Today, on April 24 Armenians all around the world will mark the 97th anniversary of the most atrocious tragedy visited upon them — the systematic killings and deportations carried out by the Ottoman Turkey.
On this day many will visit the Genocide Memorial Monument, various public meetings, ceremonies and church services will be held both in Armenia and everywhere in the Diaspora. Hundreds of thousands will take part in rallies and protests against the modern day Turkish denial (the Turkish government doesn’t agree with the events being described as a genocide).
I, for one suggest an alternative way of approaching things. We should see this day not only in black and white – this day must also be glorified and celebrated because “the villain has failed to desist a human race of it’s creative abilities.” As long as a nation is able to give life to new ideas and ways of perceiving existence it shall prevail.
And so, let us remember those who didn’t surrender to life’s blows. One of them was Edward Voskeritchian known throughout Cyprus as “EDWARDS”.
The Armenian Edward Voskeritchian was born in 1902 in Cilicia. His father was a cultivated, polyglot high school teacher and a significant member of the Armenian community. Like many Armenians, the elder Voskeritchian was forced to leave his homeland penniless, on account of the Turkish slaughter of his people. At the beginning of the century he settled in Nicosia where he immediately became a teacher and a churchwarden in the Armenian church. The small Armenian community of Nicosia was, however, an inadequate base for his economic needs, so he moved to Larnaca where he opened a photographic studio.
Over the years young Edward learned his father’s art. It was his secret hope to devote his life to photography, as indeed he did. Until the last days of his life one would find him still working daily at his Limassol’s studio.
In 1920, at the age of eighteen Edward moved to Limassol on his own and started working for the famous photographer J.P. Foscolos who, as an old man, was no longer able to carry out his work alone. Edward’s first exclusively personal photographic studio opened in 1926.
“Armenian scientists have proven that 94.7% of all famous people are of Armenian origins.” What’s next?
“To publish has traditionally meant — and to most publishers still means — to make public, on the simple understanding that what is openly known and valued has its own life and its own chance for a future. That is all the immortality culture can provide. To publish is not to preach, not even to publicize, though both those things may also be involved… Great books still come from the largest houses, but there is ample proof that publishing, like writing, is done best by those for whom a book is something more than just a marketable product, and by those for whom the beating of the heart and the singing of ideas are sweeter than the sweetest purr of money… Why so much emphasis here on the physical quality of books? Durability and beauty, like intelligence, are something more than luxuries. They are tactics for survival. Books are part of culture, and culture is part of propagation. Culture — something common to all mammals and all birds — is the part of any species’ propagation conducted by non-genetic means. Writers, typographers, printers and publishers make their books to last (if they know what a book is) for the same reason that they feed and clothe their children. The degradation of the book goes hand in hand with the destruction of the forests, the pollution of the water, the pollution of the air…”
You have just read three excerpts found on pages 295 and 296 in the book ‘A Short History of The Printed Word.’ A very invaluable book covering typography and printing from the earliest days to the beginnings of the digital revolution in the 1970’s. I enjoyed reading and it served as a reference for my dissertation. If you are a design student or someone curious — this book will be a delight to read or to just flip through the pages.
I went to the market, where they sell birds
and I bought some birds
for you
my love
I went to the market, where they sell flowers
and I bought some flowers
for you
my love
I went to the market, where they sell chains
and I bought some chains
heavy chains
for you
my love
And then I went to the slave market
and I looked for you
but I did not find you there
my love.
Jacques Prévert, France’s most widely read poet since Victor Hugo, was born in Paris in 1900. He left school in 1915 and worked at various jobs until 1920 when he served in the military in Lorraine and with the French occupation forces in Turkey.
In 1925 he began to associate with the surrealists, including André Breton and Louis Aragon. “Expelled” from this group by Breton in 1930, because of his “occupation or character”, he responded with a savage satirical attack on Breton, “Death of a Gentleman”. His first poems were published in the same year, and in 1931 there appeared his first major success: “Attempt to Describe a Dinner of Heads in Paris - France”.
