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RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
Interesting how interpretation changes with progress of genetics.
Just maybe five years or so ago, conclusion was that Neandertalers couldn´t had intebred with homo sapiens; until maybe 2 years ago when the highly likely opposite was stated.
The latter not only according with the ancient sceleton of a child that shows attributes of both subspecies, but much to my personal expectation and preference.
You could say that former science had a faible for "race" segregation in general. As an example may serve how interbreeding of wolves ( and jackals ) and dogs was deemed impossible, or interbreeding of big cats like tigers and lions. I suppose without academic bias in place the practical truth could have been observed much earlier. ( As e.g. Jack London must have with the wolf-dog co-star in his "White Fang" novell.)
- Eventhough, paradoxly the discovery of Neandertaler-HS interbred in the end could contradict the out-of-Africa hypothesis ( = all one race ), supporting out of all traditional racist intention of segregating black Africans.
But back to Neandertalers: Rigth away with the first finding of a Neandertaler´s remains, scientist of that time supplemented the facial fossile with a back head like of a gorilla and suggested this hominid to have been a cruel and primitive being. ( A partial interpretation due to traditional dogma and influence of feudals and clerics within faculties, and their aim of presenting contemporary anti-social status quo as yet optimal development of humans´"evil nature".)
However, summrizing the actual details it appears to me as if the Neanderthaler used to represent the more modest, reasonable, social and peaceful mind-set in comparison to HS. Sort of what Bonobos are compared to Chimpanzees. - And what HS was yet getting to itself until a rough 5000 years ago, when out of a sudden most of major civilisations turned into inhuman ones.
Whether Neandertalers´vanish was due to sticking to hunt of mammals as declining ( and in comparison to fish, inferiour ) protein source in the ice age, or due to HS´s aggression; I have the feeling as if his genetic relics were to be the better part in us.
The disctinction between leptosome, athletic and endomorphic and their nervous attributes, the observation that endomorphics tend to show the most patient and amiable trait ...
Makes me speculate that those broad-shouldered fellows with their solid bones and bold joints ( and often times relatively small sculls ), these physically powerful but often so peaceful ( and sympathetic ) types among us, to possibly be heritage of the Neandertalers.
This being the one and only case that I feel tempted to connect morphology to potential mental characteristics.
And while my assumption on genetical presence being vague guessing, in sight of prehistorical past one thing is for sure: Neandertaler´s legacy is on a constantly rising path of rehabilitation.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
- Eventhough, paradoxly the discovery of Neandertaler-HS interbred in the end could contradict the out-of-Africa hypothesis ( = all one race ), supporting out of all traditional racist intention of segregating black Africans.
I don't understand where you're going with this because both Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Neanderthalensis came from more primitive hominids.
I've always disliked the euphemism of calling someone a Neanderthal as a way of saying stupid and backward looking. It's totally ignorant of how science works and what science has uncovered about this very smart species. In hind sight it's easy to say this species was inferior because it is extinct, but who's to say Homo Sapiens Sapiens is not stupid and backward looking, it may be contributing to its own extinction right now. And we know that in isolated areas Homo Sapiens divided in to clan groups will completely kill off a another clan group for practically no reason other than real estate.
Although I don't totally buy into it, the idea that an endomorphic vs. ectomorphic personality trait comparison would lead to the conclusion that Neanderthal was peaceful and docile has an emotional appeal. It's not totally scientific to use it because it is highly anecdotal.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
But back to Neandertalers: Rigth away with the first finding of a Neandertaler´s remains, scientist of that time supplemented the facial fossile with a back head like of a gorilla and suggested this hominid to have been a cruel and primitive being. ( A partial interpretation due to traditional dogma and influence of feudals and clerics within faculties, and their aim of presenting contemporary anti-social status quo as yet optimal development of humans´"evil nature".)
Those early interpreters of Neanderthal fossil skulls were the real bone heads; They could not tell the difference between the more primitive sagital crest on a mountain gorilla skull and the smaller rounder skull of a Neanderthal. There may be a slight vestige of a sagital crest to anchor the mandible, but really to mistake one from the other is junior high school stuff. Much of what the first guys did was to make themselves feel important by distancing themselves from what they thought was a primitive species.
