Foot and Fire

Day 3 Nara Roaming around the streets in Japan is not boring as their manholes are always adorned with interesting painting, etching and colors. They are like stamps, yes the eki stamps which one gets after alighting a station and the postage stamps. Also, they represent the place and its symbols like Nara has deers, Shizuoka has tea plants, and Hemiji has castle. Here are some of the snaps we made along the way.  Day Himeji Castle Shizouka Hakodate Sapporo  

I mentioned in my earlier blog that the other thing apart from French Painter Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates painting, I gushed over the Egyptian relics. Having seen a real mummy with intricate bandage, met a Sphinx and scrutinized a Mentuhotep statue in person gave me an inexplicable joy. I read somewhere that The Met or the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one Museum that you have to go to if you have to choose one, and now, I agree. The African Origin of Civilization with Egyptian Art in Gallery 136  Floor 1. But see more in Galleries 304, 376, 455, 550, 601, 681, 753, 828, 957, 964, Ground Floor, Floors 1 & 2.  The mummy that gave real face to the mummies we just saw in movies. The fabric used is sturdy and the latticework in wrapping the body is intricate, not like it's just wrapped by a roll paper.  Dutch masters were a real find too and I was lucky to have seen a Rembrandt and a ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art or The Met has shown me two wonderful things when I visited it. I was able to see a real mummy, sphinx and statue of pharoah Mentuhotep and this 1787 oil painting on canvas by Jacques-Louis David.  Just before making this blog, I checked the wikipedia entry on this one to see if my own appreciation adds up to it, only to find out that I got my own understanding of the painting.  Wiki says, " The Death of Socrates (French: La Mort de Socrate) is an oil on canvas painted by French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1787. The painting was part of the neoclassical style, popular in the 1780s, that depicted subjects from the Classical age, in this case the story of the execution of Socrates as told by Plato in his Phaedo.[1] In this story, Socrates has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his death as a final lesson for his pupils ...

  In memory of the lost bracelets along the way and  in honor of these surviving ones, I have to write a story for you my dear readers about these finds I got from my travels outside the country. While trinkets abound, one has to look closely and feel affinity with the item before buying the same. Sometimes choices are overwhelming that one ends up not buying anything. It can be a visual overload actually at the flea market aside from the noise of haggling. So here is my stories... These bracelets are made of candle wicks. I can feel the candle texture on each strand actually. I lost one of this, the one with blue-green, green and blue color combination. One can buy stones of value but I found some art and soul in these candle wicker bracelets. It spoke to me like the wind, inaudible yet felt. I bought this in the night market of Siem Reap, Cambodia which is located just a walking distance from where we stayed, a hotel called, No Problem Hotel. From that hotel we woul...

The Spoliarium at the National Museum It is huge and still in good condition given that it was made in 1884, and what is more delightful is that we can actually come closer to this national treasure at the National Museum. Being able to get close to the Spoliarium is a warm welcome to every Filipino who has the heart and interest to see for real a national patrimony.  On the left side are the spectators who wanted to loot the dead gladiators while on the center, the dead gladiators are pulled up like animals devoid of human dignity and on the right side, a woman is bent and evidently crying over a dead gladiator. A man holding a lamp is also seen on the background. The gladiator represents the Philippines while the looters are those who deny freedom to our country. The woman represents our mother country while the man represents our heroes' enlightenment and seeking for freedom.    Yes, the subject Spoliarium is reflective of a Spanish culture since it is t...

To the Stealers of Rembrandts Gerlie Uy (c) 2017 Come on. Not that you admired the fine strokes of his brushes, the thickness of his lines and old paints, or the subtleness of his curves all under the control of his disciplined pulse. Come on. Not that you fathomed the different portraits that he journalled, the landscapes he captured, or the mundane events made extraordinary by him all many events and centuries ago. Come on. Not that you related well in the darkness casted with light, in the plainliness made special, or in the expression of a fearful or watchful eyes in every framed work of art. Come on. You should understand that stealing his work not simply a crime against property, but a heavy crime against all of us: stealing his work seals my chance to see it; You owe that too to your future grandkins.  Come on. You should know by now: a stolen Rembrandts has no ready clean buyers, and everyone wants it back, even...

A friend of hers with a Lady Bug,  a good luck insect in Europe.  This is a favorite of mine! Her portraits caught my attention. The faces in them have the surprising rawness and life. She has the talent in rendering faces that I cannot believe that she picked up the brush and easel only about six months ago; it appears to me that she has been doing this for a hundred years already. Her portraits are not mute faces; the eyes tell stories. Also, they have either ladybug, puma, butterflies, owl or violets with them. Self-portraits are most of them; subtle storytelling of a woman who found her art. She rejoices in her milestone in having her works of art part of the lively art scene in Monaco as well as UNESCO but little did she know that it is not the outward recognition that I wished to congratulate her for. It is her inward growth -- of finding her art and her expression -- which allowed her to fly like a Mariposa butterfly transformed from a larva to a pretty winge...