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The oldest and most well-known graphic art prints were first produced by woodcut printing. The Chinese were the first to make religious woodcut prints though they never became prominent print designers. The Japanese learned wood cutting and woodcarving techniques from the Chinese and Koreans and went on to produce some of the most prized prints today. The first of these prints were created in black and white and decades later, the Japanese began printing in three colors. At around 1700, they began to use eight to 11 blocks of colors to produce more sophisticated works. One of the big differences between Western and Oriental woodcut art is the way that changes of shade are achieved. For example, in the East, the watercolor is brushed on the surface of the wood block like in a painting, while in the West, shading is achieved by the increasing the degree of engraving and the depth of the designs carved in the wood block.

In Europe during the Middle Ages, woodcuts were primarily used to make fabric designs. Playing cards and religious pictures were also the first products of European printers. After the invention of movable type, history books and Bibles began to be filled with woodcut illustrations.

There are three main methods of making prints. The oldest one is the relief method where the print is carved on a raised surface. Woodcuts are the most popular form of relief painting. It could be tedious because the artist would first get a block of wood and cut away the background from this design. The design was then slowly inked and printed.

The second printing method is called “intaglio” and is the opposite of relief printing. In “intaglio”, the print is made from the lines of areas which have been cut or burned away. After the drawing has been carved on a metal plate, the plate is covered with ink. Damp paper is placed on the top of the plate and when the paper and plates are run through the press, the paper he lifts the ink from the lines.

A third method is known as the planographic process. Lithography is the most common type of planographic printing. Slabs of limestone are the most commonly used materials, although lithographs can be made from metal sheets. Lithography was invented in 1796 and was primarily used as a cheap method to produce music sheets. The lithograph first won popularity in France because it was less complicated and cheaper to use than woodcuts and was better suited to mass production. Europeans started to use it as a means to print political propaganda, wall decorations and book illustrations.

The invention of photography ended the use of prints to produce paintings and reproductions. Silk screen also became one of the more popular ways to produce mass prints. Most 20th-century artists have attempted to make prints. Prints are so seldom used today because they are no longer are created for mass-produced publications. So today, a print, whether carved, etched, designed, or printed by the artist himself, is now acknowledged as a precious work of art. But unlike a painting of which there is only one “original”, a print can yield up to 50 originals. For this reason, an artist’s print can usually cost less than one of his original paintings. However, many great art collections and galleries have been started with the purchase of a single print.

[tags]arts[/tags]

I believe I know what the Void feels like. Do you? It’s cold…and very lonely, because it’s wanting creation and nothing exists there as of yet.

Spend enough time there, and you may fear that you could die of it. Too much emptiness for the soul to endure; too much nothing. Until you hear (or see, or feel) it…the voice of one who has been there, too – endured it and survived to tell the tale.

I believe that we love artists most when they get us in touch with our inner selves in a way that the world outside us cannot. Much has been said about the price that they pay for their wondrous creations: loneliness and misunderstanding, addictions, emotional imbalance and depression, the life of a misanthrope. What are seldom conjectured, though, are the reasons for the artists’ sufferings.

Well, they’re living somewhere beyond the safely-defined place we call reality. They are the frontier explorers of the unknown. And that means that they exist in a place where they have nothing but their own intuition and insight to guide them…because they got there first! No one else has experienced what they have; these impressions are new, hard to fathom and even much harder to articulate. No wonder the visionaries of our world are oftentimes so lonely and desperate. Who can they confide in, and who can offer them condolences? Mankind may not catch up to the place where the artist succumbed until long after he or she is gone.

When we DO reach that place, we feel the chill too. But we have one consolation: the words or music or visual images bequeathed to us from one who has gone before. The art of our visionary creates a veritable map for us to find our way. We are no longer in the void where nothing makes sense; Art has given form to our world.

I never believed that art and science were at such odds with each other. Both are approaches to structuring our universe, and neither are strong and true for all time. Evolution continues – art offers up new inspirations, and science gives us new explanations. Joseph Campbell said that the motifs of myth had to be constantly reinvented, lest the life-giving forces slip away. Our artists keep that mythic fire alive so that it can be passed, intact, to succeeding generations.

