the heart thrills

LANDSCAPES

Beijing, 26 January 2014

Last week, I went to visit a factory on the outskirts of Beijing which recycles waste equipment. They take old TVs, old computer monitors, refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines; if the regulatory conditions become right, they will also start taking mobile phones. They disassemble these old products and recycle the various components, having first properly separated them. It’s fascinating to watch the disassembly, which is the exact mirror image of normal manufacturing: the process starts with the whole product, which as it moves down the (dis)assembly line slowly comes apart, ending up back as its individual components. This is the future, my friends. All the products we make should be collected at the end of their useful lives, brought to factories like this one, and taken apart so that their component materials can be reused: “Circular Economy” is the tag for this.

But actually, I want to write about something completely different. After visiting the disassembly line and talking with the company management about its plans for the future, we were invited to lunch in the company’s canteen. As is customary, we were taken to a separate room, which contained one large round table and the usual Lazy Mary languidly turning in the middle. As we sat and chatted and picked at the dishes going by, my eyes wandered around the room. They fastened on this painting on the wall:

It was a welcome dash of cheerful green on what were otherwise rather drab walls. That being said, it was not much to write home about, a clearly amateur rendering of the scene, the sort of thing one could pick up for 1 euro at any flea market. And yet … there was something about it which sparked a faint memory. The memory fluttered indistinctly around in my mind as we said our goodbyes at the end of the lunch and headed back to the office. It was like having a grain of sand in one’s shoe, softly but insistently irritating. There was nothing for it, I was going to have to do some research when I got back to the office. Luckily, it didn’t take long to pin down the memory. What I had been looking at was a copy – or a copy of a copy of a copy … – of a famous painting by the French painter Camille Corot, Souvenir de Mortefontaine, painted in 1864 and now hanging in the Louvre Museum:

But that’s not where I had seen it first. That memory which I had been vainly chasing through the corridors of my brain was set in my grandmother’s house in London. She had a copy of the painting hanging on her drawing room wall, from where it would look down on me as I sat on the couch drinking my grandmother’s lapsang souchong tea. Strange how life is … an invisible thread loops through time and space, linking my grandmother’s drawing room in the 1960s, cluttered with family memories, to a rather drab factory canteen on the outskirts of Beijing in 2014.

For all the warm, fuzzy memories it evokes, I would not put this particular painting, in original or in copy, on my wall. Memories are one thing, taste another. I remember my grandmother saying once how much she loved Corot. Me, I find him cloyingly sentimental, his feathery trees irritate me, and the grey-green palette he used in this particular series of paintings – he did a number of such Souvenirs – grates on my senses. If I were going to have a landscape on my wall by a famous painter, I would much prefer any one of a host painted in the last five hundred years. I could easily live with one of Bruegel’s paintings of the seasons, his Corn Harvest say:

or why not a Constable, for instance his Wivenhoe Park:

or his Salisbury Cathedral (although calling this a landscape may be a bit of a stretch)

I could also happily live with one of the pre-impressionist works which were already being painted when Corot was painting Souvenirs de Mortefontaine, like this Pissarro, La Maison de Père Gallien à Pointoise, painted just two years after the Corot, but which already shows a more real, more vibrant world than Corot’s honeyed one

From the impressionist period, I could take a Monet landscape, like this one from a series he made of the fields around Argenteuil, Walk in the meadows around Argenteuil:

From a little bit later, one of Cézanne’s many proto-cubist paintings of Mont Saint Victoire in the south of France would be lovely:

as would one of Van Gogh’s whirling wheat fields like this one, Wheat field with cypresses

A pointillist landscape would do nicely too, like this Signac, Comblat Castle and the Pré:

I could even hang a fauvist landscape on my wall, like this one, The Turning Road, l’Estaques, by Derain:

or even, at a pinch, a cubist landscape like this one by Braque, Big Trees at Estaques:

But maybe I would eschew the modernist trends which I have been following up to now, and go for one of the paintings by the American artist Grant Wood, like this Young Corn, painted in 1931:

There are certain similarities to the Bruegel I started with, no?

But in the end, I wouldn’t need to put any of these paintings on my walls, because I already have my landscape painting, purchased in the Dorotheum, the Viennese auction house.

Maybe one day I will have grandchildren who will drink lapsang souchong tea with me, look at the painting, and ask themselves what on earth Grandpa sees in it.

_____________________________

Pic in the canteen: mine
Corot-Souvenir de Mortefontaine: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Jean-Baptiste-Camille_Corot_012.jpg/1024px-Jean-Baptiste-Camille_Corot_012.jpg [in http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Corot%5D
Constable-Wivenhoe Park: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/John_Constable_-_Wivenhoe_Park%2C_Essex_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-John_Constable_-_Wivenhoe_Park%2C_Essex_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg [in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Constable_-_Wivenhoe_Park,_Essex_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg%5D
Constable-Salisbury Cathedral: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Salisbury_Cathedral_from_the_Bishop_Grounds_c.1825.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Cathedral%5D
Pissaro-Père Gallien’s house at Pontoise: http://uploads6.wikipaintings.org/images/camille-pissarro/pere-gallien-s-house-at-pontoise-1866.jpg [in http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/camille-pissarro/pere-gallien-s-house-at-pontoise-1866%5D
Monet-the Promenade Argenteuil: http://uploads7.wikipaintings.org/images/claude-monet/the-promenade-argenteuil.jpg [in http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/claude-monet/the-promenade-argenteuil%5D
Cezanne-Mont St Victoire-1887: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_107.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Sainte-Victoire_%28C%C3%A9zanne%29%5D
Van Gogh-Wheatfield with cypresses-1889: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/1889_van_Gogh_Wheatfield_with_cypresses_anagoria.JPG [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_Field_with_Cypresses%5D
Signac-Comblat Castle and the Pré-1886: http://uploads3.wikipaintings.org/images/paul-signac/comblat-castle-the-pre-1886%281%29.jpg [in http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/paul-signac/comblat-castle-the-pre-1886%5D
Derain-The turning road: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0n9IExEpmh8/S_DnuJ6ZT8I/AAAAAAAAVk4/JCfVk6QJNws/s1600/The_Turning_Road_L_Estaque.jpg [in http://www.artistsandart.org/2010/05/andre.html%5D
Braque-Big trees at Estaques-1908: http://uploads1.wikipaintings.org/images/georges-braque/big-trees-at-estaque-1908.jpg [in http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-braque/big-trees-at-estaque-1908%5D
Grant Wood-Young Corn-1931: http://uploads5.wikipaintings.org/images/grant-wood/young-corn-1931.jpg [in http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/grant-wood/young-corn-1931%5D
Pic of my landscape: mine

THE ARTIST AND THE SELFIE

Beijing, 19 January 2014

There is a phenomenon which my wife and I both agree is on the upswing in China, which is the taking of selfies. We are proud to know this word, by the way, which is so new that it hasn’t made it yet into the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary – although the Urban dictionary, which is obviously hipper, does contain a definition: “pictures taken of oneself while holding the camera at arm’s length”. We might know what the word means, but it doesn’t mean that we approve. We actually find it sad to see young women (it seems to be preponderantly young women) taking photos of themselves. It is so narcissistic, we cry!

But actually the phenomenon is not new, its amplitude is. New technology – the mobile phone with built-in camera – and its fantastic, phenomenal, global dissemination have allowed this. But the picture-makers of old – artists – have been making selfies for centuries now, since at least the Renaissance (in Europe anyway). They made selfies – self-portraits – to advertise their skills, or to allow them to exercise themselves without having to pay a model, or to comment on their or other people’s private lives, or in a more serious vein to explore their inner emotions. Anyone interested in the topic can go to the Wikipedia article on it. At the beginning, they seemed to be a bit shy (or maybe just cautious; prisons were nasty then), and rather than executing free-standing portraits of themselves they preferred to include themselves (and their friends, and even sometimes their enemies) in the role of modest bystanders in their paintings. Here, for instance, is a painting by Botticelli, an Adoration of the Magi, where the person on the extreme right in the yellow cloak and looking out towards the viewer is said to be the painter himself.

And here is a fresco, by Filippino Lippi, The Disputation with Simon Magus and the Crucifixion of Peter, where Lippi is the person on the extreme right of the fresco looking out towards the viewer from behind the pillar.

But after a while some artists were having none of this modesty. For instance, Velázquez put himself very obviously in what is probably his most famous painting, Las Meninas, which hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

On the face of it, the painting is of the young Infanta Margaret Theresa, surrounded by her entourage of maids of honour, her chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarves and a dog. But actually, Velázquez is quite obtrusively in the painting too! You can’t fail to miss him standing behind the Infanta and working on a large canvas, looking out towards the viewer. Behind him, on the wall, is a mirror, which if you look carefully can be see to be reflecting a couple. These are the king, Philip IV, and his queen, Mariana of Austria. Aha! It is them that Velásquez’s is painting, while standing in a painting which he painted … All very clever – and quite cheeky on the part of Velázquez to put himself so central when there were all these kings, queens, and princesses around!