In the 1930s he worked with a theatre company, the “October Group”, linked to the Communist Party though not always reflecting the Party’s views. In 1933 he attended the International Workers’ Theatre Olympiad in Moscow for the première of his play, “The Battle of Fontenoy”. In the same years he began writing film scripts, his first film (“It’s In The Bag”) appearing in 1932.
Paroles, Prévert’s first collection of poetry, appeared late in 1945. Patched together by René Bertelé from forgotten newspapers and reviews, cabaret songs, and scribblings from the backs of envelopes and the paper tablecloths of cafés, Paroles is widely considered Prévert’s best work.
Armenian civilization is one of the most ancient of those surviving in the Middle East, but for large parts of its history Armenia has been a nation without a country. This has given the spoken and written word, the primary means through which Armenian identity has been preserved, enormous prominence in its people’s culture.
Over the centuries this emphasis has fostered a particular regard for books and the means of producing them. Scribes added notes on the proper care and conservation of books and advice on hiding them during dangerous times, even on “ransoming” them should they fall into the wrong hands. A late 19th-century English traveler observed that the Armenians prized the printing press with the same “affection and reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun.”
In 1511 to 1512 (the exact date is uncertain), the first Armenian book was printed in Venice. The event was especially significant for this scattered nation, which did not acquire a modern homeland until 1918 and then only in a small part of its ancestral lands.
The anniversary is the occasion for “Armenia: Imprints of a Civilization,” an impressive exhibition organized by Gabriella Ulluhogian, Boghos Levon Zekiyan and Vartan Karapetian of more than 200 works spanning more than 1,000 years of Armenian written culture. These range from inscriptions and illuminated manuscripts to printed and illustrated books, including many unique and rare pieces from collections in Armenia and Europe.
The show opens with the atmospheric painting of 1889 by the Armenian artist Ivan Aivazovski, “The Descent of Noah From Mount Ararat,” from the National Gallery in Yerevan. It shows the Old Testament patriarch leading his family and a procession of animals across the plain, still watery from the subsiding Flood, to re-people the earth.
The extraordinary grip that this mountain has had on the Armenian imagination is tellingly demonstrated by subsequent sections on sculpture, the Armenian Church and the Ark — the conical domes of Armenian churches seeming eternally to replicate this geographical feature that symbolizes the salvation of the human race.
Christianity reached Armenia as early as the first or early second century. And Armenia lays claim to having been the first nation that adopted the faith as a state religion, sometime between 293 and 314, a date traditionally recorded by the Armenian Church as 301.
There followed, in around 404 or 405, an initiative that has been one of the cornerstones of the endurance of the Armenian ethnos: the invention of a distinctive alphabet capable of rendering the language’s complex phonetic system. This made possible the translation of the Bible — the majestic 10th-century Gospel of Trebizond is on show here — and the foundation of Armenian literature in all its manifestations, sacred and secular.
The desire to illustrate the gospels and other Christian texts was the primary impetus for the development of Armenian art, which drew on an unusually wide range of sources thanks to the country’s position at the crossroads of several civilizations.
As Dickran Kouymjian writes in his essay in the exhibition’s substantial and wide-ranging catalog, which is available in English, French and Italian: “Armenian artists were remarkably open to artistic trends in Byzantium, the Latin West, the Islamic Near East and even Central Asia and China.”
A sumptuous display of these illuminated books brings together some of the finest surviving examples from the ninth to the 15th centuries, and it is curious to discover that even after the advent of printing, the tradition of illumination continued in Armenian monasteries for a further two and a half centuries.
The acme of the Armenian miniature was reached in the 13th century, during the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which ruled over a substantial part of Asia Minor (1198-1375), until it was overthrown by the Mamluks of Egypt.
Armenian contacts with Venice date to the period when the nascent lagoon republic was a remote western outpost of Byzantium, where Armenians held senior positions in the administration and the military. In the sixth century the Armenian governor Narses is credited with introducing the cult of Theodore, or Todoro, Venice’s first patron saint and Isaac the Armenian is recorded as the founder of the ancient Santa Maria Assunta basilica on the island of Torcello.