And each generation must make its own journey into the unknown and face the long stretch of trials. Perils lurk in the wood, upon airy mountain heights and deep within the bowels of the Earth. But we will have help: the wise old guide, the maiden who knows the way out of the labyrinth…

And we’ll know that we’re embarked upon the only noble adventure left for modern man: the exploration of the inner world. Where else can we go? Everything has been settled and claimed, turned into megamalls and urban sprawl. We have to take the classic hero’s lead, and trust that the way within will illuminate the way out.

I doubt that our political leaders can offer us much in the way of good advice for that journey. But Tolkien provided me with some useful roadmaps, as did Stephen R. Donaldson, Arthur Rimbaud, Joseph Campbell, Rumi, Kandinski, and so many others.

Art is rain for thirsty souls.

Seth Mullins is the author of “Song of an Untamed Land”. Visit his complete blog at http://www.writingup.com/blog/seth_mullins

[tags]artists,art,void,frontier,explorers,visionaries,journey,soul[/tags]

Episode: #14

Tangor and Siren in: “The Ramping Devil!”

[Gwyin]
1/14/2006 Part I of II

[Siren’s Journal; 2180 AD] “The Ramping Devil, his fists were like blocks of iron, hard as garnet, when they hit you, I’m sure they were as heavy as anvils, he never did hit me, but I can attest to their size. The gaze he fixed on one was deadly indeed, anger in his whole being. He looked like a saber-toothed jackal, his head that is, pointed dog like ears. He clasped his hands when he bit into human flesh, so he told me, as if it was a drug. Perhaps to scare me, is why he told me; on the other hand he wanted to be human like, it would be a dream come true, if he could. Demons get their kicks out of such things, games they call them. His hands were as big as my face, and he was all of fifteen feet tall. He was a rambling beast, and ran wildly, quickly he told me through hell’s gates to escape into the lake called Hades. He said he knew me, or had seen me once, when I was in hell.

“He told me there occurred a phenomena, the day he appeared on our ship, as we were bringing King Toso to his residing moon for safety, for his people wanted to eat him alive, or at least the wild Manticore in the woods had threatened to do so.

“The phenomena he told me about was as follows: ‘I escaped into the waters of Hades, and fell into a dreamless sleep as I sank into the waters, at the same time our hemispherical demon were brining in new souls, there was a rift, a tare in the canopy of a sixth dimension, and I was snapped away, and ended up in these halls of the ship, foaming mouth and all, and even nostrils foaming.’ It is exactly the way he told me it was.

[Tangor’s Journal] “Outside our spacecraft was King Toso, waiting for us to take him to his moon, where there was a colony of his kind; he was kind of a prisoner I guess.

“In the meantime, the demon Gwyin had appeared on board the ship, he was haunted by Siren’s beauty, and seemed to know her. I guess, so he said, he was there when Siren was born in hell, he was one of the soldiers that tried to stop her from leaving hell, and she cut his head off, yet he grew another instantly. He seemed a bit indifferent on that subject, almost laughable.

“When we landed the ship on the moon, I told Gwyin to remain hiding until the king was gone, lest he freak out, and a new crisis start right on our ship with a 800-pound demon, 15-feet tall running loose.

“And so it was, everything went fairly smooth, and the king was dropped off.”

‘Why do you come here?’ I asked Gwyin later on.

‘Perhaps because I had no choice, plus I prefer human company to devil company, believe it or not. I will not harm you, Siren, I know fights like a devil, so I am not up to such a fight, but I ask for your assistance to hide me from my enemies, who will be searching for me?’

Said Siren, ‘You did not come to us like an enemy, but I am not sure what we can do for you?’

“But we both agreed, Siren and I, that we’d take the chance and give him a safe haven until we could come up with a better idea, and we were now headed for Moiromma, and I suppose we could iron it out there.”

(Siren knew a devil lies and has no pity, to her there’d been no deliberating of his nature, only his purpose, and his departure once on Moiromma. The king that was brought onto the moon of Toso’s, was taken so there would be no bloodshed on Toso itself, to serve as a prison of sorts.)) And so it was.))

