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Abstract

This essay explores a curious phenomenon in the work of several European surrealist artists, notably Hans Bellmer and René Magritte, from the late 1920s through the 1950s: In images of the body, a penis may appear in place of a nose; breasts, testicles, or buttocks stand in for the eyes of a face, a vaginal opening for the nostrils, an anus for the mouth. Alternatively, disembodied arms and legs or an elongated neck take on a phallic character, or the entire body becomes an erect penis. Aside from the shock value of these disconcerting substitutions, for which the Surrealists surely strove, what are we to make of them? Psychoanalytic accounts of fetishism point to castration anxiety as one explanatory factor in the creation of such metaphors-Freud's paradigmatic fetishist cathected a "shine on the nose" in place of the missing phallus, as described in the analyst's now-classic essay of 1927. Moreover, the aggression underlying an artist's disfiguring a face by adding genitalia is discussed in light of a general theory of caricature formulated by another contemporary of the Surrealists, Ernst Kris ("The Psychology of Caricature," 1936.) In light of a postwar social reality that included wounded bodies and widespread devastation, Surrealism can be said to reflect the experience of actual disfigurement and death. Additionally, however, biographical information on individual artists suggest possible intrapsychic sources for the hostility behind these sexualized representations.

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"A shine on the nose": sexual metaphors in surrealism - PubMed

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This essay explores a curious phenomenon in the work of several European surrealist artists, notably Hans Bellmer and René Magritte, from the late 1920s through the 1950s: In images of the body, a penis may appear in place of a nose; breasts, testicles, or buttocks stand in for the eyes of a face, a ...

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If 'compression is the first grace of style', you have it.
- Marianne Moore, 'To a Snail' ¹

The allowing of the material, trusting it, allows the memory to work-trusting that the actual material has something in it which causes it to work for the viewer. It's not a closed thing, it's not a clear statement. It's more like peering into layer upon layer of memory and consciousness.
- Alice Maher ²

In August 2005 Alice Maher held an exhibition entitled Rood at the Green on Red Gallery in Dublin. In the Old English dream-vision poem, 'The Dream of the Rood', the dreamer sees the tree that became Christ's cross and it retells the story of the crucifixion-of its own visceral resistance to being used as an instrument of torture and its own necessary acceptance of its role. For the rood this is a matter of when to bend and not to bend, and a matter of the holes and blood left on its body as the crucifixion's legacy. The idea that materials carry their own narrative histories and that they both co-operate with and resist human impositions might be traced through a number of Maher's works, as might the Christian iconography of suffering, and the association with a transformed Mariology-for 'rood' (virga) was connected to the Virgin (virgo) through Latin lections. ³ Moreover those lections regularly associated Mary with trees-olive, myrtle, cedar, palm, cypress.

'Rood' is a relatively archaic word and signals Maher's medieval and early modern interests. The name of the cross in a medieval church, rood also refers to the screen below the cross, which separated clergy and congregation. Perhaps the most notable employments of the word 'rood' in Irish writing, are in W. B. Yeats's 'To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time' and in Patrick Kavanagh's 'Epic':

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided: who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. ⁴

Kavanagh's 'rood' is a term of measurement, etymologically related to the cross, since it is a measure taken by rod or pole. To ask 'how much is a rood?' is rather like asking 'how high is a ladder?', but less than an eighth of an acre seems to be a rough guide.

'Rood' puns with rude, reminding us that Maher can also be a 'rude girl'-bawdy (see Tryst [1989] and Two Trees [1996]), excremental ( The Little Shits [1994]), violent (The Axe (and the Waving Girl) [2003]) and iconoclastic ( familiar series [1994]). ⁵ Maher's Rood explored the space of Green on Red, her 'half a rood', playing with the resemblance between art galleries and churches (Rood will later be exhibited in a church in Venice) and-as she has done previously-working with margins and borders, reversing some of the oppositions between inside and outside, urban and rural.

Green on Red on Lombard Street East is a loft-style space, on three floors, with large windows looking out from the gallery onto one of Dublin's more socially deprived city-centre areas. Part of the exhibition, which made a large feature of Maher's recent work with snails, was the covering of the gallery's windows with huge vinyl prints of snail tracks in shades of yellow, green and blue. These prints created a dappled light through the central space where Rood, an upside-down line of beech trees, hung. The season, the weather and the time of day all changed the shadows, which were an important part of the experience of visiting the exhibition. This produced something like the effect of stained-glass windows in a church, and something like a green thought in a green shade. But it shut out Lombard Street, reminding the visitor that galleries are spaces of privilege. Even this blocking is a reversal, since snail tracks on windows are usually an emblem of the outside trying to break in, Maher gives us an inside attempting to break out into the world.

Maher exploits other similarities between Green on Red and a church-its semi-hidden nooks and crannies and its screened spaces. ⁶ Her upside-down trees divided the space along its length, rather than its width, replacing the class divisions of clergy and congregation with that of left and right. While at first glance it might seem that Rood consists of cut branches hung from the ceiling, in fact Maher has carefully constructed these branches by gluing on extra twigs and getting a very deliberate shape to the work. Downstairs, the entrance to the galley featured a wooden ladder with more beech twigs apparently growing from it. In the four corners of the gallery were four globes, each about the size of a soccer ball, constructed from snail shells; these are The Four Directions. Snails, by virtue of their hibernation, are traditional emblems of the resurrection, and sometimes feature on gravestones. By making the snails work for her-Maher had a number of snail paintings on exhibition as well as the window prints-Maher foregrounds the snail as labourer (carrying its own house), its proverbial associations with slowness, and its destabilization of the opposition between inside and outside, body and dress, skin and organs, and (since snails are hermaphrodites) male and female. The body of a woman and a snail are juxtaposed in Frida Kahlo's self-portrait of herself in miscarriage, Henry Ford Hospital (1932). Although the snail is usually read in terms of the slowness of the miscarriage, its shape also echoes that of the pregnant womb, with its shell, foetus and placenta.

Maher, who has previously collected materials for her work from the ditches of her home in rural Tipperary, found the snails in Dublin gardens and hedgerows. She looked after them in her studio while they painted for her at night, and she boiled some of them to make The Four Directions.

... I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury? 7

The combination of strength and fragility as well as death and resurrection in the snail's shell suggest that these globes are emblems of the powerful but fragile planet-a contrast as well as reference to Maher's heavy bronze sculpture The Wilful Planet (1997). Such associations occur in the space of spectatorship and response. Casting one's eye back over Maher's career might suggest that she has always been fascinated by the relationship between spiral and circle, and explored this through the creation of works in a number of different media. The Four Directions reprises, for example, the ball of brambles she created in Cell (1991), and the drawing of hair in Folt (1993) and Coma Berenices (1999). In the snail paintings the artist surrenders some of her agency to the materials and the world; she sets the snails in motion, so to speak, but does not determine the patterns they will make. The snail paintings could be seen as the traces of the materials making a break for it, trying to escape in all directions. In The Four Directions the artist re-appropriates agency, making the snails her materials. As a title, The Four Directions is too broad to be pinned down to one or two associations. I might, of course, have asked Maher what she meant by it, but I shall be saying something below about the problematics of such a methodology. Nevertheless, one can notice that attention to an iconography of 'four directions' has resonances in both Buddhist and Native American spiritual art. One way to look at the whole space of Rood, then, might be to suggest that it juxtaposes-and mixes together-classical Roman, medieval Christian, Buddhist and Native American symbols. Look through the windows onto Lombard Street, onto one of Ireland's most ethnically and religiously diverse population centres as well as one of the most deprived, and the exhibition might beg questions as to what are our cultural traditions, and how are we accommodating them in our own half a rood?

