The Infinite Art Tournament, Round One: Dubuffet v. Duccio!

Jean Dubuffet
1901 - 1985
French

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Duccio
1255 - c.1319
Siennese

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Vote for the artist of your choice!  Votes go in the comments.  Commentary and links to additional work are welcome.  Polls open for at least one month past posting.

The Avatar Triumphant

It's about 80 miles from the City of Roses to Corvallis, Oregon, but my running Avatar is not the sort of chap who does things in a boring straight-line sort of way.  He has logged about 226 miles since he was launched back in late October, whim and circumstance taking him to all sorts of places of significance to myself and some of the readers of this online entertainment.

The Hypothetical Hypermarathon, 225.81 miles in.

Last Sunday, he finally made it to his first stated destination, the campus of Oregon State University.  Ever since, he's been hanging out in frequent contributor Morgan's room, resting his virtual legs and participating in whatever God-knows-what sort of crazy and unspeakable business the College Boys of Today get up to in their dormitory cells.

The Avatar arrives in Corvallis.  Photo by Morgan.

The next couple hundred miles are shown in dotted green on the map above.  Assuming his determination and legs don't fail him, the Avatar should be checking in from Monmouth (where two of my sisters went to college) and beautiful Dallas, Oregon (from where two of my running buddies proudly hail) before crossing the Coast Range hills and getting his virtual shoes wet on the beach.  Once that happens, he'll have established one coast of a coast-to-coast trip; from there it's just a simple matter of getting to the second coast.

If you have suggestions for places you'd like the Avatar to visit, you are always welcome to say.

Say, you know what I just noticed?  The Avatar has now run in seven counties!

The Infinite Art Tournament, First Elimination Round Tiebreak #1

It's a minor red-letter day for the Tournament, and hence the red letters: our first ever attempt at resolving ties. A few months ago, Peter Blake tied with Arnold Böcklin in the First Round Elimination.  Then, this weekend, Victor Brauner and Marcel Broodthaers tied, also in "Lb1e," as I call it in the notes.

For those who care: Blake and Brauner, each of whom were the "upper" or first artist in the brackets they tied in, are now competing for the upper of those two brackets; the winner will go on to face Christian Boltanski.  Böcklin and Broodthaers are fighting for the lower bracket and a shot at Daniel Buren.

Everybody gets a third image.  Since First Round Elimination contests are normally held two-at-once, these ones will be too.

Jenners, who wanted to "vote for Brauner and Broodthears and skip the other two" when they were pitted against each other, can do so now if she wants -- but "the other two" are different this time, of course.

Faceoff #1: P. Blake v. Brauner

Sir Peter Blake
born 1932
English

Lost to William Blake in Round 1.
Tied with Böcklin in First Round Elimination.

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Victor Brauner
1903 - 1966
Romanian; worked in France.

Lost to Agnolo Bronzino by a single vote in Round 1. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
Tied with Broodthaers in Round 1 Elimination.  

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Faceoff #2: Böcklin v. Broodthaers

Arnold Böcklin
1827 - 1901
German; worked in Italy

Lost to Umberto Boccioni in Round 1.
Tied with Sir Peter Blake in First Round Elimination.

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Marcel Broodthaers
1924 - 1976
Belgian

Lost to Ford Madox Brown in Round 1 by only two votes. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
Tied with Brauner in Round 1 Elimination.  

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Vote for the two artists of your choice! Votes generally go in the comments, but have been known to arrive by email, by postcard, or in a sealed envelope.

Please note that you may vote only once in each face-off.  Opining that both of the artists in one of the two face-offs is superior to the other is fine, but casting your votes for two artists in the same face-off is not permissible.

The Wednesday Post

Bassano and Boudin Push the Envelope
Two painters who left their stamp on art history.


Jacopo Bassano, a small-town boy who never really left home for long, is considered an important an influential figure in 16th Century Italian art.  In philatelic circles, he seems to attract copies made by line engraving.  Here's an 1977 Austrian version of his painting "The Good Samaritan":

...and here's a 1951 stamp released by the post-WWII Saarland Protectorate, featuring a version of his painting "The Good Samiritan."

...and a more recent Italian Christmas issue.

Bassano went 1-2 in the Infinite Art Tournament, leaving us on November 24, 2012


Eugène Boudin is a key figure in French landscape painting, pioneering the practice of painting en plein air or, as sophisticated arty types call it, "outdoors."  That might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but taking a canvas out of the workshop wasn't really practical until 18th century developments in equipment and especially pigments came along.  Subsequently, Boudin's example would be important to many of the big-name Impressionists.  Here's his "Woman With an Umbrella," celebrated by his native land.

Despite his failure to paint nude women, Boudin seems to have attracted considerable attention in patently bogus direct-to-collector stamp issues.  Here's a lot of frame for not much Guinean stamp:

...and a lot of frame for not much Afghan stamp...

...and a tribute to the landscapes of France by the Somalian postal service, or someone claiming that authority, in 2002.  I will happily send US$10 to the first person who can provide a verifiable image of a letter mailed from or within Somalia using any one of the Boudin commemoratives.

Boudin had an 0-2 record in the Tournament and exited on New Year's Day 2013.

The Infinite Art Tournament, Left Bracket Second Round: Jan Bruegel v. Bronzino!

Jan Bruegel (the Elder)
1568 - 1625
Dutch

Trounced by his father in Round 1.
Took out Victorian Sir Edward Burne-Jones in a thrilling come-from-behind one-vote victory in First Round Elimination. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Agnolo Bronzino
1503-1572
Italian (Florentine)

Beat Victor Brauner by a single vote in Round 1. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
Lost to Victorian Ford Madox Brown by a single vote in Round 2. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Vote for the artist of your choice in the comments, or any other way that works for you. Commentary and links to additional work are welcome. Polls open for at least one month past posting, but likely much longer.