See Part Two: The Demon Fugitive

[tags]Short Story[/tags]

Students of Shakespeare have spent a very great deal of time debating the meanings of “Othello”, “King Lear”, and “Macbeth”. The wealth of criticism of any one of his plays can be overwhelming to the casual student. I cite my own experience as a high school student struggling to write credible criticism of “King Lear” whilst juggling History, German, and General Studies reading and assignments. Students benefit from guidance concerning what it is best; at the very least to make best use of the time they have, opting perhaps to read the very best sources only.

Now language, spoke or written, is entirely a reflection of individual experience. We speak and write words we have picked up, first from whom ever taught use to speak; later from those we talk to and from those books which we have read. Consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, we also use language to speak and write about our experiences.

Fiction writers use language, no way in exception to this rule. However many planes they may have crossed using their imagination and knowledge, their fiction will be the product of their experiences. It is important then, for students of literature to learn about a writer’s experiences – how they lived, and what they read being the two points of focus in any such study of a writer. Secondary to reading the text apart from knowledge of the writer to consider language in the abstract, it is necessary for students, searching for meaning, to consider texts with knowledge of their writers.

Considering fiction writers’ sources is a practice never more crucial than when studying Shakespeare’s plays. Firstly, it is a relatively easy exercise (and therefore good practice), as none of Shakespeare’s plays are entirely original. Secondly, it is important for most students studying Shakespeare to express their own opinions about the texts. Examiners, certainly of A-Levels, (so I am told), are interested in the thoughts of the candidate, and therefore do not look favorably on regurgitated criticism from leading Shakespeare scholars. Thirdly, knowing something of Shakespeare likely sources is immensely useful at opening paths to substantiated judgments on meaning; it can lead to a whole new level of understanding, from which it is even easier to appreciate bard’s genius.

The discourse to follow on Shakespeare’s sources for three of his best known tragedies is, I admit, a regurgitation of my last three years of studying English. I decided that treading familiar ground was most prudent at this stage in the life of “Arguendo”. I hope to build my own confidence as a writer, as I build your confidence as a reader. Not withstanding that these three tragedies are amongst Shakespeare’s most thought provoking plays, I hope that this essay will indeed provided knowledge to add to you enjoyment of them.

One of the problems or, depending on your perspective, one of the advantages of studying Shakespeare, is that relatively little is known about his life. In particular, scholars are uncertain when he wrote the majority of his plays and sonnets, which leaves, potentially, a substantial gap between Shakespeare’s intended meaning and our own understanding of his work.

The best estimates for the dates that he wrote span several years. He must have written “Macbeth” sometime between 1603, the ascension of James I, and the first known performance of the play in 1611; “King Lear” within three years of the first court performance on December 1, 1606; according to a note in the First Quarto edition of 1608. “Othello” was written about two years before it was performed, apparently for the first time, by the King’s Men in the Banqueting house at Whitehall on November 1, 1604.

The approximate dates for the production of Shakespeare’s plays, scholars have largely derived from the apparent contextual details in the plays themselves. It is possible, then to consider and to use these dates in arguments about Shakespeare’s meaning. Context is an important source for many writers.

Shakespeare’s Context

“…this place is too cold for hell.”
–(Mac.2.3.13-14)

“What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?”
–(Lr.1.1.80-81)

“My blood begins my safer guides to rule,
And passion having my best judgment collied,
Assays to lead the way.”
–(Oth.2.3.186-188)

These three quotations have meaning set in the context of Shakespeare’s time. This higher level of meaning it is important to know something of the ideas and beliefs of Shakespeare’s England; not surprisingly, it is most important to be aware of the religious beliefs of the time. Perhaps the most fundamental of these was that the king was appointed by god; ruled with divine right. In France the belief in the divinity of the monarchy extended so far that the king’s touch was believed to cure illness. In England, the theory of divine right was no less prevalent: Elizabethan propaganda emphasized the relationship between the monarch and the land. James I was, moreover, quite obsessed with the theory of Divine Right: hence one of the central themes of Shakespeare’s plays, written at about the time of James’s ascension, is about the monarch’s relationship with the land, about who has the right to rule.