Kavanagh introduces Homer into his 'half a rood'; Maher brings Venus into hers. Also placed in the main exhibition space was a bronze cast of a double-headed Venus, whose two heads are linked by a thick strand of twisted hair. Venus, like the snail, is often associated with a shell. Walter Benjamin suggests that

In allegory the observer is confronted with the facies hippocratica of history as a petrified, primordial landscape. Everything about history that, from the very beginning, has been untimely, sorrowful, unsuccessful, is expressed in a face - or rather in a death's head. ⁸

In this re-imagined church, beneath and to the side of the rood, Venus becomes a displacement of and substitute for the two women normally represented at the foot of the cross-the Virgin and the Magdalene. The two faces are the same. The smooth classical faces of the Venus, turned to present her profiles, may not at first suggest the facies hippocratica, or death's head, so much as Canova's neo-classical Venus, austere and untroubled. Unlike Canova's white marble goddesses, Maher's bronze Venuses are black. And what of the twisted loop of hair, which, following a line something like Hogarth's line of beauty, connects one head to the other? This is not Maher's first bronze Venus. In 1997 she cast a series of small Venuses, and the double-headed Venus alludes to other bronze works- Venus Interrupted (2004), Swimmers (1996) and Twins (1997)-as well as to Maher's installation, Les Filles d'Ouranos/The Daughters of Uranus (1996-97). These multiple Venuses have been read by critics, with encouragement from Maher herself, as a rejection of the focus on the single female beauty or muse, in favour of multiplicity. 'If Venus did not rise from the waves alone ... [t]he key signifier of an idealized secular femininity would not have existed in painting from the Renaissance onwards, the perfection of her appearance masking the violence of her origins'. ⁹ The rejection of a single feminine principle can be read as a rejection of the female surrealists, with whom in other ways she has a great deal in common, and, in particular, a rejection of their fascination with Robert Graves's White Goddess, who might seem to have only too obvious an appeal to vulgar ideas of Celticism. Instead, the line that connects the heads of the two Venuses can also be read as an umbilical cord, connecting the birth of Venus with that of Minerva, the other motherless child of classical mythology. If one wanted to trace a debt to surrealism, it might be suggested that rather than opposing Virgin and Magdalene, Venus and Minerva, the erotic and the intellectual, the sacred and the profane, Maher positions them in terms of a dialectic.

So far I have been offering something like a reading of Maher's work, but it is not at all clear that this is the best approach to visual art, particularly at the point when reading seems to become explication. In a recent article in Third Text, Mick Wilson blasted those cultural critics who prefer art which thematizes or illustrates specifically Irish concerns, insisting that such artworks would almost necessarily lack 'the kind of unsettling opacity-so often disturbing to credentialized intellectuals-that predominantly characterizes experimental art practices'. Instability, dislocation, 'the possibility of encountering the not-yet-known and the not-to be-wholly-known', work that 'will not be exhausted in a single paradigmatic reading' are signs for Wilson of 'value within the discourse of art'. ¹⁰ At a moment when critical discourse on art is in conflict over the primacy of the visual, Wilson's critique of representational readings does not call for a return to visual or formal analysis so much as require us to put faith in a notion that art has an effective capacity to produce a non-linguistic form of critique. In the same issue of Third Text, Valerie Connor reproaches feminist criticism for collapsing the significant differences between certain important Irish women artists-her examples are Maher and Dorothy Cross-and attributes some of this failure of discrimination to 'the liberal use of psychoanalytic theory in rendering into writing critical interpretations of their imagery'. ¹¹ On the one hand, Connor seems to advocate a more rigorous historicism-one that would locate Maher's art practice, for example, in the context of Irish debates since the 1980s over women's reproductive rights and status as citizens. On the other hand-and there is no necessary conflict between these positions-she advocates the capacity for art to produce shifting standpoints that can be places of engagement and positions from which to articulate dissent. Fintan Cullen distinguishes the work of Maher, Dorothy Cross, and Kathy Prendergast from that of an earlier generation of Irish women artists by pointing out that it 'offers a more confrontational approach in [its] focus on gender imagery' and it may be the confrontation rather than the imagery that distinguishes such work as feminist. 12

Sometimes Alice Maher's work seems easy to understand. It appears to invite certain kinds of narrativization. Just as Maher wears hearts around her neck, and moss along her sleeve, she could be said to wear her feminism on her sleeve. ¹³ She places herself in the frame, refigures and recasts traditional artistic representations of the female body, works with female hair and clothing, seems to be offering a familiar feminist reworking of fairy tales, apparently expresses ideas of pain and anger. To Irish viewers her work may invite specifically Irish contextualization; there are echoes of oral tradition and folklore, a distinctive awareness of Catholic iconography and its oppressive symbolic regime, and obvious traces from those aspects of the Irish historical past which trouble so many modes of representation. Her most overtly political work is Cell (1991), a ball of twisted brambles located inside one of the cells at Kilmainham Jail, but it would hardly be over-ingenious to discuss Maher as someone who references poverty, famine, industry, labour, imprisonment, colonial violence, enclosure, partition, environmental destruction, and peace agreements.

Maher is also funny, and although 'funny' doesn't always mean 'easy', it is predicated on some shock of recognition, on a moment when something seems-at least provisionally-to be understood. 14 At its gentlest, her comedy appears like the doodles in a medieval manuscript. At its most savage, it has echoes of Swift and Rabelais, an interest in the grotesque fuelled by a combination of indignation against social injustice and compassion for human frailty. Her early modern influences stretch from Giotto and Pierro della Francesco to Hieronymus Bosch. Part of Maher's engagement with medievalism-an engagement that complements a feminist discourse of working from the margins-is an interest in vulgarity, which is an interest in 'what is held in common'. ¹⁵

This essay might have been entitled 'The Vulgarity of Irish Feminism'. Irish feminism is a broad social movement, which, since the 1960s, has played an important part in changing attitudes and laws in both parts of Ireland. It is a movement sensitive to its constituencies and anxious to be comprehensible to a wide range of people. At the same time it is, of course, anxious to do justice to the complexities of human experience; and feminism's big issues-the body, sexuality, reproduction, the decorums of public and private life, consumerism, labour, interiority-produce almost endless complexity. Irish feminism has been described as having an 'ambiguous relationship to modernisation discourses in which it has a considerable investment'. ¹⁶ Feminism's investment in changing laws to liberate Irish women from modes of discrimination might certainly tempt feminist critics to incorporate the last forty years into a narrative of progress. The rhetoric of progress, of women emerging, of new voices, of coming into visibility, is susceptible of several forms of critique. It occludes the huge differences in access to the benefits of modernity as experienced by women of different classes, ages, languages, ethnicities and sexual orientations and the practice of class analysis in Irish feminist theory remains exceptional.

To map an already problematic progressive narrative from political activism onto the practice of the arts is ridiculous, but it happens. Approaches to women's writing and women's art are often celebratory, and often celebrate a notion that women's artistic practice is subversive and transformative. A study of Irish women's writing over the last forty years suggests that it has a tendency to polarize between 'confessional' modes that are largely rooted in naturalist conventions, and experimental writing, which is self-consciously evasive and/or difficult. The former strategy is more popular (one might refer to Edna O'Brien and Eavan Boland), the latter held in greater critical esteem by academic critics (think of Medbh McGuckian). In many ways this is a false distinction, perhaps the product of a relative failure of much Irish criticism outside the work of Irish-language folklorists and historians to theorize popular culture, or to think sufficiently rigorously about constructions of naturalism's forms.