But in my opinion not as cheeky as Dürer, who in a self-portrait of 1500 portrayed himself as a wonderfully powerful Christ-like figure.

He was following a well-known type of painting, such as this one by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck.

I’m always surprised by the sheer effrontery of Dürer comparing himself so obviously to Christ. And not to some meek and mild Christ either. The painting’s Latin inscription translates as “I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg, portrayed myself in everlasting colours aged twenty-eight years”. Wow! Talk about someone being sure of his fame in posterity. I’m amazed that he didn’t get hauled in front of some ecclesiastical court for committing the sin of overweening pride with this painting, but apparently he didn’t.

And then there are those artists who used selfies to do a bit of character assassination. Take Cristofano Allori, an Italian painter I’d never heard of until my wife and I came across a painting of his a few years ago in the Queen’s Gallery in London. Well worth the visit, by the way; it houses part of the extensive royal art collection. The painting in question was Judith with the head of Holofernes

It’s a story from the Bible: Holofernes was a general sent by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, to wreak vengeance on various nations along the Mediterranean sea board for not having supported him. This included Israel. Holofernes is besieging a Jewish city, which is about to surrender. But it is saved when Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow, visits Holfernes in his tent, seduces him, gets him drunk and then while he’s sleeping cuts off his head. Many painters liked this subject, no doubt because of all the blood and gore; they generally painted Judith in the act of cutting off Holofernes’s head. But Allori’s take is different. There’s no violence here. The head is already off and the blood has stopped running. Judith is holding it as she would a trophy, staring all the while at the viewer with a complacently triumphant look on her face. Anyone who saw the painting at the time and knew Allori must have tittered. Because Allori painted himself as poor Holofernes while his model for Judith was his ex-mistress Maria Mazzafirri and the servant in the background helping Judith was Maria’s mother. Poor Cristofano, they must have said, that harlot Mazzafirri and that hag of a mother of hers really screwed him over, got their claws into his loot (look at that beautiful dress she’s wearing!) and then dumped him. Or maybe they thought, what the hell did the beautiful Mazzafirri see in that dolt Allori? Good for her, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Michelangelo also included himself in a very personal way in a number of his works, the most famous of which must be in the fresco of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.

In that huge drama, he painted his face on the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew (I have written about the flaying of this saint in an earlier post).

Scholars have debated the meaning of this since it was noticed in 1925. One scholar has suggested that Michelangelo was commenting on his extremely shabby and painful treatment (from his point of view) by the Pope and his minions during the painting of the Last Judgement. Amusing, along the lines of Allori’s painting, but I think other scholars are more correct when they see this as an excrutiatingly personal comment by Michelangelo on the precarious balance of his soul between salvation and damnation: it seems that the flayed skin is at an exact midpoint between the salvation of the Triumphant Christ and the horrified man who is about to be pulled into Hell. The poetry Michelangelo wrote at this time – he was also a good poet – speaks a lot about his fear for the salvation of his soul.

And suddenly the selfie is an ussie. The artist is speaking for us all.

Personally, I like more the selfie in Michelangelo’s sculpture The Deposition from the Cross, which is in Florence.

I saw the sculpture during my first trip to Italy when I was a University student (I have also mentioned this trip in an earlier post). The old man, presumably Joseph of Arimathea, is said to be a self-portrait.

A look of such sadness, such desolation he is giving the dead Christ! I was so struck by it that I remained transfixed in front of the statue. I stood there so long that someone in a group of tourists flowing by muttered to her neighbour “What’s he looking at?”

That look of intense sadness brings me to Caravaggio, who must be my most favourite painter. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I brought few books to Beijing, but one of these was the massive Caravaggio: The Complete Works by Sebastian Schütze, which I later complemented by Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, the almost detective story of his life by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Caravaggio included himself in a number of his paintings. Take his Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, one of a cycle of three paintings in the Contarelli Chapel of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

The subject of the painting is the killing of Matthew, the author of one of the four Gospels. According to tradition, the saint was killed while celebrating Mass at the altar. And so we have the saint knocked to the ground, the assassin readying to deliver the fatal blow, an angel thoughtfully passing on to the saint the palm of martyrdom, and the crowd screaming and shouting and running about, the whole bathed in that chiaroscuro, that light and dark, for which Caravaggio is so famous. A great painting, although in my opinion not as good as the other two in the chapel. In any case, what interests us right now is the figure at the back, picked out by the light, seemingly making an escape but looking back at the scene. It is Caravaggio.

Why did he include himself like this? And why that look of intense sadness? Graham-Dixon suggests that Caravaggio is saying, “I am no different from these people, who stand there instead of helping Matthew, or even run away. I would have had no more courage than they. I, too, would have run away”.

So different, this look, from the expression we see on his face in an earlier painting, the Taking of Christ in the Garden of Gesthemane, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

Caravaggio has painted the moment when Judas completes his betrayal of Jesus by kissing him in the Garden of Gesthemane, to indicate to the soldiers around him whom they should arrest. Caravaggio is the person holding the lamp at the back.

He is there to shed light on the scene, but he is also looking eagerly over the shoulders of the soldiers to get a better view. Such a wonderful metaphor for every painter, of all ages, trying hard to visualize the scene which they are planning to paint, and which they can see only darkly.

And so we get to the last of Caravaggio’s portrayals, painted late in his career. The subject is another decapitation which was very popular with painters, David’s killing of Goliath. Caravaggio himself did at least three versions of this story, more or less all of the same moment, when David grasps the head of Goliath. This last one, housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, is the darkest, the most tragic.

It is Caravaggio’s face we see in Goliath, as he was in the last years of his life, on the run from the law in at least two jurisdictions but also from enemies who had personal vendettas with him and were trying to kill him, desperately trying to have himself pardoned by the Pope so that he could return to Rome. It is said that Caravaggio intended the painting to be a gift to Cardinal Borghese who had the power to have him pardoned, a sort of “here is my head on a platter, please be merciful and forgive me”. And who modelled David, a David who strangely enough is not looking triumphantly at Goliath whom he has just overcome in battle, whose gaze rather is a mixture of sadness and compassion for his supposed enemy? One interpretation, which I like immensely, is that this is also Caravaggio, painted as he looked when he was a young boy! And so we have a scene where the young Caravaggio is looking on sadly at the old Caravaggio which he will become. Alas, this interpretation does not seem correct. More probably, the model is Caravaggio’s studio assistant, Cecco, looking on sadly as his master slowly falls to pieces before his eyes. And indeed Caravaggio died shortly thereafter.

Another artist whose powerful self-portraits have always fascinated me is the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. I must say, she was almost obsessed with herself, self-portraits making up a very large proportion of her oeuvre. Here is one of them

but there is one self-portrait of hers which stands out above all the rest and which I find truly gut-wrenching, Henry Ford Hospital.

She painted it shortly after her second miscarriage, when she realized she would never be able to have the children she so desperately wanted. You see her lying in the blood of her miscarriage on her bed in the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (the city in the background; her husband, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, had been given a commission there by Edsel Ford). Above her floats the baby she has just lost, a baby boy. Also floating around her are a female torso, showing the anatomical parts linked to having children, her fractured pelvis, fruit of an accident she suffered when young and which made it impossible for her to have children, medical-looking equipment used during the miscarriage, an orchid which Rivera had given her, and a snail, depicting the slow pace of her miscarriage. All are linked to her by umbilical-like bloodlines.

I finish with a self-portrait by Käthe Kollwitz, a German artist who was active before and after the First World War. It, too, is about the loss of a child, but this time of a child born. Her younger son Peter was badly wounded in the first days of the war and died in her arms a few months later. She created this woodcut just after his death. It is of her and her husband, distraught at their boy’s death

After the war, she distilled this image into a pair of statues, Grieving Parents, which stand in the German War cemetery at Vladslo in Belgium (I have written an earlier post about these cemeteries).

The two figures are based on Käthe and her husband Karl

They represent all the parents of the young men buried in the cemetery

although it is said that Karl is gazing directly at the tomb of his son Peter.

To parents like us with children still of age to be called up, incredibly moving.

POST SCRIPTUM

A few weeks ago (June 2014), I saw with great pleasure that my favouritest of favourite cartoonists in The New Yorker magazine, Roz Chast, had made the same connection as I had between the modern selfie movement and artists’ self-portraits

______________________________

I’LL NEVER WEAR A HAT …

Beijing, 16 January 2014

A few days ago, my wife was showing me a website she had discovered: “Before They Pass Away”. It’s a wonderful site, kept by the photographer Jimmy Nelson, who has travelled to many of the remoter parts of the world to document the world’s vanishing tribes. I really recommend my readers to visit it.

