Pages

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Roland Collection of Videos & Films on Art

Roland Collection of Videos & Films on Art

We ran across this website by chance.

The Roland Collection of Videos & Films on Art is a tremendous "pay to buy" collection of art films and art videos - all titles are available for sale - but the site also offers free viewing of 450 complete films on-line. Available by art period are:

Early Cultures
First Civilisations
Africa
Pre-Columbian America
Romanesque and Gothic
Renaissance and Mannerism
Northern Renaissance
Rembrandt
Baroque and Rococo
Neo-classicists and Romantics
The Victorians
Impressionists and Post Impressionists
Art Nouveau
Expressionism
Cubism and Futurism
Into Abstraction
The Bauhaus and De Stijl
Dada and Surrealism
Modern Masters
Modern and Contemporary Sculptors
Contemporary Painters
New Directions - New Dimensions
Modern Architecture and Design

Unfortunately, surely in order to urge the viewer to buy the original quality video or film, online quality is only top at "100%" - a very small screeb size (though the films and videos are also viewable at e.g. 300% or larger screen size). Pull the right lower edge of the RealPlayer display to play with size.

Still, it is terrific stuff, e.g. take a look at Tassili N'Ajjer - Prehistoric Rock Paintings of the Sahara.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Friday, November 12, 2004

Modulator's Menagerie

Modulator's Menagerie

The Modulator has a "Friday Ark" posting (a play on Noah's Ark) in which he states:

"I'll post links to sites that have Friday (or shortly thereafter) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).

Leave a comment or trackback to this post and I'll add yours to the list. If there is interest I'll keep this as a weekly feature."


We add here an everyday photo of our Siamese cat Lucas, who is named after Luca Signorreli (also known as Luca da Cortona, or Cortene), a Renaissance painter who we rank among the first truly naturalist painters and who has been called "the first to illustrate our own house of life". Bernard Berenson (see also here and here and here) called him the "grandest illustrator of modern times". We have a copy in oil of Signorelli's Portrait of a Man, which we regard to be art's best male comparable portrait to Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa. (Portrait of a Man is found in original in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany and the Mona Lisa of course is in the Louvre in Paris, France).

We think that there is no doubt that man evolved from primate apes, but the interesting question is what preceded them? We think it is cats - and this may account for the special relationship between the felines and humanity, a close tie recognized as far back as the Ancient Pharaonic culture in Egypt and beyond. The cats are reflections of ourselves and to our knowledge are the only other animal to turn their backs on humans and pout when offended.


Luca Signorelli
Luca Signorelli II

.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Most Popular Posts of All Time