It was not until later in the 1940's in East Africa when Leakey dug up early hominids with a pronounced sagital crest that the time line began to be accepted and the sagital crest comparison between modern gorillas and hominids/early humans began to mean anything.
But you have to give it to the 19th century guys, they tried and most were not deluding their interpretations by wearing colonial filtered lenses in their specticles.
Posts: 1809
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
Eventhough, paradoxly the discovery of Neandertaler-HS interbred in the end could contradict the out-of-Africa hypothesis ( = all one race ), supporting out of all traditional racist intention of segregating black Africans.
Segregation (and slavery and discrimination) have nothing to do with the Out of Africa hypothesis. People were being enthusiastically enslaved when we we all supposed to be descended from Adam.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
quote:
People were being enthusiastically enslaved when we we all supposed to be descended from Adam.
Bishop Usher calculated the world to be 5000 years old, I wonder how he judged slavery?
I think the think people use the out of Africa theory as anecdotal way of giving genetic evidence of that idea a kind of quasi scientific kumabya. As if to say "look we all have a commonplace of origin so why can't we all get along". It does not really work scientifically, but it's a nice thought.
The idea that humanity rode it's training wheel bike out of East Africa a couple million years ago is a good theory however.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Paul Magnussen
quote:
Eventhough, paradoxly the discovery of Neandertaler-HS interbred in the end could contradict the out-of-Africa hypothesis ( = all one race ), supporting out of all traditional racist intention of segregating black Africans.
Segregation (and slavery and discrimination) have nothing to do with the Out of Africa hypothesis. People were being enthusiastically enslaved when we we all supposed to be descended from Adam.
You are right, but I was stating the opposite of what you understood of my Pidgin. With the global genome project there seemd to be scientifical proof that there exist no human races. That was pretty interesting news, and also erased the basis for race theories of whatever kind.
Now, with the finding that northern hemisphere homo sapiens could be differing from African people in so far that his genetics are comprised of HS and Neandertaler, certain fractions could try recovering their theory of different races.
That is what I meant.
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
quote:
- Eventhough, paradoxly the discovery of Neandertaler-HS interbred in the end could contradict the out-of-Africa hypothesis ( = all one race ), supporting out of all traditional racist intention of segregating black Africans.
I don't understand where you're going with this because both Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Neanderthalensis came from more primitive hominids.
Correct. See my clarification above.
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
I've always disliked the euphemism of calling someone a Neanderthal as a way of saying stupid and backward looking. It's totally ignorant of how science works and what science has uncovered about this very smart species. In hind sight it's easy to say this species was inferior because it is extinct, but who's to say Homo Sapiens Sapiens is not stupid and backward looking, it may be contributing to its own extinction right now.
Only aside: To my understanding, and that of a steadily growing part of scientists, that would be no eventuality, but a nasty fact in the works.
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
And we know that in isolated areas Homo Sapiens divided in to clan groups will completely kill off a another clan group for practically no reason other than real estate.
But they certainly mustn´t. Vast of hominids must have been reasonable and on principle tending towards pragmatic development. Without, it should have been impossible for such a physically vulnerable species to survive millions of challenging years.
The vast indices for short-sightedness, indifference and cruelty are from the past 5000 years. ( Though there exist proving relicts on brutal assaults in Europe of 16 000 years ago, such culture / era will not have been representative occurance in general.)
After all, one gets an idea of actual human nature, considering what happens when humans grow up in detouched surrounding. They usually become mental for reason of unanswered human drives.
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana Although I don't totally buy into it, the idea that an endomorphic vs. ectomorphic personality trait comparison would lead to the conclusion that Neanderthal was peaceful and docile has an emotional appeal. It's not totally scientific to use it because it is highly anecdotal.
Not scientifical, for not specifically investigated. But why highly anecdotal? Have you not heard of that endomorphic people on average are found to be of rather self-composed mind? ( Of rather robust nerves?)
Why must that be an anecdotal connection to Neandertaler remains, that indicate a highly caring and amiable mind set? In Neandertaler graves there were found bejeweled children, other bodies who were buried on flowers, and again some who eventhough once severally injured or crippled fed by the community far over age of average life expectation, and after all entombed with love.