In writing about Alice Maher's accessibility (is she easy to understand?), I may seem to be positioning her along with the more confessional women writers. In fact, l want to argue that visual artists have often been more successful than writers in creating work that is both complex and effective. This success is partly achieved through certain kinds of formalism and certain kinds of engagement with tradition. Form and tradition can both serve as kinds of shorthand that render the artwork at once 'readable' and multi-layered, resistant to being read. Or, as one might put it, allegorical. Keep (1992) is a round tower made from braided ropes of human hair. It at once suggests fairy tales, particularly the stories of Rapunzel and Melisande; wild people from the Yeti to the 'wild Irish' in their long fur cloaks; images of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden; the long hair characteristic of images of Mary Magdalene, which was used not only to wash Christ's feet but also, like that of Lady Godiva, to cover her nakedness. The hair used to make the braids in Keep was collected in Cork and Belfast. The piece was first exhibited in Belfast and raises questions about similarity and difference between people North and South. A keep is a prison, but Maher also reminds us that hair was one of the most common of keepsakes, especially in the nineteenth century. What is a keepsake and what attitudes to superstition and to our sense of property in other people's bodies is suggested by the cutting of a lock of hair off a corpse? Is it possible to see hair in such vast quantities without thinking of those other keepsakes collected in the concentration camps? The shorn head may suggest militarism, punishment, and cancer. The American artist Petah Coyne, who works extensively with hair, relates it both to fairy-tale themes and to her experience of living in Japan and seeing how art there responded to nuclear holocaust. 17

At 270 cm high, Keep conjures with gigantism. Maher has made a number of paintings and sculptures that addressed matters of scale. The familiar series made a two-pronged attack on American minimalism, with the figure of a tiny girl coming through or positioned beside bright solid field canvases in red and blue, or with other objects alluding to the feminine placed beside the paintings. In familiar I (1994) skeins of flax, which look for all the world like a giant's hair, hang from a peg on the wall beside a canvas. Maher has spoken of one aspect of this piece:

The materials are not chosen simply for their physical qualities, but for their inherent histories, which carry multiple meanings through associations of symbol and memory ... [F]lax ... was introduced by British colonial policy. In order to do that they destroyed a once thriving native wool trade and introduced this new industry - the making of linen in Northern Ireland. ¹⁸

In the early 1990s Maher made a series of pieces using the accoutrements of femininity-clothing and human hair. Bee Dress is constructed from dead honeybees, cotton and wire; Berry Dress from cotton and rose hips; Nettle Coat from nettles and pins. Bronze casts of women's long hair appear in the heads without faces that make up Swimmers and Twins. In a number of works by Maher the viewer seems to see the back of a human head of long hair, and Maher uses materials including human hair, flax and cotton. She uses 'the image of the little girl bursting out into the world' as a way of representing 'the liberation of the female imagination' ¹⁹

It is possible to read Maher's work as interested in traditional strategies for coding knowledge by and about women and sexuality. Her novel forms of dressmaking nevertheless allude to arts and crafts traditionally associated with women. Her use of materials such as rose hips, nettles and thorns allies her work with international fairy tales and folktales, but given an Irish articulation. She uses thorns to construct, in one case, a staircase, in another a miniature house, and in these pieces Christian imagery crosses that of the fairy story. When we look at Staircase of Thorns or Bee Dress I think we all recognize what kind of feminism this is, with its emphasis on the performance or costuming of gender, and the imprisonment of the domestic, its revision of the liberationary as well as the policing potential of traditional narrative, its foregrounding of female labour, and its version of ecriture feminine - a writing of the body. It is the sort of thing done by feminist artists elsewhere but given a local habitation and a local name. What makes these works so effective is not so much a matter of the originality of their conception as the way that the relationship between artist and materials pushes into so many imaginative spaces.

St. Gobnet [Gobnait], who was in charge of a convent at Ballyvourney, Co Cork... used her bees to repel a band of raiders who were stealing the local people's cattle, presumably upsetting some skeps and shaking the bees out. In one version she miraculously changed the bees into soldiers, and a skep into a brass helmet, which she presented to the defending chieftain O'Herlihy. His family is said to have kept and treasured the helmet until the penal times (when Roman Catholicism was proscribed), and then it was lost. In another version the skep was turned into a bell, and up to the nineteenth century St. Gobnet's bronze bell was shown, with two holes at the top, where the clapper would have been fixed, through which the bees were said to have come out to sting the marauders. ²⁰

Bee Dress is one of Maher's most iconic images. At first she planned to make several of these small dresses, covered in dead honeybees. The dress itself is a sleeveless version of the 'Alice dress', cut and sewn by Maher from cotton, and stiffened on a wire frame. The bees died in a gale. The work of fixing the dead bees to the dress with beeswax was painstaking. One of Maher's characteristic procedures is to build into her work the business of a laborious collection of materials and an assembling or making of objects. Nevertheless, she does not regard herself as a 'process' artist:

I was brought up in the country... and for me as a child the country represented this vast landscape of the imagination, where everything was boundless and every object had a story of its own. But on the other hand, as a child of people who worked the land, I knew first hand the cold and wet and grinding labour of living on the land. So I have these two kinds of relationship with the land and nature involved in a battle-a battle-for us. ²¹

Amongst the associations provoked by the sight of the bees is the memory of St. Ambrose, patron saint of beekeepers. The tenth-century church of San Ambrogio in Milan has an altar with an image of the infant Ambrose, bees swarming around his cradle. That bees are emblematic of the honey-spoken is also demonstrated in their association with the births of Plato, Socrates and Pindar. Jupiter was supposed to have been nourished by bees in his infancy. Speaking about her necklace of tongues ( necklace [2003]), Maher says:

[l]t is an expression of multiple activity and multiple thinking and languages that have been cut out. The Irish language, for instance, is something I have referred to in my work before. It's not a main theme in my art, but I do feel we have another language, one we don't speak any more, but it's there, it's physically there and part of your tongue or inner ear. 22

Bee Dress may be seen either as a miniature garment, a suit of armour, or the empty dress of a child or a doll. The absent (or dead) child motif, which figures in many of Maher's works, haunts this piece but does not determine its meaning. In the context of Irish feminist struggles in the 1980s, with debates on divorce, contraception, abortion, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and with the public scandals over the death of Anne Lovett and the Kerry Babies, the rape of Lavinia Kerwick, and clerical sexual misconduct and child abuse, the stolen child had a wide cultural resonance. A spectator aware of Julia Kristeva's writing about the Madonna and child might feel that in Ireland the empty crib and the missing child is a powerful symbol of a state which has abused rather than cherished the children it was constitutionally bound to nurture. By connecting the lost child with a lost language and, through another metamorphosis, with St. Gobnait's bell, Bee Dress becomes an indictment of forgetfulness in contemporary culture, and suggests that we ask not for whom the bell tolls. The remembrance and forgetting of a dead child was the inspiration for Maher's sculpture entitled Mnemosyne after the goddess of memory. A Victorian painting in which the members of a family gather round a child's bed at the moment of her death inspired it. Maher's freezing bed hummed and chilled the air around itself.

Helmet (2003) is one of several portraits in which Maher wholly or partially covers her head, a gesture that resonates with conventions from Catholicism but also from feminist controversies over the covering of women in Islam. One also might think of surrealist portraits such as Eileen Agar's Angel of Anarchy (1936); Agar made a white plaster cast of her husband's head, then wrapped it with colourful printed fabrics and decorated it beads and shells. If this offers a playful femininity, it also refigures male artists' preoccupation with nudity, emphasizing the eroticism of mask and disguise. The title refers to anarchist struggles in Spain, and refuses any idea of the intimate as a place of hiding from politics.

Maher, like many contemporary artists and writers, has given a number of interviews about her work and most of these interviews testify to her intellectual generosity as well as to her creative and critical intelligence. Maher is articulate about her own work and about art practices in general, and critics have clearly learned a great deal from her. An artist may also be a critic, as Maher was when she wrote in The Irish Times in 1999:

The lack of trust in things visual has been running deep for many generations. The education system has failed to break the stranglehold of the literal on the imagination, and this is a problem that leads to an ongoing preference for the banal when it comes to art in our lives. 23

Maher presses Irish audiences to think about their visual culture and to combine vision and imagination. Critics demonstrate a certain laziness in their tendency to ask artists what works mean. If a critical discourse about art is striving to get away from explication as the primary mode of criticism, then pressing the artist into the role of translator may be counter productive. In interviews Alice Maher has often tried to distance herself from biographical and/or psychoanalytic interpretations of her work, and placed more emphasis on collective memory and collective knowledge. She is willing to relate her work to Irish politics and society but without limiting its meaning to one kind of interpretative strategy.

