You see what i have to deal with?

Bored

Martyrdom

Been back to the PInacoteca di Brera today to do a couple of drawings, i've come to realise that i am very interested in the Martyred Saints, i wish to limit the use of the word martyr because everytime i say it "JIHAD" shoots into my head, and i'm not interested in making a political statement about early Christian Extremism Vs Muslim Extremism because not only is that cheesy but its what you want me to do, right?

I love how literal the early pre renaissance religious paintings were, here depicts a painting of St Stephen, the first martyred saint, he was killed by stoning.



Two images of St Peter of Verona, who is often depicted with a sword in his head. (he was decapitated)






I think it would be a mistake to ignore the reference to todays "martyrs" and i find the similarities between the aesthetics quite appealing





Just found this image, it was the first to come up on Google images under Martyr.

Definition of Martyr :

1: a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle

?

Discovered this painter, who's work is cheesy but i quite liked the references to classical painting

http://www.notnoahbuchananart.com

What to do?

Finding it increasingly difficult to actually do any work.

Question: With no studio space and nowhere really to work in the Accademia, what can a painter do?

Answer: Something else.

But what? After going to the Bilblioteca Ambronesia, yesterday and seeing the cartoon of Raphael's "Scuola di Atene" (School of Athens) and Caravaggio's fruit bowl, which i must add are awesome (in the truest sense of the word), i've been craving drawing and painting, but like is said earlier, there is a problem.





So a solution is what is needed!



Anyone?

p.s

On a side note, the figure of Plato (middle left) is believed to be the image of Da Vinci, and in the final fresco in the vatican, Raphael used his own image and the image of Michelangelo for two of the other figures. Interesting eh? no? ok.

Fine, i'll draw.

Some drawings i did in the Pinacoteca di Brera.

Jacopo Negretti, Testra di Vecchio




Giovani Luteri, St. Sebasiano


This isn't the same St. Seb, but its another from the Pinacoteca.


La Vittoria dei Carnutesi sui Normandi, Alessandro Varotari


La Cena in Amus, Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio




David and Goliath Relief from The Duomo.

I thought it fitting after the Caravaggio.



Bob Dylan - Who Killed Davey Moore

Time travel.

Is time travel possible, a discussion i've been contemplating solidly for the whole of today. I'm currently coming to a close of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, an interesting read, and has me debating time in photography and time as a tool.

For instance, this afternoon i spent 4 hours in a class being talked at, not understanding a single word. Now if time travel were possible, it would be viable that i could travel back in time say 5 hours and not go to this class, or, travel back a year and learn italian.

One positive did come out of this never ceasing barrage of language, in the form of a video of a performance piece by Samuel Beckett, i suppose this gave the italian students a taste of what its like for us.

Saint Biro

Fun times at the San Siro.

1-0 INTERNAZIONALE

After watching the film "Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle" i was in the mood for some football!

From Tom Burton

Lost.

Sergent Raincloud's journey to the centre of the earth.

Ivana Gallerski

After our earlier success with the Galleries in Lambrate we decided to go back.

Found another nice gallery called, Prometeo Gallery, showcasing work by an artist called Ivan Moudov



This was one of the works, its a curiosity box filled with things stolen from art exhibits, there is a matthew barney watch strap, a sarah lucas metal thing (bottom right), a piece of Yinka Shonibare's fabrics, the list goes on until you have listed 32 things, then it stops.

It was an interesting concept, and the most interesting thing was the urge to steal one of the displayed items, as a sort of vigilanteism, didn't dare though. Although, the thing that made me laugh the most was how just two days before this exhibition, I went to a very familiar exhibition by a Mr Alfredo Jarr... and came away with a momento.



oops.

Anyway, after speaking, very briefly to Joe and Toby about the seven deadly sins a few days ago, seeing this interested me.

Gluttony



When it was still wet the ants had obviously tried to eat the ice-cream only to get stuck and die. There were still ants running around the stick, and several running over the cadavers of the deceased ants.

P.s Stealing, another deadly sin.

FastWeb!

Yeah!

so had the internet installed in our flat 20 minutes ago, and in approximately 11 minutes our electricity will be cut off for maintenance, one step forward, two steps back, thats the way of progress.

Going to probably venture into the abyss (accademia) when the lights go out.

Will be trying to find a studio to rent this afternoon, and hopefully will have somewhere to actually paint, or art (to make art is to art?).

Also, bumped into this weird guy. Anyone know who he is?... >>>>

Klerkx & Jerkx

Ok, so galleries are interesting in Milan, the first real gallery experience we had was at the Main gallery, right next to the Duomo. 

We paid €7 to go and see a Canaletto  exhibition... If you ever get the opportunity to go to a canaletto exhibition, run as far from it as possible. For a starter, it only had 2 Canelettos and they could quite possibly have been the most boring paintings ever. Then it was followed by horrible furniture and ceramic vases painted/crafted in the most complex way possible.

To add insult to injury, we might as well have been escorted around the gallery by security. If you are under the age of 40 and are interested in Classical art, you must be a vandal, right?

Pah!

Needless to say, i lost faith in art for a little while.

But on a positive note, we managed to find several art galleries similar to those on Viner st, small independent galleries showcasing new artists.

Klerkx was one of the best of these.

Which played host to works by Matt Calderwood Weighted, balanced sculptures.

Yesterday we managed to get to... get this, MILANO GALLERIA D'ARTE MODERNA!

yeah?

no.

it was crap, the most modern piece of work was from 1929...

And before you say it, i know "modernity" spans from the 19th Century to mid 20th but, it was awful.

Apart from a few nice Cartoon's (looked like MichaelAngelo's, probably weren't) it was all filled with Landscapes from lesser known painters, and with the exception of a few nice pre-impressionist paintings the place was a dive.

Will update with more of our adventures shortly.

In The Studio

or rather, not.

There are no student studios in the Accademia, we have no space to work in, no space to call our own. How sad?

:(

Don't really know how to start working or what to start working on.

There are no classes par say, each seems to be a gathering of students aching for a tutorial, in italian... of course.

We've met several of our reccomended tutors, Prof. Salvatore (Painting) who is a cold man, witty in his own italian way, says very little, but seems ok. He likes women a lot according to Angela...

Next up was our Multimedia tutor, Prof. Muzzolini... i liked him immediatly.

Benito... i mean, professor Muzzolini, speaks english, well, some english. And seemed to make a great effort to make us feel welcome, he looked at our work and told us about the structure of his course. Nice chap.

One week in Milan

After having spent over one week in milan we have finally started our course.

Its odd, to say the least.

You are given a tutorial with the erasmus tutor (Angela), who then reccomends tutors for you to see. But, you don't have to stay with those tutors, you can pick your own.

Then you are given a timetable, which basically is a list of when each tutor should be in, and you make up your own timetable depending on who is in on which day ect.

When i say should be in, i mean, probably will be in, maybe. The tutors here seem to come and go when they please, each is on the rota from, say 8-2 or 1-7. But generally turn up about 10:30-11.

deal with it.

OK!?

Milano

First week in italy.

Time is money, i'll explain all later.

Ciao

This is me in the hostel. The infamous 

Hotel Eva/Arno