Contacts became frequent during the Kingdom of Cilicia as Venetian merchants expanded their activities in the Levant and their Armenian counterparts sought opportunities in Europe.
In 1235 the Venetian nobleman Marco Ziani left a house to the Armenian community at San Zulian near Piazza San Marco, which came to be called the Casa Armena and provided a focal point for Venice’s ever more numerous Armenian residents and visitors.
The testament drawn up in 1354 by the governess of this house, “Maria the Armenian,” indicates that by that time there was not only a thriving community of merchants, but also clerics and an archbishop, to whom she left three of her six peacocks. Later the church of Santa Croce was founded on the same site, still today an Armenian place of worship. Both Marco Ziani and Maria’s wills are on show.
A precious copy of the first Armenian book printed in 1511-1512, a religious work titled the Book of Friday, is also on display. The innovation led to the setting up of a host of Armenian presses all over the world. The fruits of these — from locations as far-flung as Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg to Istanbul, Isfahan, Madras and Singapore — form the absorbing last section of the exhibition.
Venice was given a further boost as the global center of Armenian culture by the arrival in the lagoon of Abbot Mekhitar and his monks in 1715. This visionary was born in Sivas (ancient Sebastia) in Anatolia, and had spent time in Echmiadzin and Istanbul. Later he took the community he had created to Methoni in the Peloponnese, which had been conquered by the Venetians in the 1680s. But the prospect of the town’s recapture by the Ottomans led to Mekhitar’s decision to take refuge in Venice. In 1717 he and his followers were granted a lease on the island of San Lazzaro, which has been their headquarters ever since.
Under Mekhitar, San Lazzaro became the epicenter of a worldwide Armenian cultural revival. The community created a study center and library, was responsible for printing scores of books in Venice and elsewhere, and established an international network of schools, where a high proportion of Armenia’s religious and secular elite received an education into modern times.
The Armenian Academy of San Lazzaro has published Bazmavep, a literary, historical and scientific journal since 1843, one of the oldest continuous periodicals of its kind. And the first Armenian newspaper-magazine was Azdara (The Monitor), founded in Madras in 1794.
San Lazzaro’s most famous foreign student was Lord Byron, who learned Armenian there with the scholar Harutiun Avgerian, with whom he collaborated on the production of an Armenian and English grammar, containing translations by the poet.
A version of one of the most recognisable images in the world – Edvard Munch’s The Scream – is to be sold by Sotheby’s in New York.
The auction house said it could fetch more than $80m (£50m), which would make it one of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction.
The pastel work is one of four versions created by the Norwegian artist using different techniques, and the only one in private hands. Simon Shaw, head of the impressionist and modern art department at Sotheby’s in New York, said: “Munch’s The Scream is the defining image of modernity, and it is an immense privilege for Sotheby’s to be entrusted with one of the most important works of art in private hands.
“Instantly recognisable, this is one of very few images which transcends art history and reaches a global consciousness. The Scream arguably embodies even greater power today than when it was conceived.
“At a time of great critical interest in the artist, and with the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2013, this spring is a particularly compelling time for The Scream to appear on the market. For collectors and institutions, the opportunity to acquire such a singularly influential masterpiece is unprecedented in recent times.”
Shaw said it was difficult to predict the value of The Scream but recent sales suggested the price could exceed $80m at the 2 May auction. That would place it alongside auction record holders, such as Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which holds the current record after it sold for $106m at Christie’s in New York in May 2010. That broke the previous record of $104.3m paid three months earlier for Giacometti’s Walking Man I at Sotheby’s in London.
The Scream is owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen – of the Olsen shipping family – whose father, Thomas, was a friend and patron of Munch and acquired it to boost the artist’s reputation overseas. Olsen said: “I have lived with this work all my life, and its power and energy have only increased with time.