Every view of things that is not wonderful is false. ²⁴

Maher's response to a commission to make some drawings for the National Library of Ireland was to think about readers, and the imaginative possibilities liberated by reading. Picking up on motifs in the Library's stained-glass windows, she made a series of charcoal drawings in the style of silhouettes. As in silhouettes, the figures are in profile. In Lectores Mirabilis I the ground is black, and the figure patterned. In the other drawings the figure is in black, and as well as the outlines of face and bust we see remarkable growths emerging from the head, neck and arms. At times these people seems to be expelling fantasies, at other times they are apparently penetrated.

The American artist, Kara Walker, who has worked extensively in silhouette, reminds us that silhouette-a form associated with amateurism and middle-class gentility in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-is a convention of seeing the body racially, in terms of black and white, and is almost necessarily a form of caricature. Walker uses the traditional method of silhouette-the cut out of black paper mounted on pale background-to revisit the notional gentility of the antebellum South and its relationship to slavery. In The Emancipation Approximation (2000), one of the silkscreen prints based on her silhouettes, Walker presents a tiny-waisted curly-haired Southern belle leaning against a chopping block and axe, while nine decapitated heads (including one of a baby) lie at her feet. If the Lectores Mirabiles bring out the magical associations of the silhouette, including its relationship to shadow puppet theatre, they also show strange fruit. Some of Maher's recent use of the genre has developed the infernal properties of charcoal in creating large and much more sinister figures after Bosch.

The medieval historian, Carolyn Walker Bynum, describes twelfth-century ways of relating to strange and marvellous phenomena in terms of wonder:

All theories of wonder saw it as a significance-reaction: a flooding with awe, pleasure or dread owing to something deeper, lurking in the phenomenon. The wonderer was situated, wonder was perspectival (even if miracles were not)... Wonder was a response to something novel and bizarre that seemed both to exceed explanation and to indicate that there might be reason (significance-not necessarily cause) behind it.

Thus medieval theories of wonder made the case that wonder is nonappropriative, yet based in facticity and singularity. The opposite of admiratio is not only to investigate, it is also to imitate and to generalize. To wonder is emphatically not to consume and incorporate; it is, as Bernard of Clairvaux said, to give back the goblet after draining the potion... 25

Maher's ability to reinvigorate a sense of wonder around certain objects is an historicist act. It is harder to explain why her own art goes so far beyond simply suggesting what is already known about women, history and tradition.

¹ From Marianne Moore, 'To a Snail', in The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (London, 1951), 91
² Interview with Alice Maher in Katy Deepwell, Dialogues: Women Artists from Ireland (London and New York, 2005), 128
³ Sec Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London and Toronto, 2005), 107-08.
⁴ Patrick Kavanagh, 'Epic', Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (London, 1960), 23; see also W. B. Yeats, 'To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time', in The Poems. A New Edition, ed. Richard Finneran (London, 1983), 31, a poem whose references to 'under the boughs of love and hate' and 'the common things that crave' find resonances in Maher's Rood.
⁵ Speaking of Berry Dress (1994), Maher says: 'The fact that it's exhibited on a glass shelf is important. It's displayed above the viewer's head and actually puts the viewer in the position where he or she has to look up at the dress, which is a socially- sexually-unacceptable thing to do. The actual act of looking at the work would be bold, or naughty, or subversive, if you know what I mean.' Alston Conley, 'Interview with Alice Maher', Éire-Ireland Special Joint Issue: The Visual Arts, 33, 3-4 / 34, 1 (1999), 198
⁶ See Billy Leahy's review of the exhibition, 'The Space of the Poetic', Village Magazine, 26 Aug. 2005.
⁷ From Thom Gunn, 'Considering the Snail', in My Sad Captains and Other Poems (London, 1961), 39
⁸ Walter Benjamin, The Origins of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London, 1977), 183
⁹ Fionna Barber, 'unfamiliar distillations', introductory essay in Alice Maher, familiar, a catalogue for the Orchard Gallery and the Douglas Hyde Gallery (Derry and Dublin, 1995), 16
¹⁰ Mick Wilson, 'Terms of Art and Tricks of the Trade: A Critical Look at the Irish Art Scene Now', Third Text, 19, 5 (2005), 537
¹¹ Valerie Connor, 'Feminism, Democratic Politics and Citizenship', Third Text, 19, 5 (2005), 513
¹² Fintan Cullen, 'The Visual Arts in Ireland', in Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Cambridge, 2005), 316
¹³ See Collar and Limb from Maher's portraits series (2003).
¹⁴ I agree with Barber, 'unfamiliar distillations', 11, that 'Maher's work tends to distance itself from the processes of irony and pastiche by which [postmodern practices] are characterized.' A comparison of Maher's portraits with Cindy Sherman's series of photographs of herself hased on Renaissance portraits highlights Maher's bias towards early modern comedy rather than postmodern jokiness.
¹⁵ 'Maher's explicit assault on good taste... starts to invoke the positive power of the vulgar, using the word etymologically to signify what is held in common-think of the Vulgate Bible. Valuing the vulgar, in this specific sense, admits ideas and materials usually excluded from "good practice". Medb Ruane, Alice Maher (Dublin, 1997), 8
¹⁶ Joe Cleary, 'Introduction: Ireland and Modernity', in Cleary and Connolly, Modern Irish Culture, 19
¹⁷ See Lynne Tillman, 'Petah Coyne', Bomb Magazine, 80 (Summer 2002), accessed at www.bombsite.com/coyn e/coyne.html (5 Jan. 2006).
¹⁸ Conley, 'Interview with Alice Maher', 199, 207
¹⁹ Ruane, Alice Maher, 14
²⁰ Eva Crane, The Archaeology of Beekeeping (London, 1983), 216
²¹ Conley, 'Interview with Alice Maher', 201
22 Sheila Dickinson, 'Multiplicity in Art Practice: Alice Maher in Conversation with Sheila Dickinson', Womens Studies Review, 8 (2002), 56
²³ Alice Maher, 'The Celtic Tiger has No Eyes', Irish Times, 28 Dec. 1999. Thanks to Vic Merriman for drawing my attention to this piece.
²⁴ Caroline Walker Bynum, 'Wonder', in American Historical Review, 102, 1 (Feb 1997), 26
²⁵ Walker Bynum, 'Wonder', 24

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If 'compression is the first grace of style', you have it. - Marianne Moore, 'To a Snail' 1 The allowing of the material, trusting it, allows the memory to work-trusting that the actual material has something in it which causes it to work for the viewer.

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Santiago,
Chile

Ximena Zomosa, 1966 Santiago Chile. Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, major in printmaking, from Catholic University in 1991. In 1992, she developed her first installation with embroided fabric into frames titled Imaginary Museum. Serial objects and embroidery, began to be a metaphor of the female condition and also, a new way to extend the concept of engraving. In 1994 in Scream In the Sky, at the Spanish Cultural Center (Santiago), she began her following body of work focused on dress-making. In 1996, she showed at Posada del Corregidor Gallery the work Cut, that incorporated her own hair. In the installation Every Place Becomes Home, she made two gigantic dresses combined with hair drawings. This work was included in the Sidney Biennal in 1998. After that she began her work, Project of a Boundary, with other three women artists. They worked together in Chile Proyecto de Borde Valdivia (1999), The United States Project of a Boundary (fold) and (unfold) (Boston and New York 2002) and Australia Portable Affairs (2005). With the poetic of her own body (copies of it, and her own hair) and a combination of strategies according to the site specific places, She has shown her work in South America, China (Bienal of Shangai 2004), Australia, and The United States.

Feminist Artist Statement

The frame as object, became to me a symbol of absence. The embroidery replaces an image for a word, just like hair replaces me: the rhetorical figure of metonymy. The body is replaced by the dress that covers it. Empty, it fills the space in all its gigantism, like the image of a woman, mother or ghost in certain dreams. My own presence moving in different places, travelling with the basic: every place becomes home, any place. I have drawn with hair, a humming sound representing time.

