Petra the unbelievable carved buildings

 

 Inhabited since prehistoric times, this Nabataean caravan-city, situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, was an important crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock, and is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges. It is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, where ancient Eastern traditions blend with Hellenistic architecture.

Outstanding Universal Value

Brief synthesis

Situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea and inhabited since prehistoric times, the rock-cut capital city of the Nabateans, became during Hellenistic and Roman times a major caravan centre for the incense of Arabia, the silks of China and the spices of India, a crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock, and is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges. An ingenious water management system allowed extensive settlement of an essentially arid area during the Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine periods. It is one of the world's richest and largest archaeological sites set in a dominating red sandstone landscape. 

The Outstanding Universal Value of Petra resides in the vast extent of elaborate tomb and temple architecture; religious high places; the remnant channels, tunnels and diversion dams that combined with a vast network of cisterns and reservoirs which controlled and conserved seasonal rains, and the extensive archaeological remains including of copper mining, temples, churches and other public buildings. The fusion of Hellenistic architectural facades with traditional Nabataean rock-cut temple/tombs including the Khasneh, the Urn Tomb, the Palace Tomb, the Corinthian Tomb and the Deir ("monastery") represents a unique artistic achievement and an outstanding architectural ensemble of the first centuries BC to AD. The varied archaeological remains and architectural monuments from prehistoric times to the medieval periods bear exceptional testimony to the now lost civilisations which succeeded each other at the site.Outstanding Universal Value

Brief synthesis

Situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea and inhabited since prehistoric times, the rock-cut capital city of the Nabateans, became during Hellenistic and Roman times a major caravan centre for the incense of Arabia, the silks of China and the spices of India, a crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock, and is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges. An ingenious water management system allowed extensive settlement of an essentially arid area during the Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine periods. It is one of the world's richest and largest archaeological sites set in a dominating red sandstone landscape. 

The Outstanding Universal Value of Petra resides in the vast extent of elaborate tomb and temple architecture; religious high places; the remnant channels, tunnels and diversion dams that combined with a vast network of cisterns and reservoirs which controlled and conserved seasonal rains, and the extensive archaeological remains including of copper mining, temples, churches and other public buildings. The fusion of Hellenistic architectural facades with traditional Nabataean rock-cut temple/tombs including the Khasneh, the Urn Tomb, the Palace Tomb, the Corinthian Tomb and the Deir ("monastery") represents a unique artistic achievement and an outstanding architectural ensemble of the first centuries BC to AD. The varied archaeological remains and architectural monuments from prehistoric times to the medieval periods bear exceptional testimony to the now lost civilisations which succeeded each other at the site.

Whole article: UNESCO.

Terry Eagleton: "The Death of Criticism?"

Lately I'm listening to a lot of lectures and it was a pleasure to find Terry Eagleton's videos.
As I have a degree in literature I have read two of his books that was translated into Brazilian Portuguese.
Terry, may I call you like this master?, has a great sense of humour and raises numerous important issuers this world is facing.
I feel like buying some of his books but now that I can listen to the sound of his voice I'll buy it in the original language.
I'm going to listen to another of his lectures. Have a great day!

Excerpts from this video: "What sort of society is it where the possible is always superior to the actual?"

34:04 "I mean, of course, the second 9/11, not the first (...) in 1971 where the US violently overthrew the democratic elected government of Salvador Allende of Chile and installed in his place a odious dictator who went on to kill far more people that ever were killed in the World Trade Centre."

The Brazilian Portuguese version of two of Terry Eagleton's books.

It was read and will be read again.

Gaza: normal life and street art

Little is shown about the normal life of people who are in areas or countries where crimes against humanity are committed on a daily basis.

The only reference for this places are the lies mainstream media tells and the work of those who write or show through other media the resistance.

What do we know about Palestinian art and culture? Nothing.

The eurocentric history of art and culture did a lot of harm to many nations whether they are in conflict zones or not. Fortunately the discussion about it has started and I hope that soon historians will correct this mistake.

Famous paintings you must know 1

René Magritte "La Trahison des Images" (Image's treason) was painted in 1929. Magritte is a famous surrealist painter who approached issues linked to language a characteristic that was not shared with  other members of this movement.

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe." is the realistic representation of a pipe and not the pipe itself. Simple as that.


There are some paintings and artworks that are part of the western cultural heritage and are used in propaganda, graphic design, clothes stamps... they are everywhere.
I decided to post some of them so that those who don't know them can identify that the T-shirt they wearing is inspired by one of this famous art  pieces. Art is not being teached anywhere and only those who like it very much have access to this world.
I hope it helps some people knowing these renowned pieces.

What Neuroscience cannot Tell about Ourselves by Raymond Tallis

Finally I found common sense in the neuroscientist kingdom. There are numerous disciplines that neuroscientists are trying to take over sometimes with hilarious approaches for those who work on the field.

Disciplines such as  neuroaesthetics, neuroeconomics, neurosociology, neuropolitics, neurotheology, neurophilosophy, neurolaw, neurolit and others are at the curriculum of some universities.
The neuroscience conceit is creating some appalling hypothesis and arguments that defy logics and sometimes are even funny because of the mistakes and incongruent ideas.
But the field is receiving money for research while the humanities and even the scientific researches that are not of the interest of these sponsors receive nothing.

I just found this article by Raymond Tallis, a neuroscientist, where he analyzes and criticises all this neuromania.

It is a long article and it can be downloaded as pdf here or read here.