I am glad to see that you are so much into anthroplogy; as I love reading, exchange and speculation about such subjects.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana Although I don't totally buy into it, the idea that an endomorphic vs. ectomorphic personality trait comparison would lead to the conclusion that Neanderthal was peaceful and docile has an emotional appeal. It's not totally scientific to use it because it is highly anecdotal.
Not scientifical, for not specifically investigated. But why highly anecdotal? Have you not heard of that endomorphic people on average are found to be of rather self-composed mind? ( Of rather robust nerves?)
The problem is that we can't be sure if today's observations on Mezomorphs, endomorphs and ectomorphs would hold true for Neanderthal for several reasons.
Two big reasons are: One, we can't be sure if this docility in endomorphic types is a recent adaptation and that it would have crossed species from Neanderthal to Homo Sapiens or that this docility is a result of cultural environment. And are endomorphs really more docile and less violent? How about American football?
Two, that in the real world there are less strict or pure typologies than mixed typologies. In other words each person have mixed traits of mezo, endo and ecto and very few of us are pure, pure types.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
With the global genome project there seemd to be scientifical proof that there exist no human races. That was pretty interesting news, and also erased the basis for race theories of whatever kind.
Lots of social theorists and scientists alike would disagree about this. Writers like Cornell West have argued and stated pretty solid cases that race is a social construction. While we can think loftily of race in the context of the genome information we have now, many people would point out that the concept of race certainly exists as a social factor. So I feel the genetic in formation we have now has served to clarify the concept race as a social construction and help make it's definition more clear. It's very difficult for me to see genome research as anything other than new pieces in a emerging puzzle as opposed to let's all hug, we're all the same race answer.
Anyway, I ****ign got myself into this......I can't believe it. Well Ruphus I studied anthropology. Then art history, and instrument making, so basically I'm fukcked. What is your angle?
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Gummy)
quote:
I think people think they know alot more about this stuff than they really do.... White baby(not albino) born to black parents.
Ok, but what does this have to do with race and genetics? Does this mean that there is a such thing as dominant and recessive genes? And does this cancel out what has been learned about human genes regarding the idea that physical appearance can vary widely while at the same time, the basic gene sequence is practically identical? It's kind of provocative to make a statement like that and then leave the point ambigous.
I'm also not familiar with the character this paper, but is it known for sensationalizing certain subjects?
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
Albino is a genetical defect. Completely unrelated.
Absolutely agreed on what you said in your post before, Stephen. And that is what racists can´t be liking, as they always wanted to destill differences through alleged physical facts ( attitude through genetics ). To find their base to be just a construct can´t be appealing news to them. -
Football won´t count. People often enter group games for social or image reasons ( outer motivation ). You rendered the vagueness of my hypothesis correctly. It is just personal association. Also morphology varies a lot notwithstanding possible genetics. Yet, sometimes I have the feeling as if there were just a couple handful of morphological types, that would occure yet with the most different parental background. Eventually possible, seeing the diverse genetical bottlenecks during evolution.
Anyway, in my personal life it seemed to me as if the "stocky typus" was remarkably often stuffed with a mild and friendly soul. That together with interpretations on Neandertaler remains, made me speculate. -
Wow, you have some really interesting background with thrilling subjects there!
Whereas I am just a half-assed want-to-know guy, who has been accidentally interested in human related stuff. Picking from zoology, anthropology, psychology and philosophy through books and papers. In high-school I had taken behavioural science as substitute for psychology, but Piaget turned out to be more half-assed then I am. What I learned in the end was dental technique ( exhausting for creative minds ), English business correpondence ( at one time indeed ), and Wing Tsun teacher. I consider myself info-junky and global dilettante. -
On arts: Are you familiar with works of Ilja Repin? -
I am really interested to hear, whether students of art history will be supplied with info on ideological brakgrounds like "realistic art" and the whereabouts ( financing etc.) of its historic US counterpart "modern art"? -
What about art initially / from prehistorical times having been informative means ( and to my view substantially being still ). As with totems, symbols, or when you decorate your offspring for to say "this is my child, it is backed up / you better stay away if with aggressive intentions"?
