Blood

Vitkovce / Witkensdorf / Vitfalva, Spíš / Zips / Szepesség, Slovakia

Assunta

What is this exciting installation, which itself fills a whole medieval room of Milan’s Cathedral Museum, the former Royal Palace? Perhaps such kind of modern statue of the Virgin Mary, like the one set up in recent years by the gate of the Roman ghetto, in the Rose of Sion Chapel, before which for centuries the local Jews had to listen every Saturday to the sermons of the Domenicans, so they had an opportunity for conversion?


No. It is rather that kind of spontaneous folk construction, which develops and ramifies step by step, without any prior comprehensive plan, under the hand of local artisans, to whom the commission of a never seen scale allows to experience the child living in them. Like the postmodern constructivist formwork of the concrete church seen in the Ukraine.


The inevitable fate of such ad hoc constructions is passing away, except when they were intended to be the unseen supporting structure of permanent works. Like the iron structure in Milan, which is no contemporary art, as you would think at first glance, but a two hundred and fifty years old steampunk device. It was used in 1770, during the Assumption Day procession, to make lighter and more portable the huge figure of the Virgin Mary taken up in heavens. Her head, carved by Giuseppe Antignati, is seen on her side at the exhibition, just like the small model, which shows, how the folds of her dress were supposed to settle along the field lines neatly welded here and there on the construction. As is the case of the Ukrainian formworks, the secondary structure is much more exciting than the visible final conception.


Esteban Salas (Santiago de Cuba, 1725-1803): Assumpta est Maria. Teresa Paz, Ars Longa de la Havane, Maitrise de la Cathédral de Metz

Iron

Hossein Alizadeh: Aftab. Bayat-e Kord. From the album Sallâneh

János Fadrusz: King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443-1490). The modell of the statue erected in the main square of Kolozsvár/Cluj (1900) in the Hungarian National Gallery. In the background: Bertalan Székely: Finding the corpse of King Louis II after the Battle of Mohács (1526), the decisive victory of the Ottoman army over the medieval Hungarian kingdom (1860)

Sett'ispadas de dolore

Eva Lutza (trumpet, song): Sett’ispadas de dolore (Seven swords of pain) (video here). Medieval Lamentation of Mary in Sardinian language, still sung in the towns of Sardinia on the Holy Week.

Eva Lutza (trompeta, voz): Sett'ispadas de dolore (Siete espadas de dolor) (vídeo aquí). Lamentación medieval de la Virgen, sardo. Aún se canta en las ciudades de Cerdeña durante la Semana Santa.

Pro fizu meu ispriradu a manos de su rigore sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. Truncadu porto su coro su pettus tengo frecciadu de cando mi han leadu su meu riccu tesoro fui tant’a cua chignoro comente mi es faltadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. In breve ora l’han mortu pustis chi l’han catturadu bindig’oras estistadu in sa rughe dae s’ortu e bendadu l’ana mortu cun sos colpos chi l’han dadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. Morte no mi lesses bia morte no tardes piusu ca sende mortu Gesusu no podet vivever Maria unu fizu chi tenia sa vida li han leadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu.

For my son, who died at the hands of violence seven swords of pain have pierced my heart My hart is broken my chest pierced by arrows since they have taken away my precious treasure with such fury, that I do not know, how he disappeared seven swords of pain have pierced my heart In short time they killed him after they captured him it lasted fifteen hours from the garden to the cross they killed him blindfolded with the beating they gave him seven swords of pain have pierced my heart Death, do not leave me alive death, do not delay more because being dead Jesus, Mary cannot live any more: from the only son I had they took away the life seven swords of pain have pierced my heart

Por mi hijo que ha muerto a manos de la violencia, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón. Tengo el corazón roto el pecho asaeteado desde que me han robado mi tesoro precioso con tanta saña que ignoro cómo se me ha ido, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón En breve tiempo lo mataron después de capturarlo, pasaron quince horas desde el huerto a la cruz, atado lo mataron  con los golpes que le dieron, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón Muerte, no me dejes viva, muerte, no te tardes más pues estando Jesús muerto, María no puede vivir: un hijo que tenía le han quitado la vida, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón.