As I was studying his photographs of the Kalam tribe in Papua New Guinea, I was thunderstruck by the absolutely wonderful headgear they are wearing:

It rather reminds me of a headgear I’ve referred to in an earlier post, being worn by a donor depicted in a 14th century mosaic in the Kariye camii church in Istanbul:

but the Kalam tribesmen’s headgear is much, much more magnificent! For a crazy moment, I imagined myself wearing such a headgear to the office. Boy, would I look impressive! But quickly, though reluctantly, I dismissed the idea because (a) I would have difficulty passing through the doors, and (b) my staff would conclude that I had definitively lost my marbles.

This train of thought led me to start reflecting on the wearing of hats. Because I could wear a hat to the office. Hats fit through doors and my staff wouldn’t think it’s time to call in the men in white if I wore one. Yes, I could easily be a smooth operator like Humphrey Bogart (“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid”)

or Spencer Tracy

or a little closer to home and in time, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon

I would definitely avoid the top hat, which is really too formal

or the boater, which is really too silly, as Bertie Wooster amply demonstrates (played here masterfully by Hugh Laurie to Stephen Fry’s Jeeves)

or the bowler hat, which is really too English

and was amply mocked by Monty Python in their Ministry of Silly Walks sketch

although one could argue that the 1960s TV show The Avengers gave the bowler hat and attendant umbrella a certain air of glamour.

I was certainly moonstruck when I was young by la belle Diana Riggs.

But the fact is, I wouldn’t even wear the more normal of these hats to the office. I mean, who wears a hat any more? And that’s really rather extraordinary, because there was a time – before my time, I will admit, but still not that long ago – when no man in the Western world ever went out on the street without a hat on his head. Look at this picture, taken during some demonstration in New York in the early 1900s. There isn’t a single uncovered head.

And that was how things were until at least the 1940s and even into the 1950s. Then suddenly, hats disappeared.

Many theories have been put forward for this sudden eclipse of the hat: the rapid rise of the car culture (hard to wear a hat in a car); a reaction to having had to wear helmets and other hats as soldiers during the War; a general trend towards nonconformity (wearing hats was what the older generation did, ergo …); changes in hair styles: from the short-back-and-sides to Elvis quiffs in the 1950s and long hair in the 1960s (hard to wear hats on that); trends towards more casual clothing (hats being seen as a formal piece of clothing), etc. Take your pick.

My father would have been of the generation that abandoned hats. And in fact, I don’t remember seeing a single photo of him wearing a hat, nor do I ever remember seeing him wear a hat. Except once. In London. In the early 1960s, when I started going to boarding school. I have a distinct memory of him striding ahead of me, dressed like a city gent

while I trailed behind wearing my ill-fitting school uniform – a hand-me-down from my elder brother – and sporting the only hat I’ve ever worn, if it can be called a hat, the school cap. I looked something like this youngster

although, at the age of 8, I was 4 years older than this little chappie.

In the meantime, regular hat-wearing has become the preserve of the religiously inclined, from Roman Catholic clergy

to Christian Orthodox clergy

to Orthodox, Conservative Jews, here seen in their Sabbath finest

to conservative Muslims, here seen preparing for Friday prayers

to Sikhs

to certain Buddhist sects.

Sad, really. Unless I convert to a hat-wearing religion, this piece of clothing, which men in the Western world have been wearing in one form or another since at least the Middle Ages, will pass me by. The best I can hope for is a baseball cap to protect me from the sun in the summer and a woolen cap to protect me from the cold in winter.

But I’m sure the hat will come back. All things go round. The current crop of film stars is now being photographed looking glamorously unshaven and wearing some form of hat

a good sign that the fashion of hat-wearing is on the way back. But will hats come back before I too, like the Kalam tribesmen, pass away?

____________________

Kalam-PNG: http://cdn.vellance.com/beforethey/beforetheypassaway/media/images/Kalam/PNG-40.jpg [in http://www.beforethey.com/journey/indonesia—papua-new-guinea#journeytribe0%5D
Kariye Camii-theodore metochites: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/istanbul-kariye-chora-pictures/dedication-theodore-metochites-ccc-access-denied.jpg
Humphrey Bogart with fedora: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/12/21/ap97060302780-d8dd656ac739b682609d28a38655b210f24ceab7-s6-c30.jpg [in http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/12/21/144064674/is-your-fedora-a-good-idea-a-gentle-suggestion-to-the-sorely-tempted%5D
Spencer Tracy with fedora: http://godcelebs.com/images/spencer-tracy-04.jpg [in http://godcelebs.com/21495-spencer-tracy.html%5D
Belmondo and Delon: http://www.taaora.fr/blog/images/visuels/0811111_visuel_le_borsalino_pour_un_look_masculin.jpg [in http://www.taaora.fr/blog/post/0811111-le-borsalino-pour-un-look-diablement-masculin%5D
Top hat: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Austin_Lane_Crothers%2C_photograph_of_head_with_top_hat.jpg/490px-Austin_Lane_Crothers%2C_photograph_of_head_with_top_hat.jpg [inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maryland]
Boater hat-Bertie Wooster and Jeeves: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YGhq8wnXMtA/UY0stJwimpI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/SlGfD3XHZIk/s1600/Jeeves-and-Wooster-jeeves-and-wooster-18685744-1600-1200.jpg [in http://beehyphen.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-oxford-dictionary-according-to.html%5D
Bowler hat: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X9tsbaAXh7o/Ubd7symxp4I/AAAAAAAAIW8/k1BvoQ_bVhU/s1600/Gents%2Bto%2Baboard%2Batrain%2Bin%2Bbowler.jpg [in http://the-shoe-aristocat.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-bowler-hat-dress-like-london-city.html%5D
Ministry of silly walks: http://meandmyachilles.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/silly-walks.jpg [in http://meandmyachilles.wordpress.com/page/2/%5D
Bowler hat – the Avengers 1: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/fe/a5/ac/fea5ac074f741c05a72374daa617bc4b.jpg [in https://www.pinterest.com/pin/295830269244192278/%5D
Bowler hat-the Avengers 2: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dtmJKl33T5c/UYdxE_o8bfI/AAAAAAAAEUo/V89FEe9dntg/s1600/peelsteed-0000.jpg [in http://allthingscoolerthanyou.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-avengers-emma-peel.html%5D
Crowd 1900s: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/05/04/loc-union-square-rally-1912_custom-e543fad3d29c6228cd6da3404167efdd0c3a2e11-s40-c85.jpg [in http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/04/152011840/who-killed-mens-hats-think-of-a-three-letter-word-beginning-with-i%5D
City gent: http://i34.tinypic.com/ivhiwx.jpg [in http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/showthread.php?99284-An-umbrella/page3%5D
School cap: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/27/article-0-09538FC5000005DC-121_468x676.jpg [in http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1269252/Michael-Buerk-My-father-bigamist-lied-life.html%5D
Cardinals: http://www.capuanaweb.insulareport.it/media/k2/items/cache/c230427c303c0684b5582388f5d0dfd7_XL.jpg
Bishop mitre: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XI3D3v_8IJg/TYXm5n62-bI/AAAAAAAARGQ/NSKPcaCTx4w/s1600/sheen%2Bprecious%2Bmitre.JPG [in http://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/2013/05/wednesday-may-23-2013-doug-peterson.html%5D
Orthodox priests: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01798/bethlehem-priests_1798076i.jpg [in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8243817/Orthodox-Christians-celebrate-Epiphany.html?image=15%5D
Jewish shreimel-2: http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/jewish-walkin-wili.jpg [in http://www.vosizneias.com/151918/2014/01/10/manchester-england-uks-largest-eruv-opens-in-greater-manchester/%5D
Taqiyah and keffiyeh in London: http://www.beautifulmosque.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/east-london-mosque-uk-02.jpg [in http://www.beautifulmosque.com/east-london-mosque-united-kingdom/%5D
Sikhs in Toronto: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Sikhs_on_the_move!.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh%5D
Buddhist yellow hats-2: http://mosaicofhope.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/exiled-tibetan-buddhist-monks.jpg [in http://mosaicofhope.net/2013/02/12/happy-lunar-new-year/%5D
Brad Pitt in hat: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/26/article-2223410-01776062000004B0-721_634x420.jpg [in http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223410/Jason-Corkovic-Gangster-claims-hoodie-ban-violates-human-rights.html%5D

ME, I TOOK THE TRAIN TO GO TO NEW JERSEY

New York, 11 January 2014

I’ve been reading about the political storm whirling around New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie and his possible role in the partial closure back in September of several lanes of the George Washington Bridge causing mammoth traffic jams, all as a mean-minded act of revenge against a mayor who chose not to back him.

As I read and watch the TV commentaries, I smugly remind myself of the fact that 25 years ago, when I lived in New York and for a period had to travel frequently to Trenton, I did NOT drive and so was never at the mercy of tyrannical politicians and their staff. I took the train (the golden haze of history makes me forget that the trains sometimes ran chaotically).