Shouldn´t art always be informative means; conveying observation / message and skills? Or would "modern arts" randomn- and clumsyness comply with arts historical come-about and development?
Posts: 495
Joined: Nov. 27 2005
From: North Carolina, USA
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
I apologize if my earlier video link was unrelated or took off on a tangent.
While I was reading your earlier post about the genetics and the out of Africa portion, I remembered this story from awhile back. I thought it was about race and genetics and was not trying to be personally provocative. Sorry
know the Sun is not reputable but the story came out in several sources. Here is a blurb from NY Post:
Genetics experts don't believe in miracles, but they didn't have any simple answers to the mystery of baby Nmachi. Instead, they offered three theories:
* She's the result of a gene mutation unique to her. If that is the case, Nmachi would pass the gene to her children -- and they, too, would likely be white.
* She's the product of long-dormant white genes, passed on to her by her parents, that might have been carried by their predecessors for generations without surfacing until now.
* While doctors have said Nmachi is not an outright albino, or lacking in all pigment, they added that the child may have some kind of mutated version of the genetic condition -- and that her skin could darken over time.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to ashod)
quote:
ORIGINAL: ashod
Ruphus, the kid in that video is not albinos. You should check it out.
Thank you for the hint, Ashod! Servers like of youtube etc. are blocked from here. It´s a fuzz trying to access.
Gummy,
Don´t worry, nothing of offence.
White genetics are considered subdominat, yet at times they might come through after generations, indeed. In Near East you´ll find lots of folks blue, grey or green-eyed, sometimes even with light coloured hair, of parents who often times have dark eyes and hair. Apparently remains from Caucasian influence and from European crusaders, who´s genetical indication should had faded long since, considering genetical theories of dominance.
Stephen,
It would be really interesting to hear of someone who has studied both, anthropology and art history. If you could spare the time ... - If you don´t have the time, never mind!
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
It would be really interesting to hear of someone who has studied both, anthropology and art history. If you could spare the time ... - If you don´t have the time, never mind!
Well Ruphus, it's funny you ask that, because I've been kind of doing that in my blog. Guitar making is solitary and repetitive. Conceptually it loops back on itself and always ends up in the same place with the same shapes and the same intent. It's different from other visual art in that you often don't know what your painting will look like until it's done. In guitar making you can rest assured you will get a wooden box that has curved sides and tells the same basic visual story. It's not game of inventing the form along the way of making it, it's about arriving at a set form that has a specific function. If you are trained as a painter, sculptor or poet with any kind of modern sensibility for process, you will probably invent while you create and guide your work along its way without trying to direct it to a formal ending. Modern visual art thinking in general leaves the outcome open, not always because art can have specific formal intention, but within that formality the concept or what is communicated can be wide ranging.
Guitar making is conceptually limited in regard to an open ended subject matter. The subject you create is sound, and have to steer guitars very willfully to reach the same resolution each time you build one. In order to combat this conceptual tyranny I've decided to open up my internal process to the public so people can read about the mental gymnastics I have to do with my brain to keep me interested in arriving at the same curvy wood box outcome every time.
I think a lot about historical anomalies in guitar making and why there exist incorrect popular assumptions about guitars and guitar making. Then I try to connect those ideas and factoids to art history and social history. I like some of the strategies that Michel Foucault would use to examine and turn a text inside out. One of the things he did was to take a surface detail of a subject and drill down as deep as possible through the rabbit hole of that detail until he reached the subterranean water table of that subject. When I find that pool of knowledge deep under what most see on the surface, it helps to make the day to day shop work more bearable for me. It makes being covered in toxic wood dust and ruining my shoulder tendons more acceptable to me if I know I also did some type of work with my intellect. Even if my conclusions are wrong at least I am able to delve into that part of creativity that is unknowable while the process is going on.
Being engaged in that unknowable part of the process is thrilling, but in the end you have to bend that rib and carve that heel perfectly. Those are not boring tasks; you must be engaged at a molecular level with your chisel and your eye. And when carving a heel if you are really being honest with yourself, you do move into that mysterious zone of creativity where time stops. You can carve on your neck and be so fully engaged that time can pass and you feel as though two minutes have gone by when it was really more like forty five.