This resource comes from my autobiography.

Life as matrix: childhood, fears, third world cities, female gender, lenguage, artlife, everydaylife.

I translated it into site - specific works.

No Rest
hair, nails, objects, text
Exhibited in: Project of a Boundary (Unfold) Fuller Museum, U.S.A, Artist's Collection (Colección de la Artista) Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago Chile.

No Rest
hair, nails, objects, text
Exhibited in: Project of a Boundary (Unfold) Fuller Museum, U.S.A, Artist's Collection (Colección de la Artista) Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago Chile.

Human/Humana
dress inside bedroom
Exhibited in: Cotidiana, Galería Posada del Corregidor (Santiago, Chile 1997)
Installed in bedroom, Santiago 1998.

Artist's Collection (detail)
Installation
130 x 150 cms. each
Chocolate covered frames, candies, embroidery, fabric.
Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago, Chile 2003.

Mucho que Aprender/A Lot to Learn
Installation
School dresses in four types of materials (500 x 200 cms. each), text.

Sala Gasco Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago Chile 2005

Exhibited in: Cotidiana, Galería Posada del Corregidor (Santiago, Chile 1997). Everyday, Sydney Biennale (Australia 1998). En otro lugar, Galería Balmaceda 1215 (Santiago, Chile 1998)

Exhibited in: Cotidiana, Galería Posada del Corregidor (Santiago, Chile 1997). Everyday, Sydney Biennale (Australia 1998). En otro lugar, Galería Balmaceda 1215 (Santiago, Chile 1998)

Exhibited in: Desigualdad, Centro de Extensión Universidad Católica (Santiago, Chile, 2000). Play, Galería Artco (Lima, Perú 2002). The Backyard (Muro Sur chilean artists), America's Society (New York, U.S.A 2003) Biennale of Shangai (2004) Muro Sur chilean artists, Biennale of Santa Cruz, Bolivia (2006)

Websites

Contact

Ernesto Reyes 036
Santiago,
Chile
Email

CV
PDF Dowload

Text, images, audio, and/or video in the Feminist Art Base are copyrighted by the contributing artists unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum is New York City's second largest in physical size and holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.

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1178750 Affective Communities Anticolonial Thought Fin De

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Read online and download 1178750 Affective Communities Anticolonial Thought Fin De in PDF, TXT, ePub, PDB, RTF, FB2 format

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Your pelvis helps to carry your growing baby and is tailored for vaginal births. Learn more about the structure and function of the female pelvis.

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It is an old-standing theory in evolutionary ecology: animal species on islands have the tendency to become either giants or dwarfs in comparison to mainland relatives. Since its formulation in the 1960s, however, the 'island rule' has been severely debated by scientists. In a new publication in Nature Ecology and Evolution on April 15, 2021, researchers solved this debate by analyzing thousands of vertebrate species. They show that the island rule effects are widespread in mammals, birds, and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians.

Dwarf hippos and elephants in the Mediterranean islands are examples of large species that exhibited dwarfism. On the other hand, small mainland species may have evolved into giants after colonizing islands, giving rise to such oddities as the St Kilda field mouse (twice the size of its mainland ancestor), the infamous dodo of Mauritius (a giant pigeon), and the Komodo dragon.

In 1973, Leigh van Valen was the first that formulated the theory, based on the study by mammologist J. Bristol Foster in 1964, that animal species follow an evolutionary pattern when it comes to their body sizes. Species on islands have the tendency to become either giants or dwarfs in comparison to mainland relatives. "Species are limited to the environment on an island. The level of threat from predatory animals is much lower or non-existent," says Ana Benítez-Lopez, who carried out the research at Radboud University, now researcher at Doñana Biological Station (EBD-CSIC, Spain). "But also limited resources are available." However, until now, many studies showed conflicting results which led to severe debate about this theory: is it really a pattern, or just an evolutionary coincidence?

Island rule confirmed

The team of scientists at Radboud University, Doñana Biological Station, National Museum of Natural Sciences and Imperial College London has revisited the island rule, aiming to solve this debate by performing a meta-analysis of over a thousand vertebrate species. They show that island rule effects are widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians, which mostly tend towards gigantism. The study also indicates that the magnitude of insular dwarfism and gigantism is more pronounced in smaller, more remote islands for mammals and reptiles.

Size is context-dependent

They also found an effect of climate and seasonality on the island rule. Small mammal and bird species grew larger and large species stayed the same size to conserve heat in colder, harsher insular environments. Furthermore, when seasons are present, availability of resources become less predictable for reptiles, leading smaller reptile species to become larger. Benítez-López: "Using a wealth of data from museum and live specimens, we were able to rigorously demonstrate for the first time that insular gigantism and dwarfism across vertebrates is a generalized pattern and not just an evolutionary coincidence."

Reference: "The island rule explains consistent patterns of body size evolution in terrestrial vertebrates" by Ana Benítez-López, Luca Santini, Juan Gallego-Zamorano, Borja Milá, Patrick Walkden, Mark A. J. Huijbregts and Joseph A. Tobias, 15 April 2021, Nature Ecology & Evolution.
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01426-y

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Island Gigantism and Dwarfism: Evolutionary "Island Rule" Confirmed

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It is an old-standing theory in evolutionary ecology: animal species on islands have the tendency to become either giants or dwarfs in comparison to mainland relatives. Since its formulation in the 1960s, however, the 'island rule' has been severely debated by scientists. In a new publication in Nat

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The giant tortoises of Galapagos are a perfect example of island gigantism.

Island gigantism occurs when animals isolated to an island area grow drastically larger than their relatives on the mainland. The opposite of island gigantism is island dwarfism, where large animals in isolation decrease in size. Island gigantism is an evolutionary phenomenon which portrays animal adaptation to different environments at its best. The phenomenon has been widely observed in invertebrates and most major vertebrate families.

What Is The Island Rule?

Island gigantism is one concept of the island rule which was first inferred in 1964 in the journal Nature by J. Bristol Foster. Foster published a paper titled "Evolution of Mammals on Island," after undertaking a survey of 116 island-living species and comparing them to their mainland relatives. The study revealed some interesting observations such as rodents lean towards gigantism while lagomorphs, carnivores, and artiodactyls (deer and hippos) tend towards dwarfism. In summary, large species decrease in size when food is limited while small species grow big where there is no significant predation pressure. Foster's ideas pioneered the study of the phenomenon which has been advanced upon by other biogeographers over time.

Possible Reasons Of The Island Gigantism

A number of possible causes of island gigantism have been identified. The first reason is the absence of large mammalian carnivore predators. Islands tend to discourage the settlement of such mammals due to difficulties in over-water dispersal and inefficient range. Large birds, small carnivores, and reptiles take the place of predators but are inefficient since they are less advanced than other carnivores such as lions. Small sizes render herbivores less vulnerable to predation since they can hide or escape easily. The absence of predators relaxes the predation pressure and allows them to grow bigger. Some animals, as seen in the case of island tortoises, may grow big to reduce vulnerability to food resources. Larger size enables them to survive for extended intervals without food or water or to travel longer distances in search of the resources. Territorialism has been suggested to be a possible cause as well. Species which are territorial tend towards larger size as an advantage to better defend their territories. Thus, island gigantism is facilitated by the dismissal of constraints on the size of small animals as it pertains to competition and predation.