I would catch the train at Penn Station, as miserable then as it is now (although I read somewhere that they might tear it down and replace it with something nicer … hope springs eternal).

But at that time, there was an employee of the railways, announcer of departing trains, who would always end his litany of stops on these trains with a sonorously chanted “All abooo-aard!” He started high on the “All”, dropped to low note on “aboo”, and then rose to triumphant high finale on “aard”. It always put a smile on my lips and sent me off with the sun in my heart.

I needed it. After lurching through the tunnel under the Hudson River, we would emerge, blinking, in New Jersey on the other side. There then followed an urban and peri-urban bleakness. After passing through Hoboken and Secaucus, we crossed wastelands of what must have once been lovely marshes and wetlands around the Hackensack and Passaic rivers, as this small remaining wetland near Secaucus attests

but were now a tangle of roads and studded with industrial estates

many of them abandoned, evidence of the collapse of the manufacturing sector in the US.

I redid this journey recently, taking the train to Washington DC, and it hasn’t got much better.

Every time I sat in that train 25 years ago, watching the bleakness roll by, I silently lamented that way of thinking which saw wetlands as something useless. Here is what a journalist had to say when describing the Meadowlands in 1867:

“Swamp-lands are blurs upon the fair face of Nature; they are fever-breeding places; scourges of humanity; which, instead of yielding the fruits of the earth and adding wealth to the general community, only supply the neighboring places poisonous exhalations and torturing mosquitos. They are, for all practical purposes, worthless; and the imperative necessity for their reclamation is obvious to all, and is universally conceded.” [1]

So they had filled them in and turned them over to some useful economic activity. But now all I could see was that much of that useful economic activity had upped sticks and moved to China or somewhere else, leaving behind only a blighted landscape. And no doubt as I write, that useful economic activity is upping sticks again, moving to somewhere even cheaper, leaving another blighted landscape behind it.

What of those wetlands around the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers? Perhaps sea level rise, coupled with more frequent and more severe storms, both caused by climate change, itself caused by the carbon emissions from all those useful economic activities, will wipe away all our intrusions and chase us off to higher ground. A revenge which will dwarf Governor Christie’s mean-spirited attempt at revenge – if indeed he was involved, of course. Of course …

_____________________

1. The new system of reclaiming lands. (1867, November 16). Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, pp. 36–37.

Traffic jam on George Washington Bridge: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/140109121541-vo-gwb-traffic-september-2013-00000427-story-top.jpg [in http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/09/us/christie-traffic-react/%5D
Penn Station: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/12/arts/12JPWEST2/12JPWEST2-popup.jpg [in http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/arts/design/a-proposal-for-penn-station-and-madison-square-garden.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0%5D
Wetlands Secaucus: http://www.njmeadowlands.gov/images/environment/mill_air.gif [in http://www.njmeadowlands.gov/environment/parks/mcm.html%5D
Roads through the wetlands: http://www.clui.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/clui-image/clui/post_images/135-3516_img_0.jpg [in http://www.clui.org/newsletter/winter-2013/new-jersey-meadowlands%5D
Pulaski Skyway: http://media.nj.com/jjournal-news/photo/ga0111skyway-11-munsonjpg-f015d680e2f7d239.jpg [in http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2013/02/sen_stacks_letter_praises_gov.html%5D
Old industrial site Passaic River: http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4062/4488489938_631d825d01_z.jpg [in http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffs4653/4488489938/%5D

OF CABBAGES AND KINGS

New York, 5 January 2014

Kale is king of culinary cool this year in New York. Or so it would appear from a cursory glance at the offerings in the city’s food emporia: every restaurant seems to have a dish with kale in it, every supermarket a ready-made salad containing kale. Several articles tracking the growing popularity of kale have appeared in the New York Times, while a very recent article in the New York Daily News, reporting on a survey of 500 dieticians, has these worthy people predicting that kale (along with ancient grains and gluten-free diets) will be the top nutrition trends of 2014. Why, even a celebrity chef like Gordon Ramsey has weighed in, making lots of approving noises about kale. He went so far as to propose that a National Kale Day be instituted!

Which is all rather surprising to me, since I have always associated kale with something that you feed to cows. I don’t think I had ever intentionally eaten kale until a week or so ago when I picked up a take-away tomato and kale soup from a Hale & Hearty Soup outlet somewhere near Park Avenue and 45th Street.

Quite what is so remarkable about kale is not clear to me. It is purported to help you fight various cancers, lower your cholesterol, detoxify yourself, and I know not what else. Having been around a while, I am, like this reporter in the Huffington Post, somewhat skeptical of all these claims. How many foodstuffs have I seen over the years for which extravagant health claims have been made! It is true that kale is stuffed with vitamins K, A and C. So if you need those, kale might be your thing. But as for the rest …

To my mind, all the froth and frenzy about kale is nothing compared to the wonderful story behind its very existence. Around the northern and eastern rim of the Mediterranean, in what are now Italy, Greece, Turkey, and maybe further south along the Lebanese and Israeli coast, there lives a humble member of the large family of mustards. This species is known to science as Brassica oleracea, but we can call it cole (a name rooted in the Celtic-Germanic-Greek word for “stem”). With time and I presume human interference it spread from its original homeland and now can be found further north in Europe. Since it tolerates salt well and likes a limey soil, it tends to be found on limestone sea cliffs, as attested by this picture, taken on the chalk cliffs in the UK (I didn’t find a picture of the plant in its original homeland):

Anyone familiar with mustard plants will immediately see the family resemblance. And those long stems are what gives the plant its generic name of cole.

At some point, humans found that the plant was edible and presumably added it to their list of plants to gather. Some 3-4,000 years ago, maybe more, as part of the slow move to agriculture, humans began to domesticate the cole, and as they have done with just about every species which they have domesticated they began a forced process of natural selection to encourage desirable traits in their domesticates and eliminate undesirable ones. So far, so good. But the cole must have a very flexible DNA because over the millennia farmers were able to coax out of this one plant an astonishingly different array of vegetables. From the plant we see above waving on the cliff top, they managed to obtain our friend kale:

Its close cousin, collard greens:

The cabbage, which itself comes in several varieties, the common white cabbage:

the red cabbage, seen here with the green cabbage:

the Savoy cabbage:

Then we have broccoli:

Cauliflower:

and its close cousin the strange-looking romanesco broccoli:

Brussels sprouts:

Kohlrabi:

And last but not least, the Chinese kai-lan, also known as Chinese broccoli:

Pretty amazing …

The following picture shows which bits in the original cole plant all those generations of farmers fiddled with to get these massively different vegetables:

When seeing all these vegetables sitting next to each other on a supermarket shelf, it might be difficult to believe that they are actually the same plant, but when you see them still in the field the family resemblance is more easily recognized.

Kale:

Collards:

Cabbage:

Cauliflower:

Broccoli:

Brussels sprouts:

Kohlrabi:

And when these vegetables flower, which they should not, then you see the mustard-like flower coming through, as in this case of a red cabbage gone to seed:

and of broccoli gone to seed:

The early history of all these cole vegetables is shrouded in uncertainty. The Greeks and Romans wrote about one or more vegetables which sound like a cousin of kale and collards. The cabbage seems to have been developed in the colder parts of Europe some time in the early Middle Ages. Southern Italians seem to have developed broccoli quite early on, perhaps already during the Roman period, but it was many centuries before it migrated to other parts of Europe. It is generally thought that the cauliflower came to Europe from the Middle East, possibly via Cyprus and then Italy. As the name suggests, Brussels sprouts seem to have been developed somewhere in the Low Countries around the 15^th Century, possibly earlier, but didn’t migrate to other parts of Europe until several centuries later. Kohlrabi seems to have been developed at about the same time, although quite where in Europe is unclear. And then there is kai-lan. Quite how this vegetable, the descendant of a Mediterranean plant, ended up being developed in China is a bit of a mystery. It is theorized that when the Portuguese came to China, they brought with them the cabbage. Chinese farmers then did a second cycle of selection to bring about something which looks and tastes more like broccoli.

Little is known of the history of these vegetables because early European chroniclers didn’t deign to follow the experiments in genetic engineering that the humble farmers were undertaking. In his poem “the Walrus and the Carpenter”, Lewis Carroll has the walrus say at some point:

“The time has come,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings”

But those who recorded history were interested in kings and not cabbages and their ilk, so we will never know who were those legions of farmers who patiently developed this cornucopia of cole vegetables which we have available to us today. I take this occasion to salute these nameless heroes and to thank them for putting such wonderful vegetables on my table.

_____________________

THE E-CIGARETTE

New York, 22 December 2013

My wife and I have been trying for a while now to get our son to stop smoking. He’s the same age, give or take a year, that we were when we stopped but he’s still on 10 a day – more if the stress levels are high. With us cheering him on, he has tried various things: patches, gum, and I know not what. He even went cold turkey for a while. All for naught. So when back in May he decided to try e-cigarettes, we redoubled our cheering.