Giovanni Tedesco: Fragment of a Crucifix. Perugia or Siena, ca. 1460. Berlin, Bode Museum
Giovanni Tedesco: Fragmento de Crucifixión. Perugia o Siena, c. 1460. Berlín, Museo Bode

The gaze of the statues

In the times of the Counter-Reformation in 16th-century Champagne, it was fashionable to place statues in churches, many statues, very realistic ones, completely colored – living statues, so to speak. In Troyes, the site of one of the most important fairs in Europe, several churches, each having its own guilds and confraternities, had its stone figures, some of them placed at the gallery, others sitting at the base of an arch, or attentively looking down from the ceiling of the presbytery.


Most of these sculptors remain unknown. They usually did not sign their works, and the contracts between them and their patrons have disappeared. There remain only the statues, standing silently and attentively. In Chaource, near Troyes, the church is decorated with more than a hundred statues of an outstanding quality. Here, the Master of Chaource has left his name on one of the most beautiful Entombments of Europe.

You walk beyond the large grisaille windows of the Last Judgement, and then down five steps. This place is not, strictly speaking, a crypt, neither is it a side chapel, nor a tomb – but it looks like one. You descend these few steps into twilight, almost into darkness.

Yes, you descend into darkness, and there, before you see the group of the Entombment, you are startled by the stone guards who stand on either side of the door.

The guards. Larger than life, their eyes full of fear. Since 1515, they have been watching what they fail to believe, before falling asleep and awakening at the Resurrection. Since 1515, they have been standing there in their Renaissance costumes, spears in hand.

Then, as your eyes adjust to the twilight, you move ahead. There is Nicodemus, the Virgin Mary, John, Mary Salome and Mary Magdalene with a vase of perfume, Mary of Cleophas, and Joseph of Arimathea at the feet of Christ. And the body of white stone, completely smooth from centuries of caresses. All these figures are larger than you, just enough to keep you in the position of humility, while being inexpressibly human. And the patient and attentive hands of stone pause for a moment, before closing the shroud. And the eyes of stone are real eyes which look without crossing your gaze, because they are watching what no one has ever seen, and in their astonishment at seeing it, they turn back to their own thoughts.

Here, in the shadow, you encounter the thought, it has been waiting for you since 1515, and you feel very small before it.

Le regard des statues

Lors de la Contre-réforme au XVI^e siècle, en Champagne, ce fut la mode de placer des statues dans les églises — de très nombreuses statues, très réalistes, polychromes, des statues vivantes en un mot. A Troyes, site de l’une des plus importantes foires d’Europe, chacun des nombreuses églises que possédaient les métiers et confréries possède ses personnages de pierre, les uns penchés à la tribune, les autres assis à la base d’une voûte ou tendus, attentifs, au-dessus d’un jubé.


La plupart de ces sculpteurs sont restés inconnus, ils n’ont pas toujours signé leurs œuvres et les contrats qui les liaient aux commanditaires ont disparu. Ne restent que les statues, silencieuses, attentives. A Chaource, non loin de Troyes, l’église est décorée de plus d’une centaine de statues et d’une œuvre exceptionnelle : le maître de Chaource a ici laissé son nom à l’une des plus belles Mises au tombeau d’Europe.

Il faut avancer au-delà des grands vitraux à grisaille du Jugement dernier puis descendre cinq marches : le lieu n’est ni à proprement parler une crypte, ni une chapelle latérale, ni tout à fait un tombeau — mais c’est ce qu’il figure. On descend ces quelques marches dans la pénombre — presque l’obscurité.

Oui, on descend dans l’obscurité et là, avant de voir le groupe de la Mise au tombeau, on s’effraie de passer entre les gardes qui se tiennent de part et d’autre de la porte.

Les gardes. Plus grands que nature, leurs yeux sont plein d’effroi. Depuis 1515, ils regardent ce qu’ils ne parviennent pas à croire, avant de s’endormir et d’être ailleurs lors de la résurrection. Depuis 1515, ils se tiennent là dans leurs costume renaissance, la lance à la main.