Excerpts:

"As a clinical neuroscientist, I could easily expatiate on the wonders of a discipline that I believe has a better claim than mathematics  to being Queen of the Sciences. For a start, it is a science in which many other  sciences converge: physics, biology, chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, pharmacology, and psychology, among others. In addition, its object of study is the one material object that, of all the material objects in the
universe, bears most closely on our lives: the brain, and more generally, the nervous system."

"What neuroscience does not do, however, is provide a satisfactory account of the conditions that are sufficient for behavior and awareness. Its descriptions of what these phenomena are and of how they arise are incomplete in several crucial respects, as we will see. The pervasive yet mistaken idea that neuroscience does fully account for awareness and behavior is neuroscientism, an exercise in science-based faith. While to live a human life requires having a brain in some kind of working order, it does not follow from this fact that to live a human life is to be a brain in some kind of working order. This confusion between necessary and sufficient conditions lies behind the encroachment of “neuroscientistic” discourse on academic work in the humanities, and the present epidemic of such neuro-prefixed pseudo-disciplines as neuroaesthetics, neuroeconomics, neurosociology, neuropolitics, neurotheology, neurophilosophy, and so on." (emphasis added)

"The failure to distinguish consciousness from neural activity corrodes our self-understanding in two significant ways. If we are just our brains, and our brains are just evolved organs designed to optimize our odds of survival — or, more precisely, to maximize the replicative potential of the genetic material for which we are the vehicle — then we are merely beasts like any other, equally beholden as apes and centipedes to biological drives. Similarly, if we are just our brains, and our brains are just material objects, then we, and our lives, are merely way stations in the great causal net that is the universe, stretching from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch." (emphasis added)

"Wrong ideas about what human beings are and how we work, especially if they are endlessly repeated, keep us from thinking about ourselves in ways that may genuinely advance our self-understanding. Indeed, proponents of the neuroscientific account of human behavior hope that it will someday supplant our traditional understandings of mind, behavior, and consciousness, which they dismiss as mere “folk psychology.” According to a 2007 New Yorker profile of professors Paul and Patricia Churchland,
two leading “neurophilosophers,” they like “to speculate about a day when whole chunks of English, especially the bits that constitute folk psychology, are replaced by scientific words that call a thing by its proper name  rather than some outworn metaphor.” The article recounts the occasion Patricia Churchland came home from a vexing day at work and told her husband, “Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.” Such awkward chemical conversation is unlikely to replace “folk psychology” anytime soon, despite the Churchlands’ fervent wishes, if only because it misses the actual human reasons for the reported neurochemical impairments — such as, for example, failing to get one’s favored candidate appointed to a post."  (emphasis added - keep reading  here.)

Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, is the author, most recently, of Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence (Yale, 2010) and Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (Acumen, forthcoming in 2011). This essay has been adapted from a lecture delivered in February 2010 at the American Enterprise Institute.

There is also a good article about neuroaesthetics here: "Art and the Limits of Neurosciences".

Understanding and appreciating art

Discovering Art History
I believe that this chapter I found can help some people understand some concepts and issues that are sometimes hard to identify.
Take a look:


I hope it helps. The most important is enjoying art but sometimes we need some keys.

Iranian art XVII century: wall painting

These are two wall paintings done at the XVII century at the Hasht-Behesht Palace ("Palace of the 8 heavens"). Musicians at the right and dancers at the left. Music and dancing makes a great Sunday. The history of art was always told taking Europe and the centre with few references of other cultures. Now it has been changing to a global approach. Two good examples are the books Mirror of the World by Julian Bell, 2007, 496pp, and A World History of Art by John Fleming and Hugh Honour, 1982.

The masterpiece cards - Art Blog by Bob

Bob at Art Blog by Bob, an excellent blog about Arts, just wrote about "The Masterpiece Cards" a collection of 250 cards of artists from Renascence to 1960. There is only one example of a card at the site and it was at Bob's site that I became aware of the back side of one of these cards showing the historical approach and some aesthetic considerations. It's good to have the paper at your hand and you can browse your eyes at the picture they have gathered according to "art review of each by scores of renowned art historians". Reading the list of pieces they have chosen from each artist don't causes many impression but as it's a collection of masterpieces paintings such as Vélasquez, Las Meninas ; Munch, The scream; Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère & Olympia; da Vinci, The Last Supper & The Mona Lisa; Dalí, The Persistence of Memory; van Gogh, Bedroom at Arles, The Starry Night & The Night Café are inevitable. This is a good start to make people familiar with the masterpieces and make people wanting to know more about some artists they will find more interesting. If you think of Leonardo da Vinci and only consider one of his paintings you will have one da Vinci that will change after the apreciation of some of his works. I believe it can be considered as another tool for those who are art lovers but books are valuable source and the Web can help every individual creating its own master-piece collections. We are talking about reproductions. There is a kind of "market" for reproductions. Those who are at X or Y museum are more displayed and those who have been studied by a number of experts has also its place at this market. I would like masterpiece cards of paintings and sculptures that are at the basement of museums or taken away from public view because they are at private collections. It would require lots of money. But we cannot stop daring to dream. This is a good way to have access to art's history. I hope that their next step is making collections of one single artist at a time because it’s a good way to understand each artist and their arts, world and aesthetic in a more complex way. Since we still cannot travel in space and time at light speed we have to rely on reproductions although nothing compares to the experience of being on an exhibition dedicated to an artist. It's the most efficient and pleasuring way to understand the art and universe of an artist we like. Visit Bob's blog. This is a great source for art lovers. I'm visiting it daily.