“Now, however, I feel the moment has come to offer the rest of the world a chance to own and appreciate this remarkable work, which is the only version of The Scream not in the collection of a Norwegian museum.”
He added: “I am concerned as an environmentalist about man’s relationship with nature, and I feel The Scream makes an important statement about this.”
The work was one of many by Munch that Olsen’s father had acquired in an effort to further the artist’s reputation by lending the collection to exhibitions overseas, he said.
“In that tradition, proceeds from this sale will go toward the establishment of a new museum, art centre and hotel on my farm Ramme Gaard at Hvitsten, Norway. It will open next year in connection with the Munch 150th anniversary, and will be dedicated to the artist’s work and time there.”
Munch’s studio and house would be restored, allowing guests to stay in the latter, he said.
This version of The Scream is the most vibrant of the four, with the prime example being in the collection of the National Gallery of Norway. It was stolen in 1994, at the start of the winter Olympics in Lillehammer, but returned later that year.
Ten years later the other two versions were stolen, this time by a masked gunman. They were also recovered and went back on display in 2008.
The sale will allow this 1895 version to go on public display in London and New York for the first time.
Via - the Guardian
Love is… started out as love notes between New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali and her future husband Roberto back in the 60s. To get around her shyness Kim would leave drawings of the two of them with little messages under his pillow or tucked into a pocket. Roberto it turned out kept every note Kim ever made for him. Kim’s cartoons were eventually published in the Los Angeles Times in 1970 and were soon touching the hears of millions across the globe. Love is… has been translated into 25 languages.
Restaurateurs and those who advise them have long argued that people read menus in predictable ways. The received wisdom holds that a diner will start on the right-hand side of a menu, a little way above the middle, before zooming up to the top right-hand corner. Then he’ll jump backwards to the top left and down the left-hand page, then finally fill in the gaps in the bottom-right and the middle.
Not so, apparently. New research from San Francisco State university claims to overturn this notion. Once they had hooked people’s heads up to computers, presented them with menus and studied their eye movements, the researchers found that participants read menus sequentially from left to right, like books. (In part, this confirms Gallup research (pdf) from 1987.)
The findings could have important implications for menu design and the way we order in restaurants. Restaurateurs might need to rethink placing their showcase items at the top-right of their menu or just below it. The menu from Keith McNally’s majestic New York brasserie Balthazar, deconstructed in this paper a couple of years ago, proudly places “Le Bar à Huîtres” at the top-right of the page, with its high-margin plateaux de fruits de mer at $70 and $115 and half a lobster at $23. (It also sticks a prawn cocktail there for $15: this might look expensive in isolation but seems almost cheap beside such expensive dishes.)
Menu design is a complex and opaque business. A menu reflects the spirit of a restaurant, its beliefs, presumptions and pretensions. Typeface, style and structure communicate the values. A cleverly pitched menu can make a diner who chooses the lowest-priced item feel like a cheapskate and the one who orders the most expensive feel like a sophisticate. And most good menus – except in the flashiest, show-off places – cleverly insinuate a notion of value for money that the place itself might not deliver. The menu is the shop window for the kitchen, of course, and thus one of the most effective and consistently reliable means of getting money from the customers. Restaurateurs have developed a number of tricks and tropes with it.
Boxes draw the customer’s eye, highlighting whatever is inside them. If something is in a box on a menu, it’s a reasonable bet that the restaurant makes a decent profit on that dish – or at least that the kitchen is particularly proud of the product. Pound signs and zeroes are mostly out nowadays – “£15.00” looks much more money-focused and expensive than the nakedly trendy “15”, and “£9.99” seems horrible compared to “9.50” or even “9.95”. Few customers understand restaurant economics enough to do anything more than guess at the margins on specific dishes, but they are sensitive to contrast. So almost all menus bundle expensive items with cheaper ones: more specifically, they price some items relatively highly for what they are and list them next to the most expensive items of all, like the prawn cocktail above.
Via - The Guardian