The Porter grumbles about the knocking at the gate: “if a man were the porter of hell’s gate, he should have old turning the key.” He asks: “who’s there in the Devil’s name…in th’other Devil’s name?” and then declares “But this place is too cold for hell”. These comments are all ironic, as the audience must realize, given what has taken place in Macbeth’s castle. The Porter has become the keeper of hell’s gate, as he is the keeper of Macbeth’s castle. Macbeth is not only guilty of regicide, he is guilty of murdering a kinsman, as all Scottish thanes were relatives of the king. Shakespeare is ironic when he has the Porter say it is “too cold” to be Hell. The ninth circle of hell was reserved for those who betrayed their kinsmen. The guilty were frozen in ice for eternity as punishment for their crime.

After King Duncan is murdered (Mac.2.2) it is no coincidence that Shakespeare has characters in this scene, Macduff and Lennox, discuss the weather in the next scene: the “unruly” night that has just passed. Shakespeare creates the impression that there were dark forces at work through mention of “strange screams of death, and prophesying with accents terrible, of dire combustion and confused events”. The weather is symbolic: because the king is murdered, God’s chosen is murdered, according to the theory of Divine Right, there is disorder in the kingdom; represented here by a storm. After renouncing his authority formerly King Lear finds that his kingship has truly been usurped by his daughters (Lr.3.2). He finds himself going slowly mad, in a storm, which has many characteristics similar to those featured in the storm alluded to in the scene after Duncan’s death (Mac.2.3.53-59): the verbs Lear uses to command the elements – “blow”, “crack”, “rage”, “blow”, “spout till you have drenched our steeples” – suggest this.

The answer to Lear’s love test is (Lr.1.1.86-92) becomes increasingly clear, considering Shakespeare’s handling of the relationship between the king and the kingdom. When he asks each of his daughters what they can say to “win” the largest portion of his kingdom the only correct, the only acceptable answer for a sixteenth century audience is Cordelia’s: “nothing”.

The Theory of Divine Right was one closely linked with that of the Great Chain of Being; the one very much determined the other. According to the Great Chain of Being, in society every man had a place, a social stratum, in which they ought to remain for their lives. The king was the highest authority in the chain; the highest authorities in the church and in the state, the archbishops and bishops, and the noblemen occupied the second strata, to the parish clergymen and gentry; down to the poorest man. Above everyone, however, was God. The king’s role was to protect the kingdom in God’s name: hence the Theory of Divine Right. The law of primogeniture was thus very important in Shakespeare’s society, to keep the Great Chain in order; without endeavoring to explain the feudal system, it suffices to say that land to remain united was to pass the eldest male child, or to the husband of the eldest daughter. Lear does not protect his kingdom by unburdening himself of his divinely appointed authority: he brings war and division; not only in Ancient Britain, but in his family. The subplot involving the Duke of Gloucester and his two sons further emphasizes the symbolic relationship between the king and the land that emulating that between the father and his children.

When studying “Othello” one of the important contextual details is that colored people were uncommon in Shakespeare’s England: Christendom, Christian Europe, had been at war with Muslims for many centuries in and around the Holy Land, and increasingly in the Mediterranean, whereabouts the main drama of “Othello” is set to unfold: on Cyprus. The racial tensions gave way to superstitions and stereotyping: Othello apparently breaks the latter for all Shakespeare presents him displaying composure and control over his emotions; marrying for love; proving successful and intelligent as a military leader. Yet, it is already clear that Othello is destabilized by Iago and reverting to racial type for a sixteenth century audience (Oth.2.3), by giving way to fists of passionate jealously of his wife; and moments of other intense and negative emotions, including anger, when he discovers his soldiers brawling.

Literally and metaphorically, Othello’s “blood” begins to rule him when he is removed from the cultured and safe environment of Venice: Europe. At least this is what the 16th century audience would have surmised.

Some commentators have argued that “Pliny’s Natural History”, which Philemon Holland translated in 1601, probably provided the details that Shakespeare uses to enhance with a degree of authenticity Othello’s exotic adventures and alien origin (consider the explanation that Othello gives to Desdemona about the origin of the handkerchief that he gives to her).

