America isn’t known for its breathtaking architecture. There, I said it. I live in a Daniel Burnham-designed loft building that used to be a paper binding factory. It is as close to era-inspired as I could get (or afford) in Chicago. Seems that ours is a young nation hell-bent on beauty-free, modern efficiency. There are few castles here. Churches look more and more like Costco warehouses [insert sarcastic statement about capitalism and religion here] and the few Victorian Gingerbread homes left are weak and cookie cutter [why do I suddenly crave gingerbread cookies?].
I want structures that will serve my imagination. And to fulfill this desire I have to cross oceans of time. I raved over the Kostnice (Sedlec) Ossuary and St. Barbara’s Cathedral in Kutna Hora outside of Prague, I loved strolling through Notre Dame in Paris and I attended mass at St. Peter’s in Munich. I just stood there with my jaw hanging open looking around in awe at these places. If architecture was an animal I’d be a constant hunter, if only I could match my trips with the ever-growing number of arrows in my quiver.
Me at the Sedlec Kostnice Ossuary in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic
If you’ve ever “experienced” Dr. Zhivago you know that Russia simply drips with tragic historical romance in both its literature and architecture. The Romanovs, czars, czarinas, Rasputin, Lenin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, nesting dolls, the beautiful characters that comprise the cyrillic language, etc. It is that velvet-y revolution of mind to which I’m drawn. Near the top of my Bucket List, which consists entirely of travel destinations and architectural delicassies is the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (phew!) a.k.a. St. Basil’s Cathedral. This magnificent onion-domed church was built bewteen 1555 and 1561 by Ivan the Terrible in honor of the capture of the Kazan Khanate, part of the former Golden Horde. It stands on the edge of Red Square in Moscow.
Until 1600 it was the tallest building in the city and marks the geometric center of the city.
According to FamousWonders.com, legends have it that the builder of this Cathedral was blinded so that such a beautiful structure could never be built again. The Cathedral is vividly colorful and contains redbrick towers that add to its beauty. The church’s design consists of nine chapels, each mounted with its individual dome that marks the assault on the city of Kazan.
The Cathedral provides a strong religious symbolism and is based on architectural designs found in Jerusalem. Eight of the domes make a circular form around the ninth dome, forming a star (if viewed from the top). The number eight is considered an auspicious number according to Jewish calendar. There is a deep contrast between the interior and the exterior of the Cathedral. The interior contains modest decorations and is not that spectacular. The corridors inside are narrow and don’t have adequate space for worshippers seating.
Many times in history, the Cathedral has suffered damage due to violent communal incidents. If stories are to be true, the French ruler Napoleon wanted to take St. Basil back to France with him, but due to the lack of such technology, he ordered his army to destroy it so that no one else could occupy the church. His army had prepared to attack the church and had also lit up the gunpowder, but a mysterious rain shower prevented the explosions. These are legends, but people really believe in St. Basil’s mysterious powers and there are a lot of committed worshipers.
The small dome on the left marks the sanctuary of Basil the Blessed (1588).
According to our friend Wikipedia: The building’s design, shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, has no analogues in Russian architecture: “It is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to fifteenth century… a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design.” The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century. The church has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929 and, as of 2011, remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. It is often mislabeled as the Kremlin due to its location on Red Square in immediate proximity of the Kremlin.
The church acquired its present-day vivid colors in several stages from 1680s to 1848. Russians’ attitude to color in the 17th century changed in favor of bright colors; icon and mural art experienced an explosive growth in number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original color scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:
…
| |
“And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.” |
Color scheme of the cathedral is best seen by night.
I think I would either cry or faint if – nay, WHEN – I behold this cultural gem. It resembles a whimsical jewel-like castle from my dreams. Or like a sandcastle made by God. All I can do until I step foot in Red Square is to swoon and swoon. Additionally, I would also make time to travel to St. Petersburg to visit the St. Basil-inspired cathedral, The Church of Our Savior of Spilled Blood.
Inspired by St. Basil's Cathedral.
