Franz Sedlacek

Last November I spent 3 weeks in Vienna. I had enough time to visit my favourite museums, galleries, cafés and all the other interesting places. As usual I also went to the Leopold Museum. Jim wanted to see all those famous Schiele paintings and I wanted to see the special exhibition "Between the Wars - Austrian Artist" from 1918 till 1938; ( By the way this exhibition has been extended until March 3, 2008).

At the exhibition "Between the Wars", they were lots of very good, interesting paintings and artists. Some of them I had never heard before. But one painter has totally stolen my heart, his name is Franz Sedlacek. Born in Wroclaw (now Poland) in 1891, he disappeared (missing presumed dead) in Poland in 1945.

His style is cool, in some way very quantum physics-like and magical. With Salvador Dali you can see the perfection, the sophisticated imagination but also a kind of fake. With Franz Sedlacek you see the imperfection, but also the passion for his work. He is honest in his own magical world.

The Kunsthandel Widder gallery in Vienna has lots of his drawings and few of his paintings in its collection. If I had some spare amount of money I would be extremely tempted to buy one of his paintings.

According to the books and the art critics his paintings belong to the style Magic Realism and Neue Sachlichkeit. Often his style was also described as Poetic or Allegoric Realism.

The term Magic Realism (Magischen Realismus) was first used by the German art critic Franz Roh to describe the style of the paintings at the exhibition in Mannheim in 1924.

(See an article about magic realism in Wiki – In my view it is not totally correct and in many ways confusing, but I am an alien so who am I to quibble).

Franz Sedlacek

Lied in der Dammerung, Franz Sedlacek

Training Field, 1926

Sedlacek, Franz

Fantasy become reality and A Chimera

This post is about Fantasy but not about Art. Or maybe it is about Fantasy in Art that became Reality.

I have been searching on the web for Gargoyles, Chimeras and grotesque form of Gothic Churches and sacred buildings and I found this. - Scientists have been starting produce chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

I know it is old news but still incredibly fascinating. Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

A chimera is a mixture of several different species (human, animal, dragon, dinosaur, virus, bacteria) in one body – this will be in the future.

The mythological monster Chimera had two heads: one of a lion one of the goat, goat's body, and serpent's tail and according Homer "a snake behind, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire".

What once had been fantasy become reality....Chimera! It belongs to the Greek Mythology and to Gothic Churches. It belongs to the fantasy world of art, literature, mythology, sculpture and SF but not to the REALITY! Imagine I am just about to meet a Chimera somewhere. How would I react? "Hi, I am sorry that I have to say this, I loved you on the Gothic buildings but in reality you are disgusting and sickening....or How are you today? What a lovely day today, isn't it? Should we......"

Gothic Cathedrals and the Brick

I love Gothic Churches (or should I say Gothic Cathedrals because the English speaking people use it as a synonym for all the Gothic churches, Cathedrals or not). They are a creation of a genius spirit, mind and fantasy. They are colossal, huge and arrogant in their gigantism, gigantology, gigantomachy. (what is the best description?!) The sphere inside the Gothic Church is only one of its kind and is very mysterious; and of course the architecture and the ornamentation is unique as well.

I can’t remember how old I was, 4 or 5 when I saw my first Gothic Church in real. I mean an old Gothic Church, not one in Neogothic style. It was in Gdansk in Poland. I was only a child but still I can remember my surprise that fairy like building could also exist in a real world. In my realm. (I grow up in a Communist country, with the communist architecture!) Of course when you are small and short everything seems huge.

But the St. Mary’s Church is really a huge one. The Church is is the largest brick church in the world, and one of the largest Brick Gothic buildings in Europe. It is 105.5 m long, and the navie 66 m wide. Inside the church is room for 25,000 people. It is an aisled hall church with a transept (Build between 1343- 1496). The Polish name is Bazylika Mariacka. The long proper name should be this: Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The church was severely damaged in the World War II, during the storming of Danzig city by the Red Army in March 1945. Fortunately, most of the artworks from the interior survived, as they were evacuated for safekeeping to the villages surrounding the city. Many of these have returned to the church, but some are displayed in various museums around Poland. I read in some magazine that the Polish Church does everything to secure their return. I hoop so, because they belong to this building.

From the moment when I saw my first real Gothic Church, every time when we was visiting a new place, city, country, I always wanted to know if there is a Gothic church there. My Mum thought for a moment that I was a profound believer in god, in the Catholic god of course. But I wasn’t, I didn’t actually like the idea about such a powerful and horrific creator. I probably felt in love with the Gothic style, without knowing this. With the wonderful ornamentation, the gargoyles and the dragons. The mythical, mystical and profound creation of the medieval people.

The brick Gothic architecture is different to the French Gothic Style of building. Using less of more only bricks delimited the ornamentation possibilities of the architects. You can say that the Brick Gothic is a reduced style of Gothic architecture but you can also see it as a a different style of Gothic by using the bricks. The countries where the Brick Gothic was common were: North Germany and all the countries around the Baltic Sea; all are without natural rock resources.

Personally I prefer the rock Gothic, the real French Gothic with all the ornamentation, with the dragons, with the gargoyles. I will tell more about this subject in the next post.

(If you are interesting in more information about the history of this church, go to Wiki; Wikipedia has an interesting article about the St. Mary’s Church in Gdansk; available in English).

The Last Judgment, Triptych by Hans Memling

The Last Judgment by Hans Memling

Hans Memling isn't Hieronymus Bosch but he was absolutely one of the best primitives of his time.
And his altars still are the precious of some Gothic Churches. The triptych The Last Judgement belonged a long time to a Gothic Church in Gdansk. After the Second World War it has been moved to The National Museum in Gdansk. What you see in the Church St. Mary's Church in Gdansk is a copy, a great one.

Multi-media course on blogging

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Gothic Cathedrals and dragons

I love Gothic Art, especially Gothic Cathedrals. Tomorrow I will post a great post about both of them......it is to late now. Till tomorrow........
For now, the Gothic Cathedral in Polen, Krakow.....