I know, they’re not the miracle cure they are sometimes claimed to be, but on balance we think they are better than real cigarettes.

Almost immediately, though, our son’s experiment with e-cigarettes went awry. During a night out with the boys just after he started using it the body broke (for the uninitiated, I should explain that an e-cigarette is composed of a body and a head; the two are separable and can be purchased separately, an important detail in the unfolding drama). After much badgering – our son was very busy with his new business (which of course augmented the stress levels and thus the cigarette consumption) – he finally got around to purchasing a new body via internet and received said body through the post. My wife and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he would imminently be throwing away his cigarette packs. But no. Our son discovered that he couldn’t remove the head from the old body despite the use of much brute strength and wrenches. So still no e-cigarette use.

Things stood thus for several months before we came to New York to spend Christmas with the children. We were determined to move things along. After more badgering, we got some guidance from our son as to where we might go to separate head from body. Our initial thought had been to find a repair shop of some sort. But who runs repair shops these days, especially for so arcane a product as e-cigarettes?

So our search shifted to so-called vapor stores. These are locales which are vigorously promoting e-cigarettes and the vapor lifestyle. Again, to make sure that the uninitiated are following, recall that the principle of e-cigarettes is that you inhale water vapor impregnated with nicotine, taste molecules (our son favors mint and watermelon), and a few other odds and ends. Thus, vapor is central to the e-cigarette experience, thus stores offering this new lifestyle are called vapor stores, and thus the devotees of this new lifestyle call themselves vapers (in contrast to smokers; cute, no?).

We located two vapor stores in Lower Manhattan. The precise location of the stores is already an indication of the life choices of the fans of the vapor lifestyle. Because when I say lower Manhattan, I don’t mean Wall Street or thereabouts, the hang-out of the Gods of Finance and their acolytes from New Jersey, I mean NoLiTa. This is an area north of Little Italy (whence the name NoLiTa; the serious New Yorker must keep up with the continuous creation of new locational acronyms). I am informed that NoLiTa is now a very cool area to live in for those into the more alternative lifestyles.

After some blundering around the small streets of NoLiTa, we finally found the first vapor store on our list. As we entered, we suddenly felt like dinosaurs, relics from a past era.

Everyone in the place could have been our son or daughter, and every single one of them was puffing on an e-cigarette. They looked at us rather surprised. Clearly, troglodytes like us did not enter the shop often, if at all.

We diffidently made our way to the counter where a young man served us, e-cigarette in hand. And as we explained the problem, he sucked on his e-cigarette and breathed out vapor from his nostrils in a fashion that was very reminiscent of angry bulls in cartoons – my wife and I checked notes afterwards and both agreed on this point

After this impressively taurine display, our young man managed to separate head from damaged body and sold us a bottle of mint-tasting e-cigarette liquid. At which point our son rolled in and took over, giving my wife and I the leisure to look the place over.

Calling this a store is clearly a misnomer. What we have here is an experience, an event. Other than the counter and the vitrines in one corner showing off e-cigarettes and related paraphernalia

our store had a bar in another corner where various high-end teas were being served – no tea bags here – and where clients could sit at the bar sipping their tea, chatting convivially, and of course puffing on their e-cigarettes together.

In yet another corner it had a nook where vapers could sit on smart but environmentally-friendly furniture made with discarded objects, and flip through high-end magazines like Monocle, all the while puffing meditatively on their e-cigarettes.

(these photos are not of the store we saw, but the fact that I found them, and many others like it, makes me think that this is the basic blueprint of all vapor stores)

It all rather reminded me of the more traditional smoking rooms of the 19th Century

or more darkly of those high-end turn of the 19th Century Parisian brothels which Toulouse-Lautrec liked to paint

Like the French say, “plus ça change et plus c’est la même chose”, the more it changes and the more it’s the same thing. In every age, there’s always a part of society which wants to be exotic.

But all my wife and I want is for our son to quit smoking.

_________________

e-cigarette: http://www.vapeitnow.com/pics/joyetech-starter-kit/joyetech-evic-5.jpg [in http://www.vapeitnow.com/products/joyetech-starter-kit/joyetech-evic.html%5D
smoking e-cigarette: http://thegazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ecigarettes680.jpg [in http://thegazette.com/2013/10/10/university-of-iowa-considers-e-cigarettes-and-campus-wide-smoking-ban/%5D
NoLiTa: http://dguides.com/images/newyorkcity/areas/nolita.jpg [in http://dguides.com/newyorkcity/areas/nolita/%5D
Dinosaur skeletons: http://www.dinostoreus.com/rex-vs-ceratops.jpg [in http://www.dinostoreus.com/%5D
Bull snorting: http://www.ecigarettedirect.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/a/raging-bull.jpg [in http://www.eliquid.co.uk/%5D
Vapor shop-1: http://ecigarettereviewed.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/vapor-loft-vape-shop.jpg [in http://ecigarettereviewed.com/so-cal-vapers-creating-their-own-june-gloom/%5D
Vapor shop-2: http://getvapordelight.com/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_93591.jpg [in http://vapordelight.com/vapor-bar-lounge/%5D
Vapor shop-3: http://www.yext-static.com/cms/af5ee3ea-019d-4b15-991d-76d4fc371fe1.jpg [in http://yellowpages.ny1.com/biz/buffalo-vapor-lounge/buffalo/ny/14216/53824266%5D
Smoking parlour Victorian England: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/clubs/11.jpg [in http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/clubs/11.html%5D
Brothel Toulouse Lautrec: http://www.studiomatters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/719px-Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec_012.jpg [in http://www.studiomatters.com/art/olympias-heirs%5D

MY AUSTRIAN JACKET

Beijing, 21 December 2013

I was 13 when I started wearing jackets. They were part of our school uniform. I shucked them off when I went to University, along with many other habits both material and spiritual, but in the case of jackets it was a brief reprieve. Once I entered the workforce, it was back to wearing jackets. I suffered at first but now I don’t mind anymore. Whenever I see my wife rummaging around in her bag muttering under her breath that she could swear she put it in (“it” being any number of things) and where on earth was it?, I thank Fate that men wear jackets. Because to me jackets have become the equivalent of a handbag, except that contrary to handbags the pockets are all handily separated. This makes it so much easier to retrieve my stuff: mobile phone in the left-hand external pocket, packet of paper handkerchiefs in the right-hand external pocket, glasses and computer stick (you never know when you might need to copy a document) in the inside left-hand pocket, passport and pens in the inside right-hand pocket, clip-ons in the breast pocket, business cards in that little inside pocket down towards the left, from which you can fish out a card and present it to your interlocutor in one smooth, fluid, business-like movement.

This close relationship in my mind between the handbag and the jacket has meant that I am relatively insensitive to the sartorial aspects of jacket wearing. Frankly, I would just keep wearing the same jacket for ever if I could – such a nuisance to have to shift everything to the pockets of the new jacket! And having to make choices in the morning about what new jacket to wear, when really all I want to do is to go back to bed, is very tough. But luckily my wife is at hand to firmly guide me through the relatively frequent decision-making process of jacket-changing.

At this point, you would be excused if you thought that I am completely uninterested in jackets as fashion statements. But actually from time to time I have been able to appreciate a style in jackets. This happened, for instance, when we moved to Vienna. I noticed with great interest that many men wore jackets like this

Commonly called a Styrian jacket, its cut is a cross between the traditional gear which hunters wore in the Alpine valleys of the Austrian province of Styria

and early 19^th Century military uniforms, which we see here (for reasons which will soon become apparent) being shown off by Archduke Johann of Austria, 13th child (no less) of Emperor Leopold II.

To my mind, the collar is what makes the Styrian jacket very distinctive, although as the last photo shows it has been reduced considerably compared to its military forebear.

Unfortunately, wearers of this type of jacket in Austria are normally making a strong social statement. They are usually advertising their conservative credentials, which is why many wearers are of the older generation:

Although its distant roots are in the Styrian peasantry, the jacket’s recent pedigree is very aristocratic. It was brought from the Styrian farms to Vienna’s imperial court in the early 19^th Century by the same Archduke Johann I just mentioned. Initially considered with suspicion by Crown and aristocracy (Archduke Johann was a tad too close to the people for them), it eventually caught on and was popularized (if that’s the word) by the Austrian upper classes and their hangers-on in the middle classes. Which is no doubt why Christopher Plummer’s Captain von Trapp is shown wearing one in The Sound of Music

Wearing the jacket can also have strong political overtones, declaring the wearer’s oh-so Austrian credentials, a rampart against the sea of dubious Eastern European influence lapping up against the edges of the country’s pristine Alpine ranges. Which is why Jörg Haider, the far Right governor of the province of Carinthia, liked being seen in the Carinthian version of this jacket (the earth tones, the “good earth of Carinthia” is what makes the jacket specifically Carinthian).