So the oddity for me, being a reader, sculptor and long time instrument maker, is that when I go into that timeless space while I make and come out with the same basic shape every time, am I doing harm to myself by not making varied forms and different conceptual outcomes? So as way of guiding the outcome be more irrational in a healthy way, I think about lots of things while I build guitars. And at the same time I think of nothing.
Does that make sense?
( Someone should commission a guitar based on the merit of me articulating that state of being :) :)
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
Interesting how interpretation changes with progress of genetics.
The paper in science which was the source of the NYtimes article gives a good introduction and is open access (i.e. no pay wall) - although it is aimed at non specialist scientists
I think the point is that the evidence has been building up over the years. It says that mitochondrial DNA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA) analyses showed no evidence of human-Neanderthal interbreeding but that it does not preclude interbreeding. Now they say they have evidence for interbreeding from the nuclear DNA but it depends on some statistical techniques rather than direct inference. So we should have more evidence over the coming years as the techniques are refined and more information is amassed.
It's difficult for both scientists and journalists to communicate technical aspects to the public as the meaning of what you say changes as you try to simplify it.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the time you took.
If you built duds, hardly any gallerist ( dealer ) could push you and your output as astronomically paid genius. But in "art" the contemporary gallerist easily can, merely depending on his repuation / sales connections as gallerist.
- And noone can paint like Repin ( retracable proficiency ).
Your post was no direct reply to my questions, but interesting still. To my experience serial production is the emotional death of an actual and creative artist. ( The ever same form of product within dental techniques and the usefulness of just routine certainly used to depress me. - I am incabale of routine. Just have to approach each work piece individually.)
With building guitars, I suppose, thelike limitation being in place only partially, with individual challenge existing for each work piece. From there, especially if the luthier be a guitar player in the same time, the situation at the bench being basically different from solely practical jobs like dental techniques, which require only very little of creation / improvisation and just a bit of crafting talent.
For my part, I love the Black Hole of time while busy with a work piece. Maybe it helps sort of "taking a break" from personal and wordly matters, eventhough one tends to treat them during that kind of trance at work. Guess, it ressembling "digestion of information" as it occures during sleep periods, and the interaction of consciousness and unconsciousness for problem solving, as with Newton´s popular example and many others´. -
I liked to read that paper on Neandertaler cannabilism, but the NY-Times wants you to open an account first. -
To me it appears like almost certain that future progress in techniques will confirm interbreeding. Seeing other examples like genetical possibility between wolves and dogs who can not only differ dramatically in morphological sight, but have even diverted as carnivor ( wolf ) and omnivore ( dog ), I would expect good chances for Neandertaler / HS interbreed.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
Thank you, Marrow!
Could be there exist restrictions for access from where I am. So far I have experienced numerous of thelike occurances while trying to access URLs or internet services in the US.
It has been an interesting read.
From what I remember Spain must have been last European refuge for Neandertalers, especially near coastline. Unfortunately, it seems they didn´t take advantage of the coast however, instead of developing fishing techniques stayed with hunting mammals.
So, supposedly it mustn´t be far fetched that they might have gone through starvation. Under such conditions culture might change fundamentally, including attacks on fellow being and cannabilism. It occures still with stranded people.
Then again, it is not stated in the article from where the scientists conclude that these Neandertalers had been killed by their own fellows. Until now at least, there was rather speculation that HS might have chased Neandertalers.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
It's interesting that the Neanderthal remains were butchered, it could also mean that the those Neanderthal were hunted by the other guys, the early Homo Sapiens which co-existed. That is one of the Neanderthal die out theories. If some CSI archeologist could only find some DNA from the perpetrators. ...
It's not common to find cannibalism evidence on early human/hominid habitation sites. In a site outside Bejing China called Choukoutien there is evidence homo erectus endo cranial cannibalism. In other words brain eating! Also one of the first places they found fire being used to cook food. So basically these blokes were prototypes for Hannibal Lechter in the film Silence of the Lambs.
