I came across this piece in my math textbook (yes math) and I've been thinking about it from time to time ever since. It is resonating with some vague ideas that I've been encountering about the sacred in art. It is a beautiful and maybe slightly terrifying image.
who's it by?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if that is known or not, I only know that it is 14th century from Ohrid, Macedonia.
ReplyDeleteOhh. Is "Assumption" its name? I want to find out more.
ReplyDeleteI was recently terrified by art too, though for different reasons. The V&A Museum here in London has life-size casts of ancient massive sculptures that don't exist anymore. The "Trajan's Column" from Rome was so big that it was in two massive pieces, an enormous phallic symbol of power and conquest. It was majestic--and terrifying, because of its enormity, because of its semiotic relationship to the "real" but lost Thing, and because I didn't know it existed and wasn't prepared for it.
Oh, I just googled it, and the "real" Trajan's Column does indeed still exist in Rome. That means I've probably seen it. Yup.
ReplyDeleteBut here it was bent into a room, torn asunder, assembled amongst a myriad other random artifacts. For tourists to experience the Real without traveling there? Is the Real real?
Argh, I have to watch F for Fake again.
It is, "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary"
ReplyDeleteI can understand how that column might evoke those thoughts from you, it looks (from pictures) like it contains more than is comprehensible to a viewer. Also just the way the figures look and the sheer number of them is also a bit terrifying.
I think in the above picture, the closeness of the heavenly door to the scene is disquieting.