But actually you don’t have to belong to the huntin’-and-shootin’ set, or want to make a political statement about smelly foreigners, to wear this jacket. To my mind, it works brilliantly well in more casual “modern” settings

where the somewhat militaristic cut of the jacket contrasts pleasingly with the relaxed style of the rest of the outfit.

I have one such Styrian jacket, a light summer one, but I left that behind in Vienna. I have another winter jacket with me in Beijing, which is actually a Bavarian Miesbacher jacket (so I suppose strictly speaking the title of this piece is wrong – but the Bavarians and the Austrians are very similar, even in their sartorial preferences, sharing as they do the same Alpine history).

The Chinese look at me curiously when I wear the jacket, and sometimes they ask me what it is. I explain, but I don’t think they really appreciate; I suppose you need to have seen an Alpine valley or two.

The interesting thing is that the Chinese, or rather the Manchu of the Qing imperial court, created a style which was a precursor for a similar jacket in the UK, where the collar is often called the Mandarin collar. This picture of Qing dignitaries nicely shows the collar in its original setting:

After the collision of East and West in China, with the West coming out on top, this traditional dress morphed into a jacket, in response to the “modern” forms of Western wear invading China. It is commonly thought that Mao Zedong popularized the new style – and in fact the collar is often referred to as a Mao collar – but actually it is to Sun Yat Sen, the first President of modern China and founder of the Kuomintang, that this honour should go:

(which, as a trivial aside, I suppose must be the model for the jacket worn by Dr. No, the arch-evil adversary of James Bond in the 1962 film of the same name.)

This sartorial strand is somehow mixed up with another strand emanating from India. There, during the 1940s the Indians developed the Band Gale Ka Coat, Urdu for “Closed Neck Coat”, an apt name indeed. This coat became a global star thanks to another leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of modern, post-colonial India, who was often seen wearing a version of it.

All of this gave rise to the British variant of the “closed neck” jacket, the so-called Nehru jacket:

The interesting thing is that while the Austrian version of the jacket tends to be favoured by the right-wing elements of society, in its heyday – the Swinging Sixties – the British version was favoured by the left-wing elements, or at least the cooler, hipper set. Taking rock bands as a good indicator of all things cool, we have here a photo of The Who, where you will notice Roger Daltry wearing a Nehru jacket

while in this photo, we have – gasp! shriek! tearing of hair! – John and Paul of the Fab Four sporting Nehru jackets during a concert

Why, even in the US the Nehru jacket made its appearance among the modish set, as this ad with Sammy Davis Jr attests!

So with such stellar support I don’t suppose I can be very far off the mark in thinking that the closed neck style for a jacket is kinda nice. Nowadays, though, in the UK the style seems to be more in the purview of women, as shown by this photo from last year of Catherine Ashton at one of the many meetings she held with the-then Iranian negotiator on nuclear issues, Saeed Jalili:

No matter. I will continue to beat my lonely path with my Bavarian jacket in China.

And I need to look into the shirt which Jalili is wearing. It’s pretty nifty, eliminating as it does the need for a tie, which is no bad thing. Another piece of clothing which I was required to start wearing, along with jackets, when I was 13 …

___________________________
Trachten jacket: http://www.oktoberfest-dirndl-shop.co.uk/images/articles/Trachtenjacke_Stachus_anthrazit_v1_894.jpg [in http://www.oktoberfest-dirndl-shop.co.uk/men/trachten-jackets/138/traditional-jacket-stachus-anthracite%5D
Styrian hunter: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Styrian_Hunter.jpg [in http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Styrian_Hunter.jpg%5D
Archduke Johann: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/0/0d/1782_Johann-1.JPG [in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_von_Österreich%5D
Old fogey: http://www.alpen-lifestyle.de/shopimages/t_240x/lf_oberoesterr_anzug_gr.jpg [in http://www.alpen-lifestyle.de/24.html%5D
Christopher Plummer-Sound of Music: http://d1w7nqlfxfj094.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Chris-Plummer3.jpg [in http://www.actclassy.com/2013/05/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-ten-reasons-the-sound-of-music-should-never-be-remade/%5D
Haider: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/red/blue_pics/2008/10/23/Haider1.jpg [in http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/23/jorge%5D
Steireranzug: http://www.heuundstroh.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/_/m/_mg_0155.jpg [in http://www.heuundstroh.com/trachtenanzug-innsbruck%5D
Miesbacher jacket: http://www.country-online.com/images/product_images/original_images/931_0.jpg [in http://stadtfuhrer22.bloggum.com/post/miesbacher-trachten-jacke.html%5D
Manchu men: http://store.tidbitstrinkets.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Manchumen-LC-USZ62-56123.jpg [in http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t275297.html%5D
Sun Yat Sen: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Sunyatsen1.jpg/556px-Sunyatsen1.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen%5D
Dr. No: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YsnLPzQA9o8/UHeA4lcPgXI/AAAAAAAACe0/m78FM-vE0LU/s1600/Dr%252520No%2525207.jpg [in http://silent-volume.blogspot.com/2012/10/according-to-wikipedia-quarter-of.html%5D
Nehru and Jackie Kennedy: http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Nehru-and-Jackie-Kennedy.jpg [in http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/nehru-jacket-guide-mao-suit/%5D
Nehru jacket: http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Nehru-Jacket-in-grey-with-pocket-square.jpg [in http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/nehru-jacket-guide-mao-suit/%5D
The Who: http://24.media.tumblr.com/26974fed8aa5c8fe98df29ffdda9b503/tumblr_mjkb5uMlx51rvno3ho1_500.jpg [in http://dandyinaspic.blogspot.com/2013_07_01_archive.html%5D
The Beatles: http://static.ibnlive.in.com/pix/slideshow/05-2013/jumpsuits-lbd-platform/nehru-jacket-may-9.jpg [in http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/13406.html%5D
Sammy Davis Jr: http://c590298.r98.cf2.rackcdn.com/YMM6_062.JPG [in http://www.ebay.com/itm/1968-Ad-Nehru-Suit-Sammy-Davis-Jr-Groshire-Austin-Leeds-Tailor-Men-60s-Fashion-/301019399979%5D
Ashton and Jalili: http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ashtonjalili.jpg [in http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2012/09/2148/report-iran-eu-nuclear-negotiators-to-meet-in-istanbul/%5D

TROPICAL FRUITS

Beijing, 11 December 2013

I’ve just come back to China from a business trip abroad. As is my habit on these trips, I picked up whatever English-language newspapers were being proffered at the plane door. On the return leg, I found myself with the International New York Times (until recently the International Herald Tribune). Once we had taken off, I settled into my usual reading routine, which is to start with the cartoons, have a stab at the Sudoku and sometimes the crossword (depending on how easy it is), then meander through the rest of the newspaper, settling on whatever articles catch my eye. In this particular edition, I came across an article entitled “Letting the Nose Lead the Way”, about the durian. The article was a paean to the durian, the author an unashamed fan. So much of a fan that I decided to write this post in protest and to right the balance.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the durian, this is it:

It is a tropical fruit common throughout Southeast Asia and southern China. A huge fruit which can weigh up to three kilogrammes and whose husk is covered with large nasty spikes. Which two facts together lead some to wear safety helmets if they venture into durian orchards when the fruit is ripe and ready to fall. I kid you not:

When you split open the husk you find these squishy pods inside

which smell and taste absolutely … disgusting.

The first – and last – time I ate durian was in Malaysia in the mid-1990s. I was with a Moroccan colleague. It was the first time for both of us in the country. We were with a third colleague, an Italian, who had been many times to Malaysia. We were driving through some village when he suddenly ordered the driver to stop and us to get out. We were confronted by a roadside vendor behind a pile of these large spiky fruits. We absolutely had to try one, our Italian colleague declared, it was rightly called the king of fruits. The vendor split open the husk, and a nauseous smell hit us. We hesitated, but he urged us on; get beyond the smell, he cried, the taste is sublime. And all my life I will remember the face of my Moroccan colleague as he bit into that yellow guck, a look of pure horror and utter revulsion. A look which was mirrored in my face as I too bit into the guck. This photo, of a poor kid who has just tried durian for the first time in Indonesia, sums up the experience well.

Never, ever, again.

You don’t have to open the husk to get the smell. It spreads around the unopened fruit like a sickening miasma. So strong is the smell that durians are often prohibited from enclosed public spaces. I disovered this in Singapore after my trip to Malaysia, where there were prominent signs banning durian from the subway system.

The long list of things you can’t do in Singapore has now become something of a joke, but the ban of durians on the subway is one which I completely and heartily approve of.