Notable Examples Of Island Gigantism

Numerous rodents have exhibited island gigantism including the Flores giant rat which inhabits the Flores Island in Indonesia. The rat measures twice the size of an average brown rat. The rat is believed to be primarily vegetarian in addition to specific types of insect. In the forests of Sulawesi Island of Indonesia lives the Sulawesi giant rat. The largest tiger snake in the world, the Chappell Island tiger snake, found in Mount Chappell Island, Australia. The snake measures 8 feet in length, and it is highly venomous. In the island, the snake lacks any serious predators, and it feeds on populations of muttonbird chicks. New Zealand is home to the kakapo, recognized as the only flightless parrot. The bird is large and heavy with a maximum length and weight of 64 cm and 4 kg respectively. The giant tortoises occupying Galapagos Island are ecologically and biologically interesting species. 14 subspecies of the animal have evolved from a single ancestor due to the varying environmental conditions on the different islands. The tortoises grow for over 5 feet in length and live for more than 100 years.

1. Home

2. Environment

3. What is Island Gigantism?

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Island gigantism occurs when animals isolated to an island area grow drastically larger than their relatives on the mainland. The opposite of island gigantism is island dwarfism, where large animals in isolation decrease in size. Island gigantism is an evolutionary phenomenon which portrays animal adaptation to different environments at its best.

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its all piracy anyway

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The Golden Age of Piracy

Though pirates have existed since ancient times, the Golden Age of piracy was in the 17th and early 18th centuries. During this time more than 5000 pirates were said to be at sea.

Throughout history there have been people willing to rob others transporting goods on the water. These people, known as pirates, mainly targeted ships, though some also launched attacks on coastal towns.

Many of the most famous pirates had a terrifying reputation, and they advertised this by flying gruesome flags, including the 'Jolly Roger' with its picture of skull and crossbones. Captives were famously made to 'walk the plank' - though this doesn't appear to have been as common in reality as in fiction; in fact, it's likely that most victims of piracy were just thrown overboard.

Pirates have existed since ancient times - they threatened the trading routes of ancient Greece, and seized cargoes of grain and olive oil from Roman ships. The most far-reaching pirates in early medieval Europe were the Vikings.

Thousands of pirates were active between 1650 and 1720, and these years are sometimes known as the 'Golden Age' of piracy. Famous pirates from this period include Henry Morgan, William 'Captain' Kidd, 'Calico' Jack Rackham, Bartholomew Roberts and the fearsome Blackbeard (Edward Teach). Though this Golden Age came to an end in the 18th century, piracy still exists today in some parts of the world, especially the South China Seas.

Pirates of the Caribbean

The explorer Christopher Columbus established contact between Europe and the lands that were later named America at the end of the 15th century. As he was working for the Spanish monarchy, these 'new lands' were claimed by the Spanish, who soon discovered them to be a rich source of silver, gold and gems.

From the 16th century, large Spanish ships, called galleons, began to sail back to Europe, loaded with precious cargoes that pirates found impossible to resist. So many pirate attacks were made that galleons were forced to sail together in fleets with armed vessels for protection. As Spanish settlers set up new towns on Caribbean islands and the American mainland, these too came under pirate attack.

Corsairs, buccaneers and privateers

Corsairs were pirates who operated in the Mediterranean Sea between the 15th and 18th centuries. Muslim corsairs, such as the Barbarossa (red beard) brothers, had bases along North Africa's Barbary Coast, while Christian corsairs were based on the island of Malta. Both used to swoop down on their targets in oar-powered boats called galleys, to carry off sailors and passengers. Unless these unfortunates were rich enough to pay a ransom, they were sold as slaves.

Buccaneers lived on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and its tiny turtle-shaped neighbour, Tortuga, in the 17th century. At first they lived as hunters, but later the governors of Caribbean islands paid the buccaneers to attack Spanish treasure ships. Although raids began in this way, with official backing, the buccaneers gradually became out of control, attacking any ship they thought carried valuable cargo, whether it belonged to an enemy country or not. The buccaneers had become true pirates.

Privateers, meanwhile, were privately owned (rather than navy) ships armed with guns, operating in times of war. The Admiralty issued them with 'letters of marque' that allowed them to capture merchant vessels without being charged with piracy.

Why did pirates become pirates?

In England there was social disruption. Smaller farmers were forced off the land by ruthless landowners and smaller tradesmen were challenged by larger businesses. These displaced people flocked to urban areas looking for work or poor relief.

In London especially there was overcrowding and unemployment and funds for the poor could not meet the need. People had to shift for themselves. Distressed people weren't simply worse off, they had no hope of making a better life. Piracy tempted poor seamen because it offered them the chance to take more control of their lives.

In an age when few people travelled and young men might have to work seven-year apprenticeships before they could make an independent living, many were tempted to go to sea anyway, though the life was a tough one.

Adolescents who longed to escape could get a job on a sailing ship before they were fully grown: agility was needed as much as brute strength.

Yet ordinary seamen toiled for modest wages and were subject to strict discipline. In contrast, piracy not only offered them a chance to get rich quick but also a rare opportunity to exert a degree of power over others

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Though pirates have existed since ancient times, the Golden Age of piracy was in the 17th and early 18th centuries. During this time more than 5000 pirates were said to be at sea.

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Dr. Ian Tyers, a dedrochronologist from England, was here in 2016, inspecting and dating our wood panel paintings. While looking at our large panel portrait of George Poulet (1593), located in our Great Parlor, Dr. Tyers found something very neat!

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slowly getting through this, finding it hard to read on a screen, changing my perspective

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“Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of and manifestation of rituals at female saint shrines in the Holy Land. The book’s central claim is that, in the Middle East, a turbulent, often violent political context, states tend to have no clear physical borders, and lands are constantly at stake. I…

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This is a preview. Log in through your library.

Kibadachi is a rather simple karate exercise performed during a several-day-long special training, in which the participants squat in a crouching position for an hour and a half without moving. Despite its simplicity, and because its main feature is the immediate and excruciating pain it induces, kibadachi stimulates a kind of permeability between the participants, and also causes changes in the relations between physical and mental parts of their lived body. Following Deleuze and Guattari, kibadachi, and its capacity to dissolve boundaries, is analysed here as a way of becoming a Body without Organs. The participants of kibadachi enter social and somatic dynamics which operate potentiality hidden in their lived bodies, alter boundaries, and reinforce connectedness. /// Le kibadachi est un exercice de karaté relativement simple, exécuté au cours d'un entraînement spécial de plusieurs jours, lors duquel les participants se tiennent accroupis pendant une heure et demie sans bouger. En dépit de sa simplicité, et parce que sa principale caractéristique est la douleur immédiate et cuisante qu'il provoque, le kibadachi suscite une sorte de perméabilité entre les participants et provoque aussi des changements dans les relations entre les parties physique et mentale de leur corps vécu. Dans l'esprit de Deleuze et Guattari, le kibadachi et sa capacité d'abolir les frontières sont analysés ici comme un moyen de devenir un Corps sans Organes. Les participants au kibadachi s'engagent dans des dynamiques sociales et somatiques qui opèrent sur les potentialités cachées dans leurs corps vécus, modifient les frontières, et renforcent les liens aux autres.

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JSTOR provides a digital archive of the print version of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The electronic version of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is available at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=showIssues&code;=jrai. Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site.

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The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The Institute is a non-profit-making registered charity and is entirely independent, with a Director and a small staff accountable to the Council, which in turn is elected annually from the Fellowship. It has a Royal Patron in the person of HRH The Duke of Gloucester KG, GCVO.

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Kibadachi in Karate: Pain and Crossing Boundaries within the 'Lived Body' and within Sociality on JSTOR

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This is a preview. Log in through your library. Kibadachi is a rather simple karate exercise performed during a several-day-long special training, in which the participants squat in a crouching position for an hour and a half without moving.

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very interesting, need more time in the day to research everything

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In Karate we often deal with numbers. So this post is going to be about that. When I wrote the word mysticism in the title, I really meant numerology. But mysticism sounds cooler, and it's almost the same thing. Numerology is for some people a weird "pseudo-science".