When brain eating explanations come up it's either in the script of a zombie movie or because cultural anthropologist collected the oral histories of a tribe that was hidden by jungles for long time......maybe if you eat Paco de Lucia brain we'll get to better guitarists.
I would actually like a nice heaping bowl of Diego del Morao hippocampus.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
Sad thing is that such superstition ( taking over characteristics by eating corresponding body parts ) still exists today; just as superstition in general being incredibly dominant still these days. Considering food myths, especially in Asia.
After all it is the main reason why wildlife / game from Burma and from all over the world is being illegally exported to China. Vast of poaching in the world happens for market demand in China and Korea.
People there eat penises and other body parts of all kinds of wild animals, especially big cats, before all of tigers, but also of other physically strong animals like Gorillas etc. As you know something between 100- and 200 million of sharks are being finned yearly, only for their fins to end up in shark soup; which in fact is a poultry soup with only some fibres of shark fin contained in it.
Chinese and Korean upstarters, apparently traditonally concerned and uncertain about their manliness, are the main consumers of these dumbass and perverse dishes served in specialized restaurants.
Until about four years ago there were left over 6000 tigers worldwide, a couple of months ago they were estimated to be still 4000, and as of late the number is being quoted as 3800. ( A number including all tiger subspecies still in existance, while a single subspecies could not survive with a meagre gene pool of some thousands individuals alone.) As tigers have become so rare that pouching is hard, pouchers now gow after the snow leopard, which is being on decline just as well anyway.
Observers suggest that people in China only continue the ignorant consumption, because of having no notion about the extinction of wildlife. They suppose that perverse eating manners would vanish if the people were only being informed on the wildlife situation.
However, the Chinese and Korean governments can´t be bothered with making a couple of informational documentaries on the matter and broadcasting them, so that things shall change to a better.
Reason for that again, as I see it, is that western governments and governmental organisations keep much too quiet about these backgrounds. If they felt the sloughter in the jungle worth a move, and decided to officially ask Asian governments for educational measures on the matter ( making the international image desaster of it as it should be ), things might have changed considerably by now. -
If eating anatomical parts would have the slightest effect on the person who eats them, the vast majority of homo sapiens must have been eating chicken brain for a rough 5000 years now.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
I was in China at school for summer in 1993 at the national art academy in Hangzhou, i got to experience China from a source other than TV and film. I can say from that time that there is a fine line between cultural imperialism and what is right universally.
But I agree that the things you point out about the eating of rare species is despicable and wrong. And in many cases just ignorance at work. I've noticed that along with wealth and rise of the middle class in China that the consumer wants to demonstrate their purchasing power by being able to buy the shark fin soup and have that become a marker of personal success. It's complicated to criticize that from an American perspective without being a hypocrite because there is so much wrong with the food industry here and with American values about food. There's a hot debate in Northern California about the shark fin soup because in Fan Francisco we have such a big Chinese community. On one hand people will tell you it's a cultural right to have shark fin soup and on the other they will say it's an outdated mode of culture that should be abandoned. I'm in favor of abandonment, but as soon as you emphatically say that around here, you have set up a polemic that puts you on one side of the fence or the other. It's a problem because then you get accused of cultural insensitivity and a tricky tedious argument follows in which you have to carefully parse out the difference between what is universally best for everyone and the environment and what is cultural preservation.
On the other topic.... Ilya Rapin, I do know this artists work,but only very little of it. Mainly I recognized him from his portrait of Mussorgsky which I already knew. So I looked at dozens of images on line and thought about this for few days. Honestly he does not do it for me even though he is a good painter. He seems like he is in the Manet / Courbet zone in regards to how he handles paint and light, but I find some of the themes he uses to be a little too sentimental or heavy handed. he also has the brushy elegance and flash of a painter like Sarolla the Spaniard or Sargent the American. In Manet you get much less forced narrative and in Courbet you get narrative, but it's more ambiguous. I feel like Rapins symbolism is too forced and it leaves me wanting fewer signposts or directives to what he's trying to say.
