The “Sistine Chapel“, dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, is one of the most famous cultural and artistic treasures of the Vatican City, inserted in the path of the Vatican Museums. The chapel was built in 1479 under the direction of Pope Sixtus IV, who gave it his name. The location of the building is very close to St. …
Read More »CARLO ALBERTO SALUSTRI, ALIAS TRILUSSA – The cynical Roman version of La Fontane: three sonnets
Among the Roman dialect poets, Trilussa (1871/1950), is by far the most well-known and appreciated outside his own hometown. His mature work falls broadly into two types (sonnets and fables), however, it wasat the poetic fable that Trilussa truly excelled, developing a distinctly cynical Roman version (of the genre of Aesop and La Fontaine). Among his many artistic merits, he …
Read More »MANIPULATING COLORS EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS – Zhang Jing Sheng: the painter that tried to reveal the intensity of color
ZHANG JING SHENG 1/3 – Zhang Jing Sheng is a devoted painter who for many years studied color. In 1967, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Central Fine Arts Academy. He is a professor and tutor for graduate students at the Tianjin Fine Arts Academy. He tried to reveal the intensity of color, often working with a palette …
Read More »ZHANG JING SHENG, CHINE PAINTER – Dynamic tension inside colors, with shades of impressionism
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER – Classic Chinese novel, by Cao Xueqin
For more than a century and a half, Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels (a Chinese Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world’s great civilizations). Written in the mid-18th century, Dream of the Red Chamber was the last of the four great novels of Chinese literature …
Read More »THINGS GET REARRANGED – Poetry, by Huang Lihai
THINGS GET REARRANGED – The world changes subtly as it goes around. The morning coffee aroma feels like the glow from a honeycomb, while outside the window the olive grove still soaks in the twilight mist. Tiny footsteps follow faint sounds to distant places, but the fisherman has returned and is sitting in the courtyard, watching a bird foraging in …
Read More »THE WATER MARGIN – Classic Chinese novel, by Shi Nayan
Published in the 14th century, The Water Margin introduced the vernacular form and style which the others would adhere to. The novel is set in the Song dynasty and depicts a group of outlaws who eventually go on to serve the Emperor in battling foreign invaders. It was based on the real life story of the outlaw Song Jiang, who …
Read More »LETTER TO A FRIEND – Poetry, by Ah Xin
LETTER TO A FRIEND – Let me tell you about these sheep. In many ways they are like the ocean creatures you know so well: in the benevolence of the creator, they bear children, each has a face of a lad or an old man. These days they are on the hills, a tight flock, a warm flock, with a …
Read More »LEAVE ME ALONE, NOVEL BY CHENGDU – Romance, by Murong Xuecun
Leave me alone, novel of Chengdu (historically, Chengdu has been the center of China’s food culture, and is famous for its laid-back lifestyle), is an unflinching, darkly funny take on love and life in modern China. It’s the story of three young men, Chen Zhong, Li Liang and Big Head Wang and their tragi-comic struggles to make their way in Chengdu, …
Read More »THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Poetry, by Lang Qibo
THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Wumeng likes to sing after a few drinks, and he always sings the same old song. I’ve heard it many times, but still can’t remember a word of it. Wumeng dreams of building his own empire, calling it The Great Yunnan Kingdom, but the soberer he gets, the more his empire looks like a castle …
Read More »NANJING ROAD IS A LONG STREET, LIKE THE HISTORY OF ITS TOWN – Shanghai, waiting for The Bund and Tang Yun Tea House
For your clothing? Shanghai’s latitude relative to the equator is about the same as New Orleans and the climate is classified as humid subtropical. Shanghai is a huge city with several district articles containing sightseeing, restaurant, nightlife and accommodation listings. With a population of more than 23 million, is the largest and traditionally the most developed metropolis in Mainland China. …
Read More »CHINESE MUSIC – Contemporary Traditional Chinese Music
When your geographical horizon extends – for business or pleasure – you have the wonderful opportunity to hear you inside, like the perfectly proportioned man (created by Leonardo da Vinci), correlating the symmetry of human anatomy to the symmetry of the universe. What you see, hear, eat and feel, it’s all inside the Vitruvian approach to life. String instruments from …
Read More »THE PARADISE OF THE SOUL, FROM THE LABYRINTH OF THE WORLD – Hard and harsh style into engravings and drawings, like its life
KOLOMAN SOKOL 1/3 – Koloman Sokolwas (largely considered one of the most prominent of Slovakia’s contemporary artists), he was born in a poor family, in Liptovsky Mikulas. Sokol’s father died when he was very young. He attended the private schools in Kosice and in Bratislava, as well as the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where a real breakthrough in …
Read More »KOLOMAN SOKOL (1902/2003), SLOVAK PAINTER – The eventful artistic odyssey of an painter
WHAT IF YOU SLEPT – Poetry, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
WHAT IF YOU SLEPT – What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven, and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had that flower in you hand. Ah, what then? http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140423532
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