May 17, 2011
Categories: Architecture . Tags: architecture, Book of Revelation, bucket list, Chicago, Church of Our Savior of Spilled Blood, Daniel Burnham, Dr. Zhivago, Golden Horde, Ivan the Terrible, Kazan Khanate, Kutna Hora, Moscow, Munich, Notre Dame, Paris, Prague, Red Square, Russia, Saint Basil's Cathedral, St. Barbara's, St. Petersburg, State Historical Museum, travel . Author: Famous After I Die Art & Digital . Comments: 1 Comment
Famous After I Die Art & Digital Blog 
Charlie Chaplin Makes Me Cry
In one of my graduate classes we examined the subtext of Charlie Chaplin’s films and the social commentary he presented in a time when it was rather risky to do so. We watched part of Chaplin’s Modern Times in class. I had to put both hands over my mouth to stifle the uncontrollable laughter I was gripped with during the following “eating machine” scene. Tears were coming out of my eyes and my husband, who was also in this class, just laughed at me as I tried to contain my hysterics. Imagine, a silent film causing me to laugh harder than I have laughed at a film in years. That’s what I call a great time-transcending comedic art.
We plan on walking over to Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center this week as I am in luck – Charlie Chaplin films are currently being featured.
The context of the clip below: the men are testing out a more efficient way for a factory worker to quickly eat lunch, to maximize productivity. This was blatant commentary on industrial working conditions and employee treatment during the Great Depression.
…
Modern Times Movie Plot
Modern Times portrays Chaplin as a factory worker, employed on an assembly line. After being subjected to such indignities as being force-fed by a “modern” feeding machine and an accelerating assembly line where Chaplin screws nuts at an ever-increasing rate onto pieces of machinery, he suffers a mental breakdown that causes him to run amok throwing the factory into chaos. Chaplin is sent to a hospital. Following his recovery the now unemployed Chaplin is arrested as an instigator in a Communist demonstration since he was waving a red flag that fell off a delivery truck (Chaplin intended to return the flag to the driver). In jail, he accidentally eats smuggled cocaine, mistaking it for salt. In his subsequent delirious state he walks into a jailbreak and knocks out the convicts. He is hailed a hero and is released.
Outside the jail, he discovers life is harsh, and attempts to get arrested after failing to get a decent job. He soon runs into an orphan girl (the “gamine”), played by Paulette Goddard, who is fleeing the police after stealing a loaf of bread. To save the girl he tells police that he is the thief and ought to be arrested. However, a witness reveals his deception and he is freed. In order to get arrested again, he eats an enormous amount of food at a cafeteria without paying. He meets up with the gamine in the paddy wagon, which crashes, and the girl convinces the reluctant Chaplin to escape with her. Dreaming of a better life, he gets a job as a night watchman at a department store, sneaks the gamine into the store and even lets burglars have some food. Waking up the next morning in a pile of clothes, he is arrested once more.
Ten days later, the gamine takes him to a new home – a run-down shack which she admits “isn’t Buckingham Palace” but will do. The next morning, Chaplin reads about a new factory and lands a job there. He gets his boss trapped in machinery, but manages to extricate him. The other workers decide to go on strike. Accidentally paddling a brick into a policeman, he is arrested again. Two weeks later, he is released and learns that the gamine is a café dancer, and she tries to get him a job as a singer. By night, he becomes an efficient waiter though he finds it difficult to tell the difference between the “in” and “out” doors to the kitchen, or to successfully deliver a roast duck to table. During his floor show, he loses a cuff that bears the lyrics of his song, but he rescues his act by improvising the story using an amalgam of word play, words in (or made up of word parts from) multiple languages and mock sentence structure while pantomiming. His act proves a hit. When police arrive to arrest the gamine for her earlier escape, they escape again. Finally, we see them walking down a road at dawn, towards an uncertain but hopeful future. (According to Wikipedia)
About Charlie Chaplin
(Born April 16, 1889 – Died December 25, 1977) In 1915, British-born Chaplin burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler, he stayed on the job. … It is doubtful any individual has ever given more entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most”. George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin “the only genius to come out of the movie industry”. He co-founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. This meant more freedom in producing his own films. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin’s identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time. In 2008, Martin Sieff, in a review of the book Chaplin: A Life, wrote: “Chaplin was not just ‘big’, he was gigantic.
May 31, 2011
Categories: Cinematheque . Tags: Adolph Hitler, American Film Institute, Art, Chaplin: A Life, Charlie Chaplin, Chicago, factory worker, Gene Siskel Film Center, George Bernard Shaw, Great Depression, industrialization, Mary Pickford, McCarthy Era, McCarthyism, Modern Times, movies, Paulette Goddard, productivity, silent film, social commentary, United Artists, World War I, WWI . Author: Famous After I Die Art & Digital . Comments: 2 Comments