If this had been my only experience with tropical fruit in Malaysia, I would have left the country with a permanently bad impression. Luckily, though, my Italian colleague redeemed himself by introducing us to three other tropical fruits (or froo-wits as he called them): the jackfruit, the mangosteen, and the rambutan.

The jackfruit looks uncannily like the durian. The fruit is also large – huge, sometimes – and has a spiky exterior, although nothing like as spiky as the durian

The pods inside are also yellow and squishy

But the taste is a universe away from the durian: a delicate sweetness which lingers in the mouth and urges you on to take the next morsel.

As for the mangosteen, ah, what a fruit! From the outside, it looks something like a large plum but with a hard rind.

When you crack open the rind, you find that it harbours soft, dazzlingly white segments

which literally taste divine, something surely that was invented by nature only for the gods to eat: juicy, supremely sweet, yet with an acid overtone that holds the sweetness in check, preventing it from becoming cloying.

And finally the rambutan, a wonderfully hairy looking fruit (reminding me always of a certain part of the male anatomy), growing in clusters on the tree

When the rind is opened, a glistening small white globe is uncovered

with a taste very much like fresh lychee; not surprising, since the two are relatives. I smuggled a batch of rambutans back to my wife (I’m sure I was not allowed to import them), and they tasted as good at our kitchen table in Italy as they had in the market in Malaysia.

There comes a time of year, in autumn, when street vendors in Beijing begin to sell durian. When that sickening smell wafts over me again, I make a wide detour and occupy my mind’s eye, nose and mouth with the wonders of jackfruit, mangosteen and rambutan.

______________________

Durian on tree: http://bizzarrobazar.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/cd81e7e027f4cae2c94959b42b6797f6.jpg [in http://bizzarrobazar.com/tag/durian/%5D
Safety helmets under the durian tree: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fVVBfNE7dsI/SBawmCQGfsI/AAAAAAAAAdA/T1oJ-Rm8IfE/s400/109-0970_IMG.JPG [in http://dusundurian2002.blogspot.com/%5D
Durian inside: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3782/9372567678_1077e89202_b.jpg [in http://www.sgfoodonfoot.com/2013/07/rws-invites-durian-fest-2013.html%5D
Durian inside-2: http://hype.my/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Durian.jpg [in http://hype.my/2013/05/durian-pizza-anyone/%5D
Kid feeling sick after eating durian: http://www.indoboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Kids-Feel-Sick-After-Eating-Durian.jpg [in http://www.indoboom.com/2013/videos/americans-taste-durian-for-the-first-time-indonesian-reactions.html%5D
No Durians-Singapore: http://dodontdontdo.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/singapore_several_2011_transtation.png [in http://dodontdontdo.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/no-bombs-no-no-durians/%5D
Jackfruit tree: http://www.parrikar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/jackfruit-tree-nundem-goa.jpg [in http://www.parrikar.com/blog/2012/01/16/jackfruit/%5D
Jackfruit inside: http://www.envygfx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/jackfruit-picture-kerala.jpg [in http://www.envygfx.com/yellow-flowers/jackfruit-picture-kerala.html
Jackfruit pulp: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eJb31wThfh8/TzQyJZbTraI/AAAAAAAABlY/8xRgGyoUPNI/s1600/jackfruit+pulp.jpg [in http://www.skinny-vegan-food.com/2012/02/what-is-jackfruit.html#.UqcyWielrnQ%5D
Mangosteen on tree: http://0.tqn.com/d/treesandshrubs/1/0/K/3/-/-/MangosteenFlickrgoosmurf.jpg [in http://treesandshrubs.about.com/od/fruitsnuts/ig/Tropical-Fruit-Photo-Gallery/Mangosteen.htm%5D
Mangosteen inside: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B2KRqsfacXY/TPauKjqVJ2I/AAAAAAAAAD8/47vgd8Q51Dg/s1600/Fruit+%25282%2529.jpg [in http://mastryone.blogspot.com/2010/12/mangosteen-juice.html%5D
Rambutan on tree: http://www.panoramicfruit.com/P1000481Copy2cropped.jpg [in http://imagejuicy.com/images/fruits/d/durian/5/%5D
Rambutan inside: http://www.baldorfood.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/r/a/rambutan.jpg [in http://www.baldorfood.com/rambutan%5D

ROCKS IN THE GARDEN

Beijing, 4 December 2013

The Chinese have a a strange relationship with rocks. Go to any self-respecting Chinese garden and somewhere in the twists and turns of its paths you will come nose to nose with a fantastically twisted rock standing there waiting to be admired.

The Forbidden City in Beijing has a specimen which is (of course) very large

while a number of the famous gardens in Suzhou have examples more to the human scale.

Admire them they do, the Chinese. When they catch sight of one of these rock sculptures, they will normally break into oohs and aahs, and end up – inevitably, in today’s culture in China – taking a group photo in front of said rock.

The fascination with these rock sculptures extends to internal spaces. It is very common to come across smaller (and sometimes not so smaller) versions in Ministries and other public buildings. Even in the intimate space of the scholar’s study, it was almost de rigeur for the scholar to have a small rock sculpture such as this one

sitting on his desk, among the brushes, ink stand, rice paper, and the rest of his scholarly paraphernalia.

This is not a dead art form. Chinese sculptors are continuing to create these rock sculptures, as this photo from an outdoor exhibition in Chicago attests (in this case, though, while the design principles remain the same, rock no longer seems to be the medium)

I have to assume that Chinese garden designers, like their English counterparts, were bringing the natural landscapes around them, suitably tamed, into their gardens. In the case of the rocks, the landscapes in question must surely be the karst landscapes which are common in many parts of China. This is one such landscape in Yunnan, known as the Stone Forest and famous enough to have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

(on an aside, I should note that it was visited by Lisa, of whom I have written earlier, during a trip which she took to Yunnan some six months ago; predictably, her photos of the trip included a large number of her, or her traveling companion, or her tour group, standing among the rocks)

I have to say, I don’t like these rock sculptures. I find the sheer froth of all that twisted stone to be just too much. Those whorls, those curlicues, those knobs, those piercings, the sheer grotesqueness of it all … Ugh!

This fascination with large rocks has taken on a modern twist. It has become a sign of class for any organization with pretensions of social or economic significance to have a large rock placed before its important buildings, with its name carved on it in classy Chinese characters. These rocks tend to eschew the flowery style, opting instead for a massive ponderousness which no doubt is meant to signal the solidity and power of the organization in question.

I don’t like these sculptures any better. They are just big and heavy with no redeeming features that I can see – the Chinese will sometimes get excited about the script, either because it adheres to the classical cannons of beauty for Chinese characters or because they are copies of some famous Chinese person’s script, but all that leaves me cold.

So you can imagine the relief and pleasure I felt when my wife and I came across this

in the courtyard of a museum in Suzhou, which was designed by the architect I. M. Pei (he of the East Wing of the National Art Gallery in Washington D.C.). Here at last was a rock sculpture in China which I could relate to, spare, simple, clean of line, yet able to evoke beautifully its subject, a range of mountains in the distance.

It is that same spare style which made me fall in love so many years ago with Japanese rock gardens which my wife and I visited in Kyoto during a trip to Japan. Here are pictures of some of the more beautiful of these gardens.

When I saw these gardens, I vowed that some day, somewhere, I would make my own rock garden. I had to wait 15 years before I got my chance, in Vienna, in a corner of the large balcony which wrapped itself around our apartment. I bought the small stones in a garden store, I found two largish stones in the woods around Vienna (I nearly bust a gut carrying them to the car and then up the stairs to the balcony), and I strategically placed two small plants (also bought in the garden store) behind these stones. I cut saw teeth into a plywood plank to make a rough rake, and then I lovingly raked the small stones around the large stones to create a vision of ripples around rocky islets. The result was really not bad, even if I say so myself.

But we left the apartment, and with death in my heart I had to abandon my rock garden. But some day, somewhere, I’ll make another one, to contemplate it in my old age with peace in my heart.