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This video became a bgi part of my life for a few week, i actually found it quite relaxing and sometimes played it if i couldnt sleep ! lots of ritualistic actions in it

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okinawa Island. birthplace of karate, social history of oppression, regulations, inability to carry arms births karate as a form of protection

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Karate master Kenyu Chinen, originally from Ie Village, established the World Oshukai Dento Okinawa Shorin-Ryu Karate Do Kobudo Federation. There are branches in numerous countries including France, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy, India, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Slovakia. Although a karate master, Chinen is also known for his artistic talents as a painter. He is currently teaching karate in France.

Okinawa is the birthplace of karate. The actual meaning of karate in Japanese is "empty hand." However, the Okinawans first elaborated "te" (hand), their own unique art of self-defense devoid of weapons, which later developed into karate. Created in the former Ryukyu Kingdom and spread from Okinawa to Japan and then to the world, karate today is said to have more than 50 million fans in more than 140 countries. Karate is characterized by the use of fists, toes, elbows and knife-like hands.
It is said that "te" existed before the Chinese styles of kung fu were introduced, flourishing in the 15th century. Cultural exchange with other Asian countries was at its height, and it contributed to the development of karate, with the local art merging with martial arts from other countries, mainly China. At the time when the Satsuma clan (Kagoshima Prefecture) subjugated the Ryukyu Kingdom back in 1609, the Ryukyuans were prohibited from carrying or using weapons; however, they continued karate training in secret. Father and son practiced together in hidden places from midnight to dawn so people would not find out. Between the late 17th and early 18th centuries, "te" and Chinese styles blended together to form a unique martial art: karate.
There are two major types of karate: Shuri-te (today, Shorin-ryu) and Naha-te (which later became Goju-ryu). During the 19th century Shuri-te and Naha-te developed into unique forms with different basic movements and methods of breathing. Shuri-te stems from certain training forms linked to natural movement. Stepping is generally in a straight line. Speed and proper timing are essential in the training for kicking, punching and striking. Also, breathing naturally is a peculiarity of Shuri-te. In Naha-te, the moves look more like those of animals. Also, compared to Shuri-te, the kata of Naha-te are rhythmical with an artificial way of breathing in accordance with each of the movements. Other styles are Matsubayashi-ryu, a merger between Shuri-te and Tomari-te, Uechi-ryu with strong roots in China, Ryuei-ryu and a few other styles.
It is believed that the study of karate was confined to the Ryukyuan samurai class and carried on in the strictest of secrecy. With the end of the Satsuma clan's occupation, Okinawa was officially recognized as part of Japan in 1872. Karate became more popular when it was introduced as a physical education requirement in the public schools in Okinawa in 1901. One of the greatest masters ever, Anko Itosu, worked on introducing karate into the schools and thus made one of the most significant contributions to transforming the feudalistic karate into a modern martial art. Itosu also trained many in karate, including Gichin Funakoshi, who, among others, went to mainland Japan in the 1920s to introduce karate there. This marked the beginning of the spread of this martial art throughout the world. Karate was officially adopted by the Nippon Butoku Kai in 1931, and the name "karate" was officially chosen circa 1936.
Karate survived the holocaust of World War II and emerged to become international in scope. It regenerated and strengthened to take an equal position among international sports such as boxing, wrestling, judo and aikido.
After World War II, the US administration in Japan issued an order prohibiting the practice of judo and kendo, but karate training was permitted. The fact that it could be practiced without any implements helped karate gain in popularity. Later, the development of the karate tournament and "kumite match" was another factor that explains the increase in popularity of karate. The All-Japan Karate-do Championship Tournament was held in Tokyo in 1963, with many teams and individuals competing.
Considered its soul, the kata of karate can be described as a systematically organized series of defensive and offensive techniques performed in a sequence against one or more imaginary opponents and are usually given a symmetrical, linear pattern. It includes all the techniques of karate like punching, blocking, striking, kicking and even throwing. These defensive and offensive techniques are combined in kata. There are more than 40 kata divided into basic and intermediate levels. But all are combined to produce the vital power of karate. An interesting fact is that while Ryukyuan dances and karate are different, they have many common characteristics in the movement of the feet and hands, so much so that some believe karate was hidden in folk dances at one time. Some believe this is the link to self-defense. Okinawans strongly believe that kata are the essence of this martial art of self-defense, wherein lies all its richness, in one word, its treasure.
The other famous side of karate is kumite, or sparring. While kumite is practiced regularly in karate gyms, sport kumite has become quite popular worldwide. In such practice, opponents are required to seek the opportunity to attack from every angle and in every possible way. Ideally, kumite should be practiced as a life-or-death match, but never with the intention of harming the fellow practitioner. Kumite is a unique act of sharing, for your opponent and you are reaching out together toward the total commitment of self and toward the understanding of that commitment.
Along with karate, kobudo, or weaponry, was also developed through the use of various everyday tools. It developed as an art of self-defense when Okinawa was under subjugation and weapons were not permitted. Today, karate and kobudo in Okinawa are considered like the two wheels of a bicycle and thus inseparable. Among the kobudo weapons are the bo (staff), sai (trident), nunchaku (originally a horse bit), eku (oar), tonfa (grinder handle) and many more.
Away from sport-oriented karate, Okinawans are proud of their original karate and kobudo, traditional martial arts that have spread to the world. And with more than 400 dojo on the island of Okinawa, the art is still very much alive and continues to lead the path of the empty hand, karate-do.
International Karate Study Center
Murasaki Mura, located in Yomitan Village, is home to the International Karate Study Center, where visitors can try their empty hand at karate. Beginners' classes are available in both Japanese and English. Classes run for one hour in length with an option for extended sessions possible.
Miguel's profile
Experienced Okinawan karate in France and came to Okinawa in 1993. Charmed by Okinawa, he lives and works today in Naha City and is the editor of the monthly Okinawa Karate News.
www.okinawakaratenews.com

Enter the world of karate

It would be a pity not to experience the martial art and cultural asset that is karate while visiting Okinawa, the birthplace of karate. Regardless of whether you're an experienced martial artist or a beginner, many dojo on island will welcome you and show you the way of karate and kobudo.
The Okinawa Traditional Karate Liaison Bureau is a local organization that acts as an intermediary between those who want to practice karate and the masters on the island. If you are interested in finding a dojo or a master, or simply want to watch a karate class, visit their website: www.okkb.org.

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Karate: the martial art of Okinawa/Okinawa Island Guide

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Karate master Kenyu Chinen, originally from Ie Village, established the World Oshukai Dento Okinawa Shorin-Ryu Karate Do Kobudo Federation. There are branches in numerous countries including France, Poland, Canada, Spain, Italy, India, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Slovakia. Although a karate master, Chinen is also known for his artistic talents as a painter.

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Origins Of Karate: All You Need To Know About Its History

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Discover the origins of Karate and where this timeless martial art form originated. Explore the history and evolution of this ancient fighting style and how it has transformed into the sport that is enjoyed by millions today.

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(note to self)Big chance of me returning to this as a topic 

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(note to self)Big chance of me returning to this as a topic 

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RTE Archives from 1981, a short feature on the long Forgotten tradition of Door Dancing

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A look through the archives at social housing | ITV News

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Few argue against the State having a role in the provision of social housing for those who do not have the means to house themselves.

But how deeply the State should involve itself in the provision of private housing is a question that has exercised successive governments for the better part of the past century.

The State's involvement in housing those usually expected to house themselves has recently come back into focus. Details of a new affordable purchase scheme to help low- and middle-income workers get a foot on the property ladder is due to be issued within weeks.

By the early 1960s, almost 30 per cent of the cost of a standard suburban house could be recouped from government by the purchaser

There has also been the advent of the Land Development Agency to oversee the construction of private and social housing on public land; the existing help-to-buy tax rebate scheme, that lasts to the end of this year; and the future cost-rental scheme to provide homes to workers below market rates.

For the best part of a decade, since the last affordable housing schemes were discontinued in 2011, the Government has largely steered clear of the issue, with the financial burn they received when these at-first immensely popular schemes collapsed still smarting.