Ensuite, vos yeux se sont faits à la pénombre et vous avancez. Il y a Nicodème, la Vierge Marie, Jean, Marie Salomé et Marie de Magdala avec le vase de parfum, Marie de Clopas et Joseph d’Arimathie aux pieds du Christ, Joseph et ce corps de pierre blanche, lisse d’avoir été caressé pendant des siècles. Tous ces personnages sont à peine plus grands que vous, juste assez pour vous maintenir dans l’humilité de votre position tout en étant indiciblement humains. Et ces mains de pierre, patientes, attentives, retenues un instant avant de refermer le linceul. Et des yeux de pierre, de vrais yeux qui regardent sans qu’on croise leur regard car ils voient ce que nul n’a vu et, dans leur étonnement d’avoir vu, ils se tournent vers leurs propres pensées.

Voilà, dans l’ombre, vous rencontrez la pensée, elle vous attend depuis 1515 et vous êtes tout petit devant elle.

The Three Graces

Today I went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin to see the First World War exhibition, heralded with great fanfare. It is vain to waste many words on the exhibition, when a single one describes it: boring. In the basement, in one large room, a turbulent installation tries to present the entire history of WWI. The attempt is a complete failure. Anyone who does not already know the progress of the war in detail will not be able to assemble into one coherent picture the objects exhibited in separate stalls, which are labeled with the names of various theatres of operation, and presented in an “ach, wie schrecklich, der Krieg!” way to maximize the emotional effect. And anyone who knows it will clearly see the random and commonplace character of the selections. I would have not even written about it, if, just before the exit, in the stall dedicated to the post-war developments, I had not caught sight of one last exhibition object.


The more or less one meter wide bronze plaque once adorned the building of the Croatian Parliament in Zagreb, while today it is preserved in the Croatian Historical Museum. According to its inscription – “narodno vijeće na spomen proglašenja slobodne nezavisne države slovenaca hrvata i srba u hrvatskome saboru, XXIX. X. MCMXVIII.” – it was raised by the national council to commemorate the proclamation of the free and independent state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 29 October 1918. The three female figures in classical dress, personifying the three peoples, hold hands. The figures on the left and right hold in their free hands the coats of arms of Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia, assembled from a wide variety of regions. The figure in the middle has both hands full, yet she is not left without a coat of arms either. She has it under her foot.


If the three South Slavic brother nations want to celebrate their union on the wall of the Croatian Parliament, let them do so, although the sincerity of the gesture is seriously questioned by the permanent fratricide against each other they have been committing ever since, both by the pen and the machine gun. But that on this occasion they found it necessary to immortalize, aere perennius, the treading on the (heraldically defective) coat of arms of Hungary, with which Croatia fought on the same side through WWI; which they did not win, but were separated from it by virtue of the treaty of peace; and with which they were for eight hundred years in personal union, and fought together against the Ottoman empire and its Balkan marauders, so that here they also tread on their own coat of arms and eight hundred years of history – this already belongs to the pathology of the newly created Eastern European small states. And it also illustrates, together with thousands of similar gestures, why that treaty of peace, of which today we commemorate the ninety-fourth anniversary, can remain a living psychological and emotional burden, beyond all historical considerations and necessity.

Ivo Kerdić, the sculptor, creator of several patriotic post-WWI sculptures and medals, seems to have thoroughly learned the principles of Roman classicism in his study trips. However, it seems that neither he nor his commissioners had ever heard about the most important principle of classical Rome, with which it could preserve its conquests and under which they would flourish, and which is summed up in four words as the art of government by Virgil in the famous verse 6.853 of Aeneis:

parcere subiectis et debellare superbos

spare the subdued and vanquish the arrogant

To learn the second half of the principle, they had plenty of time between 1991 and 2001. The first half, however, they seem never to have learned.

Dissolving: Traditional roller skates

Berlin, Schloßstraße, Week of the Dutch shoe, February 2014, from here

Prague, Old Town, Řetězová 245/8, “U černého strevíce” (Black Shoe House), facade 1603

Twelve Communists

About the video of the previous post the question was raised, what is the Ukrainian song performed with such dedication during the tumbling down of the Lenin statues. Let us then have the original text with its translation, and, below the video, the song itself, free from the background noise of the events. The author, Trizuby Stas – Three-Tooth Stas, “one tooth for the Communist Party, another for the Komsomol, a third for the trade unions” – aka Stanislav Shcherbatikh (1948-2007) was a prolific and influential figure of the Ukrainian underground.