The thing that comes to mind most in his work is it feels like a precursor to Soviet era social realist painting. The picture is capable of telling a narrative and the style is bordering on being illustration. Getting back to art school in Hangzhou, the Soviet state artists were the ones who taught social realism to the Chinese in the 1920's, 30's and 40's. When I was there you could see in the official curriculum and the studios it was still very much a part of the training of the art student in the early 1990's. I find it difficult to like unless like a Shostakovich symphony written to please the soviet leaders, it has an element of subversion built into it that the leaders are too stupid or untrained to understand. Or, ideally they understand the subversion, but are powerless to dismantle it, which was Shostakovich's stock in trade. He was brilliant.
So I see Rapin as part of a continuum of Russian art and I'm not sure if I have a taste for his brand of sweetness and sentimentality. I would however contrast his work with that of a contemporary Russian artist named Ilya Kabokov. I worked for a short time as one of Kabokov's studio assistants when he was doing an installation in San Francisco at the now defunct Capp St. Project installation gallery.
Kabokosv work operates by creating a dialectical relationship between an environment he creates and his drawings. He builds installations which are essentially slip shod replicas of places he has lived or remembers from his early life in the then Soviet Union. One for instance that I worked on was of a state mental hospital. We constructed some dingy hallways that had a clastrophobic sense of closing in on you by how tall and narrow they were. he used the built environment to set up a feeling for the viewer. Very much like the way T.S. Elliot would call a section in a novel an 'objective correlative'; the scene itself is meant to elicit emotional responses.
Kabokov's invented scenes, like physical movie sets the viewer actually enters, are then hung with his drawings which are based on the lives of the persons who may have inhabited these spaces. The drawings, unlike the Soviet social realism I mentioned before, are also open ended and not willfully directive to the viewer. The drawings are often whimsical, as Kabokov was a childrens book illustrator before he jumped over to so called fine art, and the viewer does not get a ready made picture of the people who may have lived in those rooms.
The synthesis of the invented architectural facades and drawings make a third experience, the one that Kabokov can't control, but delights in setting up. You can look at it in many ways, but I apply the classic, thesis blended with antithesis equals synthesis model to it because it gives a contrast to Rapins work and as a visual sign that wants to spell out a specific meaning for the viewer and often a closed meaning. One of the main differences between the way art communicates today as opposed to yesterday is that inventing a situation where the viewer becomes a greater a participant in the creation of the meaning is has become more important.
However if you really know in depth the works of Franz Joseph Hadyn you could counter that argument for some time before you would have to relent and agree with the modern way of including the viewer and not making statements which are mean to willfully steer the viewer to political or social point of view. All through art history you find artists like Velasquez and Shostakovich who are kept alive in the service of the king and also subversively telling the king he is a fool, at the same time. This is dialectic that we in modern times so much love to see because it's like the artist is telling us a truth which lasts through time and it not pinned to a political movement or the total will of the person who commissioned the painting.
RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to estebanana)
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It's a problem because then you get accused of cultural insensitivity and a tricky tedious argument follows in which you have to carefully parse out the difference between what is universally best for everyone and the environment and what is cultural preservation.
Probably, by minds who strive for correctness, without being able to think things to ends. Sometimes, not even simple ones, as they can´t free themselves of what is fancied to look like correct ways of approach.
Cultural idiosyncrasies are always worth conserving, given that they will not cause injustice or needless shortcomings. If they do however, they should be left behind, for culture of pragmatism, as owed to a thinking species.
There are cultures and languages going lost every day now. Taking immediate measures for preserving those still to go, should be rather of sense than loopy conservation of ignorant habits. -
At crying status quoe I would think it time to put an end to thoughtless PC, - thus consider myself what I´d call a "culturist". Naming ignorance and cruelty as seen, no matter which culture.
Which is why I would not approve certain Swiss provence tradition of eating dog as cultural gem either; and among other things request industrial investment into protein of plants ( artificial meat, as started over thirty years ago, but discarded ) anyway, so that indifference and barbarism shall cease meanwhile over 2000 A.D. -
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... like a Shostakovich symphony written to please the soviet leaders, it has an element of subversion built into it that the leaders are too stupid or untrained to understand.
My cousin once magnaged to get a pantomime performance through the censoring of a dictature. At the time when the regime realized what it meant, the video was shown on TV, and him situated abroad already.