____________________

Rock sculpture in the Forbidden City-2: http://www.annapoynter.net/pictures/China/IMG_2011.JPG [in http://www.annapoynter.net/Holidays.html%5D
Rock sculpture Suzhou-1: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3016/2901558799_c71f5ea4d5_z.jpg [in http://www.flickr.com/photos/orangenation/2901558799/%5D
Rock sculpture Suzhou-2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/20090905_Suzhou_Lion_Grove_Garden_4502.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_garden%5D
Rock sculpture Suzhou-3: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/2984134.jpg [in http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2984134%5D
Scholar’s stone: http://www.mrlei.com/images/134/1.jpg [in http://www.mrlei.com/item.php?cat=rock&lang=%5D
Stone forest Yunnan: http://31.media.tumblr.com/54195fa03584bc1fbc2a488da1fb12d9/tumblr_mhd5vjD4wl1s2zxumo5_1280.jpg [in http://viajes-por-el-mundo.tumblr.com/post/41747655074/viajes-por-el-mundo-capitulo-81-karst-de%5D
Rock in front of building-1: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pxr81FiVJcw/SsHJAmLcQEI/AAAAAAAAAQU/6bdhavyfVu4/s320/IMG_1209.JPG [in http://tainanchineseclass.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html%5D
Rock sculpture in Chicago: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yHQ9FxAo-ZQ/TW0pQdVNXkI/AAAAAAAAcUM/LodlhBZ5_y8/s1600/LI-sculp-MP-007b.jpg [in http://chicago-outdoor-sculptures.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html%5D
Rock landscape Suzhou IM Pei Museum: http://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/files/2010/03/full-rocklandscape.jpg [in http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/i-m-pei/image-gallery-of-the-suzhou-museum/1570/%5D
Kyoto Nanzenji rock garden: http://www.lexaloffle.com/img2/jrg1.jpg [in http://www.lexaloffle.com/jrg.htm%5D
Kyoto Ryoanji: http://famouswonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Ryoanji-Rock-Garden.jpg in [http://famouswonders.com/ryoanji-rock-garden/]
Kyoto Ryogen-in rock gardens: http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/ryogen-in-zen-rock-garden–kyoto-japan-daniel-hagerman.jpg [in http://fineartamerica.com/featured/ryogen-in-zen-rock-garden–kyoto-japan-daniel-hagerman.html%5D
Kyoto Tofukuji rock garden: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bWbsTZVSaLw/S8uzFo1o2mI/AAAAAAAAAO4/tq11td38q3I/s1600/april-13+141.jpg [in http://kyotofreeguide-kyotofreeguide.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html%5D
Kyoto Totekiko rock garden: http://muza-chan.net/aj/poze-weblog2/totekiko-garden-ryogen-in-temple-kyoto-big.jpg [in http://muza-chan.net/japan/index.php/blog/smallest-japanese-zen-rock-garden-japan%5D

DREAM JOURNEY: PART II

Beijing, 24 November 2013

Back in May, I closed my post Dream Journey: Part I in Aquileia, in North-Eastern Italy. I said then that my wife and I would be continuing the journey. But somehow, I got distracted by other things. Now the days are shortening and the cold is beginning to bite …

No matter, let’s continue! Even in late Autumn the Mediterranean is beautiful. But we won’t be following my original plan for the second leg of the trip, which was to drive in our open-topped MG from Aquileia to Istanbul through the Balkans following the trace of the old Roman roads Via Gemina and Via Militaris. It’s too cold for that now. Instead, we’ll backtrack to Venice airport, drop off the MG in the airport’s parking lot for the next dream travelers to pick up, and take a plane to Istanbul.

No sooner said than done. With a click of the mouse we have arrived in Istanbul!

Wonderful city, Istanbul. Since time immemorial, a place of passage and trade between Asia to the east and Europe to the west, between the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean Sea the south. Where Jason and the Argonauts passed on their way north to find the golden fleece. Where the Persian King Darius I crossed his troops to chase after and subdue the pesky Scythian horsemen to the north. Where, more prosaically, grain ships from the northern shores of the Black Sea passed on their way south to bring their cargoes to the Greek city states and later to Rome. Chosen by Constantine the Great as the seat of his new capital of the Roman Empire. Later, capital only of the Eastern Roman Empire when the Empire’s western portion disintegrated and disappeared, and later still of the renamed Byzantine Empire. Conquered one thousand two hundred years later by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, to become the capital of the Ottoman Empire, a role it played for another five hundred years. Set aside by Kemal Atatürk as capital of the new Turkey in favour of Ankara. In the last several decades, swollen to bursting by millions of impoverished migrants from Turkey’s eastern provinces. But still a lovely, vibrant city.

In this dream trip of mine my wife and I are only here to visit the city’s early christian mosaics, so we’ll ignore the Islamic splendours of the city …

the breathtaking views of the Bosphorus …

the fun of the covered spice bazaar …

the culinary delights of its restaurants …

No, we tell the taxi driver instead to take us straight to Hagia Sophia.

The edifice started life as the Basilica of Holy Wisdom in 537, was turned into a mosque when the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, and finally became a museum in 1935. Other than the four slim minarets, it has remained pretty much the same on the outside over the last millennium and a half. The inside has changed more as the obvious signs of its Christian function were whitewashed over or removed and replaced with Muslim symbols. This process of islamicization, together with those natural processes linked to the passage of time – rot, mould, water ingress, along with an earthquake or two – has meant that most of the glittering mosaics which covered every inch of the vast interior have disappeared.

We are left with a few modest shards tucked away in various corners of the interior:

A gentle Madonna in the apse, but so high, so remote:

A stern Christ between Mary and John the Baptist:

The Emperors Justinian and Constantine humbly offering the Madonna the basilica and the city:

The Emperor Comnenus and Empress Irene with the Madonna:

The Emperor Constantine Monomacchus and the Empress Zoe with the Christ:

The Emperor Leo VI prostrate at the feet of the Christ:

And lastly, uncovered just a few years ago, a seraph:

(As I look more closely at his face

I cannot escape the notion that he is saying, “get me out of this stuff!”)

I cannot avoid a certain melancholy as I survey what is left and think of what it must have been. I am reminded of a story from the time of the Ottomans’ conquest of the city. It is said that when Mehmed II wandered around the Imperial palace originally built by Constantine, now lying ruined and abandoned, he murmured some lines from a famous Persian poet:
“The spider spins his web in the Palace of the Caesars,
An owl hoots in the towers of Afrasiyab”.

Still in a state of melancholy, I click the mouse, and my wife and I are now visiting another, much smaller, church in Istanbul, Kariye Camii (the Church of the Holy Saviour). It still has extensive mosaics, executed in early 1300s. We are entering the twilight age of mosaics; in fact, the church also has extensive frescoes, the medium which eventually triumphed over mosaics. Here are photos of some of the mosaics.
Up in its two small domes:

which give us an idea of what the dome of Hagia Sophia must have looked like.

Scenes of Christ’s Ministry:

Scenes from the life of the Virgin:

And finally the donor, the powerful Byzantine statesman Theodore Metochites, humbly offering his church to Christ:

(I like the hat!)

The church also has some wonderful frescoes. This one is my favourite, a fresco of the Resurrection

Such a dynamic Christ! So different from the stiff, awkward, reserved Christs of this period’s mosaics.

We come out into sunlight of the noisy street outside. It’s time to move on. The next leg of the journey will be in Greece.

____________________

Blue Mosque: http://www.beautifulmosque.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Sultan-Ahmed-Mosque-in-Istanbul-Turkey-1.jpg
Bosphorus views: http://www.wallpapersgalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/suleiman-mosque-in-istanbul-turkey-view-to-bosphorus.jpg
Spice bazaar Istanbul: http://images.fxcuisine.com/blogimages/turkey/istanbul/egyptian-spice-bazar/istanbul-egyptian-bazar-02-1000.jpg
Restaurant Istanbul: http://thumbs.ifood.tv/files/images/editor/images/top%20restaurants%20in%20Istanbul.jpg
Hagia Sophia-exterior: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Hagia_Sophia_Mars_2013.jpg
Hagia Sophia-interior: http://powertripberkeley.com/wp-content/uploads/hagia-sophia-wallpaperhagia-sophia-interior-by–thesolitary-on-deviantart-cjcwsxkd.jpg
Hagia Sophia-apse: http://www.mosaicartsource.com/Assets/html/artists/lilian/mosaic_hagia_sophia.jpg
Hagia Sophia-Deesis: http://www.gradale.com/Media/Deesis.jpg
Hagia Sophia-Justinian and Constantine: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Istanbul.Hagia_Sophia075.jpg
Hagia Sophia-Comnenus and Irene: http://www.turkey4travel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/hagia-sofia-mosaic.jpg
Hagia Sophia-Zoe and Constantine Monomacchus: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Empress_Zoe_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia.jpg
Hagia Sophia-Leo VI: http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/images/P33112366e.jpg
Hagia Sophia-seraph: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4089/4973697085_028b4ed969.jpg
Hagia Sophia-seraph-detail: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01725/mysteries-2509_1725247c.jpg
Kariye Camii-Christ in the cupola: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Chora_Christ_south_coupole.jpg/800px-Chora_Christ_south_coupole.jpg
Kariye Camii-Virgin Mary in the cupola: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/HSX_Mary_genealogy.jpg/800px-HSX_Mary_genealogy.jpg
Kariye Camii-Christ’s Ministry: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8069/8213661931_5653c8fd48_o.jpg
Kariye Camii-paying tax: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Meister_der_Kahriye-Cami-Kirche_in_Istanbul_005.jpg
Kariye Camii-theodore metochites: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/istanbul-kariye-chora-pictures/dedication-theodore-metochites-ccc-access-denied.jpg
Kairye Camii-fresco resurrection: http://www.vikiturkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/chora-museum.jpg