Тризубий Стас – Дванадцять комуністів (Twelve Communists)

Дванадцять комуністів в однім куротнім місці Зутрілися на з'їзді чи на пленумі ЦК. В готелі поселились, а чим це закінчилось, Про це моя історія не радісна така. Дванадцять комуністів пішли купатись в море, І в хвилі променисті кожен весело стрибав, Та двоє з перепою лишились під водою, От вже і починається, як я попереджав. Бо тільки десятеро вийшли із води, Ось так і зменшуються в партії ряди. Вже десять комунітсів покупані та чисті В покоях ономісних перетравлюють обід, В вісьмох перетрамилось, а двоє отруїлось, А троє в моїй пісні ще захворіли на СНІД. Всі вісім комуністів останні чули вісті, Про СНІД, що ходить в місці, попередив партактив, Розважились приємно в непевнім товаристві, Типовий сексуальний кримінальний детектив. Трьох неслухняних довелося поховать, І залишилось із вісім тільки п'ять. З п'ятірки комуністів один помер на місті, Бо кунив сигарету на імпортний килим, А четверо тушили, з них троє так спішили, Що довго не прожили, бо попав у горло дим. Багато комуністів померло в моїй пісні, Сама Агата Крісті позаздрила б мені, Та ще один лишився, що в морі не втопився, Обідом не втруївся і не загинув у вогні. Таки не тонуть і в пожежах не горять, Вони і досі на шиях в нас сидять.

Twelve Communists gathered in a spa for the CC meeting or plenum. They stayed at the hotel, and as to how it ends, will be told by my not too happy story. Twelve Communists went to bathe in the sea, and cheerfully frolicked in the golden waves, but two with hangovers remained under water, lo, how it begins, did I not tell you before? Only ten came out of the water: this is how the ranks of the Party decrease! All ten Communists, bathed and clean, retired to their rooms to digest lunch. Eight digested it, but two were poisoned, and three in my ballad got AIDS there. All eight of the Communists knew the latest news about AIDS from the party activist, but somehow mingled with their cheerful company a detective specializing in sex crimes who managed to bury the three naughty ones, so that only five of the eight were left. Of the five Communists one died in the city when he put out the cigarette on an imported kelim. And the other four were so enthralled by the fire, that three of them did not survive, as the smoke went down their throats. Many Communists die in this song of mine, even Agatha Christie could envy me. But there was one left, who was not drowned in the sea, was not killed by the lunch, and did not die in the fire. No water kills, no fire burns this race: look, they are still sitting in our neck.

And in fact, only eleven of them are pulled down in the video.

Iconoclasm

Demolition of a statue of Lenin in a small town in Ukraine in the summer of 1941, after the German invasion

We have already pointed out that, beginning in 1918, in Russia and later in the Soviet Union they preserved the pedestals of the tsarist public monuments, while exchanging the statues standing on them for the figures of Lenin (and later of Stalin). Traveling in the Ukraine in the past two decades, we could observe the opposite: preserving the pedestals of the statues of Lenin in the main squares, the figure on them was replaced by the statue of Shevchenko, as the symbol of Ukrainian language, history and unity. But not everywhere. Like in so much else, here also, it was the Zbruch, the former Galician-Russian and later Polish-Ukrainian border river, that was the invisible dividing line, and when traveling eastward from Czernowitz, soon there appeared the first preserved Lenin statues, the symbols of the protest of Eastern Ukraine against the new concept of nation and history propagated from the western part of the country. What is more, as if pointing out that the statues were not accidentally left in place, in many localities – mostly small towns – they added a new iconographic element to them, by completely painting them gold or silver.

This invisible border seems to be broken now, with the statue-demolishing actions carried out yesterday throughout Eastern Ukraine. According to @ukpravda_news, they hurled down the statues of Lenin in thirty-two towns, although the accompanying map indicates only sixteen locations, and among them at least the ones in Kiev and in Berdichev were already destroyed one or two months earlier by the protesters. Even in the following video, published yesterday by Yuri Kovtsunyak, we only see eleven, the majority of which, however, are destroyed in observance of the traditional rules of ritual statue-hurling as an execution in effigie: with the rope tied around the neck, pulling it down with a truck so that it falls head first to the ground, then pulling the body for a while on the pavement, and finally smashing it in pieces.

Click here for the text and translation of the music accompanying the video.

The pedestals, however, are still standing, and an empty pedestal cries for a statue. As to who will be put on them next in Eastern Ukraine, this question will be answered by the political developments of the next weeks and months.