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You can look at it in many ways, but I apply the classic, thesis blended with antithesis equals synthesis model to it because it gives a contrast to Rapins work and as a visual sign that wants to spell out a specific meaning for the viewer and often a closed meaning. One of the main differences between the way art communicates today as opposed to yesterday is that inventing a situation where the viewer becomes a greater a participant in the creation of the meaning is has become more important.
I can´t find concrete problems with conveyance of specific meanings ( especially not under global destruction as is, that could use each any pointer available; be it explicitely or subtley. - Despite freakishly opposing common sense of past decades, which hopefully keeps fading to insignificance.
People should be emancipated enough these days to not be dominated by inferioirity complex of intellectual servility anymore. In fact, an autonomous beholder will be self-confidently ready for focussing on contents, regardless ways of formality ).
Which won´t mean that subtle conveyance couldn´t be very enjoyable in the same time. -
Now, with Repin there seems to have been conveyed litlle of expanded, lesser even of revolutionary contents. The less as he seems to have been bourgeois. Yet, to me it would appear like gross dismissing if works like his were to be mainly eyed under aspects of extended messages.
Quoting myself on the painting below:
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Look at how lively the situation tells of what is happening. And imagine that as a painter you could never have models deliver you such a moody example to even take from. See how this was generated from an inner projection sharp like a mirror.
Look at all the individual interactions, the different measure of engagement down to those figures wo just approach the scene, and to what is not involved at all. Look at how he dressed them, at the mimics, gestures, the sarcasm ... the torn glum of the sultan´s messanger ...
Try sensing what an inner eye it takes to envision such sparkling host of detail and even be able to convey all of that to canvas. And how!
... You probably guessed it already; just love watching exceptional skills.
Ruphus
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Background to the paintings motive:
The text of the Sultan's letter to the Cossacks:
As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the Sun and Moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians—I command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.
—Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV
The reply was a stream of invective and vulgar rhymes, parodying the Sultan's titles:
"Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!
Thou art a turkish imp, the damned devil's brother and friend, and a secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight art thou that cannot slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil ****s, and your army eats. Thou a son of a bitch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, **** thy mother.
Thou art the Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-****er of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, Armenian pig, Podolian villain, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, a fool before our God, a grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. Thou wilt not even be herding Christian pigs. Now we shall conclude, for we don't know the date and don't have a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year in the book, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!"
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RE: Signs of Neanderthals mating wit... (in reply to Ruphus)
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Cultural idiosyncrasies are always worth conserving, given that they will not cause injustice or needless shortcomings. If they do however, they should be left behind, for culture of pragmatism, as owed to a thinking species.
Chairman Mao could not have said it better. LOL ( that's a joke)
Have we gotten far enough afield yet?
I like a good picture, I like the 19th century and its ways of dealing with realism and the various levels of artifice and how the pictures are constructed. You asked about how I see the difference between modern ways of communicating visually and how that is different from older ways more realistically representational ways. I think the essence of what I'm saying is that despite my personal tastes, which are incidental and don't really matter, that the older styles do this: They create a theatrical window through which you look into a scene taking place in a pictorial space a painter sets up. It's like going to the theater, sitting in seat and viewing the stage lit reality through the frame of the curtain around the stage. In modern visual communication the barrier between the stage and the audience is often broken apart (Brecht - Artaud for literal examples) and in some ways the audience becomes a part of the way the art operates on us.
In modern visual communication the artists deal with the concept of suspending disbelief by acknowledging that it exists. In the older more theatrical representational mode of visual story telling that really never comes up in the West after Giotto. From Giotto everyone believes in the pictorial theatrical magic until artists like Cezanne and Picasso question its core values and tear it apart. But that is another story.
I'm perfectly happy to sit in a seat and watch the play unfold through a gilt frame, or participate in it as much as the modern artist allows the me to enter into the play outside the frame. I don't think one way is better or superior to the other. But I have my own personal curatorial instincts for what I want to look at and being a modern person in this time I can't reject or repeal my understanding of what happened since the 1880's.
But probably like you I can find pleasure, solace, irritation, happiness, etc. in looking at many things from 17,000 year old cave paintings to Andy Warhol.
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