Saint of the Month: Saint Barbasceminus!

There's no telling what St. Barbasceminus looked like, and no artistic
tradition for him as far as I know.  But here are the impressive ruins of the
royal palace at Ctesiphon, which could conceivably have been the
setting of his martyrdom and which are, in any event, pretty cool
in their own right.*

St. Barbasceminus

AKA: Barbasymas, Barba'shmin, Barbascemin
Feast Day: January 14.

Really Existed? Almost certainly.
Timeframe: Died January, 346.
Place: Persian Empire.

Credentials: Recognized by Tradition.
Martyrdom: Long imprisonment in a “in a loathsome dungeon” followed by beheading.

Patron Saint of: No known tradition of patronage.
Symbolism: May lack symbolic tradition.

The Saint of the Month is chosen without a lot of pre-screening, so when I picked St. Barbasceminus I didn’t realize that his story would have so much in common with last July’s Saint Barhadbesaba. I fear we may have a little trouble keeping them straight.

He was “Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, Greece in 342,” one online site begins, and has already dropped the ball. Seleucia and Ctesiphon were nowhere near Greece. Seleucia was an important city in modern Iraq, not all that far from ancient Babylon or modern Baghdad, and Ctesiphon was a smaller town nearby. Modern Iraq was a chunk of the Persian Empire in the fourth century, and Ctesiphon was the summer capital, kind of a Versailles to Seleucia’s Paris.

So, St. Barbasceminus was Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, in the Persian Empire, in 342. He was a brave chap to take the job. As we discussed last July, Christianity was increasingly unpopular with the Zoroastrian Persian establishment.  This was not a point of theological principle -- it almost never is -- but  a matter of Christianity being the state religion of the aggressive, powerful, and increasingly erratic empire to the west, Rome. St. Sadoth, possibly Barbasceminus’ brother, had been the previous bishop, and had apparently been put to death rather grimly with 128 fellow Christians. Barbasceminus must have taken over knowing that, as a representative of the religion of an old and bitter enemy of his country, the odds were awfully good that he would meet a similar end.

How do we know all this? Well, most of our information on the persecutions of Persian Christians in the 340s comes from the Acts of the Persian Martyrs, a text written by (or possibly ghostwritten for) St. Maruthas, one of the leading figures in the Syrian Christian church a few generations later. From St. Maruthas, the information gets into the English-language tradition via the ubiquitous Rev. Alban Butler, whose eighteenth century Lives of the Saints is one of the great landmarks of vernacular hagiography.

Whether Barbasceminus was able to do anything productive with his time in office is lost to us, as far as I can tell. St. Maruthas focused on the story of his martyrdom, which consisted first of being arrested with sixteen church elders and, after refusing to renounce his faith, being imprisoned. Butler writes that the Persian King, Sapor II, “confined him almost a year in a loathsome dungeon, in which he was often tormented by the Magians with scourges, clubs, and tortures, besides the continual annoyance of stench, filth, hunger, and thirst.” This went on for eleven months, after which Sapor did what might be thought of, from a certain point of view, as the decent thing: he tried to buy Barbasceminus off. Sapor offered a golden cup full of money, plus a good government job, if Barbasceminus would agree to “worship fire and water.” St. Barbasceminus – again, apparently a very brave and steadfast fellow – stuck with his Christianity, and was beheaded along with his companions. It would be 20 years, or perhaps 40, before Seleucia and Ctesiphon would have a bishop again.

Now, you might be thinking it unlikely that a Persian Emperor would get so involved in the administrative minutiae of suppressing religious dissent. If there was some way to actually reconstruct the events of this tale, it wouldn’t surprise me enormously to find Sapor’s part in the story acted out by a lesser functionary.  On the other hand, Barbasceminus was operating right there in his summer capital, so it’s not inconceivable that the emperor might have taken an active hand. The golden cup full of money seems unnecessary from Sapur’s point of view and maybe a bit too convenient for Marutha’s desire to tell a good story, but who knows.

The bits in this story and in St. Barhadbesaba’s about Christians being compelled to worship fire and water, though, are pure baloney. Zoroastrians worship a deity and fear a second, lesser diety, not unlike those Christians who are invested in the idea of Satan. Fire and water are used in their ritual, but to describe this as “worshipping fire and water” is either ignorance, propaganda, or poor translation. Whether the fib belongs to the Reverend Butler, to St. Marutha, or to the chain of storytellers between the event and St. Marutha’s pen, would be very hard to say. It seems to me, though – although it is not my habit to publicly call out men of the cloth from the three centuries back –  it does seem like a fellow of Rev. Butler’s erudition should have known better.

* This is a very minor quibble indeed, but the flatness and high water table of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, as highlighted in this photograph, makes me wonder if there were really any "loathsome dungeons" as such.  It doesn't seem like a part of the world where basements would be very practical.  But I'm just guessing.

Also, it's fun to think that, for the foreseeable future, this picture of the Ctesiphon ruins will be the image people get if they try to look up St. Barbasceminus.

Five Years Ago in the IAT/L&TM5K

In its first several years, this online periodical wasn't nearly so much about art as it is these days.  MQX was a taste of things to come.

The Monday Quiz X: Modern Art

This week, it's the same question for all five: who is the artist? Not all of these are famous works in their own right, but all are highly characteristic of their maker.

In the unlikely event that more than three people sweep this one, you will also need the title for number three to get the Exclamation Point.

1. Who is the painter?



2. Who is the painter?

3. Who is the painter? (And what is the title?)

4. Who is the artist?

5. Who is the painter?

Submit your answers in the comments.