Land Commission

However, they are far from the State's first foray into the private housing market. Public intervention in private housing actually predates the founding of the State.

The Land Commission of the 1880s established a system of government loans to enable tenant farmers to buy their homes from their former landlords, and to build new homes. The scheme became the focus of the economic war with Britain in the 1930s when de Valera refused to honour repayments to the British.

It was eventually settled by a one-off €10 million payment, about 25 per cent of what the British considered owed to them.

The new State got stuck into the housing market straight away with the introduction in 1922 of the excitingly-named Million Pound Scheme. This enabled local authorities to construct 2,000 houses in just two years, most of which were sold to middle-income buyers.

When that fund was exhausted in 1924, grants and subsidies for private house purchase and construction took over, though local authorities continued to build some private houses directly.

These supports were available to individuals and to building cooperatives, called Public Utility Societies, and initially funded about one-sixth of the house-building costs. By the early 1960s, almost 30 per cent of the cost of a standard suburban house could be recouped from government by the purchaser.

Grants and government-backed home purchase loans continued right into the 1980s.

Slum clearance

Large-scale construction of social housing by local authorities didn't really take off until the 1930s, when the incoming Fianna Fáil government put an emphasis on slum clearance, particularly in Dublin.

Their rise to power coincided with the appointment by Dublin Corporation of the city's first housing architect, Herbert Simms, probably best known for the development of the city's corporation flats, such as Chancery Place near the Four Courts, Pearse House on Townsend Street, and Marrowbone Lane off Cork Street.

But he is also responsible for large-scale suburban housing estates including most of Cabra and Crumlin, building 17,000 homes in Dublin in his tenure as housing architect from 1932 to 1948.

In 1945, the city architect Horace O'Rourke, who had been a buffer between Simms and the city's administrative and political entities including church authorities, retired and his role was not replaced. This left Simms effectively occupying both positions.

While local authorities were still building social housing, they were not seen as having the ability to deliver on a large scale

In 1948 a new government announced it was going to ramp-up housing production. The same year, aged 50, Simms took his own life, leaving a note indicating he felt overworked and overwhelmed.

Simms-designed social housing developments continued to be built right through the 1950s and were replicated by other local authorities.

Tenants of council houses have been able to buy their homes from individual local authorities since the 1930s, and a scheme for the sale of council houses was introduced in 1973.

Two-thirds of all council housing ever built is now privately owned, with Simms houses the most likely to be in private hands. The discounts meant the proceeds of the sales could not fund the construction of new housing.

Greatest errors

Many in the social housing sector see this as one of the greatest errors ever made by the State in relation to housing. Simon Brooke, director of policy with Clúid, the State's largest housing association, describes it as "selling off the family silver".

Others, though, including Dublin City Council's head of housing Brendan Kenny, say it has had a positive and improving influence in areas with a high concentration of social housing.

The next wave of mass social housing construction came in the 1960s, precipitated by tragedy and panic about the conditions of inner city living.

Slum clearance was pushed up the Government agenda, when in the summer of 1963 three tenement houses collapsed in separate parts of Dublin killing residents.

This led to a clamour for new safe suburban homes, and resulted in the construction of Ballymun under the auspices of the newly established National Building Agency (NBA).

In the 1990s, the State again intervened in subsidising house buyers, through the introduction of the shared ownership scheme

While local authorities were still building social housing, they were not seen as having the ability to deliver on a large scale. The NBA was established as a semi-state body to build big, and fast.

The problem was it lacked a figure such as Simms who was obsessed with build quality and detail and ensuring that services, such as shops and playgrounds, were provided as well as homes. Such amenities were promised in the estates built by the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s, but did not always materialise.

In the rush to get people into new homes, housing complexes in Britain, where families were generally considerably smaller, were used as a template.

'Problematic social housing estates'

"The National Building Agency did Ballymun, Darndale, St Michael's Estate, Finglas South in Dublin, Rahoon in Galway, Southhill in Limerick.

"It did a lot of the problematic social housing estates," Housing Agency chief executive John O'Connor says. "Because the focus was just on building housing, they made some big mistakes."

The Land Development Agency (LDA), which was established last year and had its first official meeting last month, is the natural successor of the NBA, an overarching body which aims to develop housing on a large scale.

While the LDA plans to build a mix of private and social housing, unlike the NBA which built almost entirely for social housing tenants, there is still a danger the new agency could repeat mistakes of the past, O'Connor said.

"The NBA made mistakes. It repeated poor designs and caused a lot of problems. Similarly, the Land Development Agency could make the same kind of mistake if all the focus is on housing delivery, with no retail or other services".

The NBA wound down in the 1980s with the general retrenchment of State construction of housing, private or public.

In the 1990s, the State again intervened in subsidising house buyers, through the introduction of the shared ownership scheme, a part buy/part rent scheme operated again by local authorities, who were providing mortgages to buyers who had been refused loans by banks.

With the crash, as in the private sector, people were unable to pay back their local authority mortgages, prompting Dublin City Council's then-head of housing Dick Brady to question whether the council should be in the "mortgage business" due to the burden of arrears on the council's balance sheet.

Then, at the end of the decade, came the affordable housing schemes, the last great wave of State intervention in the private housing market before the crash, until now.
This is the end of the series on housing

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A century of housing: How the State built Ireland's homes

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Few argue against the State having a role in the provision of social housing for those who do not have the means to house themselves. But how deeply the State should involve itself in the provision of private housing is a question that has exercised successive governments for the better part of the past century.

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Camille Claudel: Directed by Bruno Nuytten. With Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Madeleine Robinson, Laurent Grévill. Camille Claude impresses already-famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. He hires her as an assistant, but soon Camille begins to sculpt for herself and she also becomes his mistress. But…

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liked this,

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Artist Talk | Body Work: Performance and Practice

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George Condo: The Way I Think | Louisiana Channel

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Podcast | A brush with... Jenny Saville | In-depth interview

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Books that informed printmaking weekend
based mainly on the origins of "kata" and the social structures which inform our methods of protection of both land and body

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Love using masking tape with print !

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photography weekend

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for my place of investigation i chose the car mirror, i have about 20 images of the mirror reflecting back different images, i liked the process off moving through the landscape while looking back, i wont upload all 20!

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had to use laptop camera to get a pic of this ! sorry not great quality!! 

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had to use laptop camera to get a pic of this ! sorry not great quality!! 

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Exit brief 1- Tonal colour wheel- mix shade with white (slide 10) 2-Josef Albers: Colour experiments: Using card, paper, wrappers found at home,create your own “Albers” colour experiment handmade notebook as per link below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdZlIwyZSHo&ab_channel=CreativeArtsWorkshop 3- Create a monochromatic still life using materials and household objects. Use light to cast shadow (slide 35) A3/A4 4- Peripheral landscapes: minimum size A1 Think about these in between places in the landscape where you live. Document, photograph, take notes, write down your thoughts, sketch out possible compositions.. Create a large scale painting of this space. Using all neutral tones, mixed as per colour wheel and 1 highly saturated hue (eg. yellow) 5- Light exercise. Pick a scene from your locality and paint in neutrals at 3 different times of the day- early morning, afternoon, evening- record changes in light/ shadows

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BAVA YEAR 1 Painting_ Responding to your Landscape

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Brian thinking

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light exercise

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This is the view from a back alley in the housing estate, i wanted to create a feeling of being trapped and not have any clear view out which is why i kept the windows small. i liked the two drips on the right hand house, feels like some sort of decay or mold that is often present in these uncared for estates, people and homes.

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Peripheral landscapes :
This work is a representation of a council house estate near where my family home is in carrigaline, i chose this place as growing up it was a hub for drug use, drinking etc. i also chose it because it always interested me how they painted the majority of council estates with white pebble dash in the 90's, i think this stops the place from ever looking clean. These homes have always been in disrepair and often people living with addiction etc find themselves here. These homes and people often get over looked and seem to disappear into the urban landscape.

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Kiki Smith Interview: In a Wandering Way