However, Geoffrey Bullough has maintained that Shakespeare probably consulted John Pory’s translation of “A Geographical Historie of Africa” by Leo Africanus; in which there is a distinction drawn between the Moors of the northern and those from the southern regions of the country. Africanus also describes both groups of Moors as candid and unaffected but prone to jealousy. Shakespeare’s Othello appears to be quite a faithful rendering of this characterization. Othello is candid and unaffected while in Venice; so much so that he passes as a Venetian, as a European, sufficiently to have achieved prestige as a general. In his speech to Brabantio and the senators in Venice regarding his clandestine union with Desdemona, he is indeed candid and unaffected

It is apparent that Shakespeare was familiar with fifteenth
century and sixteenth century accounts of the wars between Venice and Turkey, particularly the battle of Lepanto in 1571, in which the Venetians in alliance with the European Catholic states temporarily regained control of the island of Cyprus.

Being thus aware of the sources that Shakespeare is likely to have used for “Othello”, the perspective or meaning of the play is that much more clearly defined. The cause of Othello’s madness is diagnosable; the symptoms are those behavioral characteristics of Moors, according to contemporary accounts. Once Othello leaves Venice, he becomes symbolically isolated from the positive influence of Christian European culture; Othello’s nature begins to take hold of him. When Iago preys upon him, Othello’s reversion to a racial stereotype is apparently dramatically increased.

The lesson for Shakespeare’s contemporaries is that Moors will only revert to erratic behavior if they are first isolated from the European society and second treated with contemptuous cruelty and abused because of their heritage and origin. Hardly a racist attitude within the context of his time; to be likened to Shakespeare’s apparent sympathy toward the villain, Shylock, in “The Merchant of Venice”. At the very least, Shakespeare offers Shylock the same chance that the likes of Iago, Edmund and Richard III have to justify their actions; and Shylock’s is quite reasoned when he explains that Antonio has wronged him because:

SHYLOCK
I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions, fed with the
same food, hurt with the same
means, subject to the same diseases,
healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and
summer, as a Christian is? If you
prick us do we not bleed? If you
trick us do we not laugh? If you
poison us do we not die? And if you
wrong us shall we not revenge? If we
are like you in the rest, we shall
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong
a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew,
what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me I will
execute; and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
–(3.1.51-64).

The suggestion that the Jew follows the example of the Christian establishes a hierarchy of sorts. With the Christian above the Jew; it places the Christian in a position of responsibility and culpability for the actions of his Jewish subordinates. The Jews follow the Christians example: when the Christian persecutes the Jew, the Jew will likewise persecute the Christian; as the Christians persecute Shylock, Shylock persecutes Antonio.

Shakespeare’s perspective is thus not anti-Semitic, relative to the context in which he lived as a Christian. He is critical of the treatment of the Jews more than he is condemning of the people or the faith. Considering that the Nazis in Germany promoted “The Merchant of Venice” as evidence that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic, the importance of considering Shakespeare’s sources and the context in which he was writing is practical, as well as of literary significance.

When the meaning is properly understood by means of contextual knowledge, the artwork gains in aesthetic value. The crimes of Macbeth, the weakness of Othello, the madness of King Lear, and the morals of “The Merchant of Venice” are clarified. The plays are more enjoyable; the morals are comprehensible, sympathetic, human, and considered. The message is clear and Shakespeare’s genius is polished; restored to all its glory.

Dr. Evans
April 24, 2005

Dr. Evans has a PhD in English Literature and an MA in History. She lives in New York City and is a freelance writer. Visit her web site at http://www.charlotte-evans.com for more information.

[tags]Shakespeare, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Literature, English Literature, Language[/tags]

[From the book: “The Last Trumpet…” by Dennis L. Siluk; 2002]

1—The Dragon (Satan)) Fallen Archangel))

2—The Beast (Government/or church)) God the Father))

3—The False Prophet (Lamb Beast)) The Unholy spirit))

The Antichrist I

(Intertwined with the Trinity):

The Beast also can be seen as a government with a status of a Church, with a tri-headed unity (Satan the head); goal world power, worship—;let me somewhat repeat this: The Beast, a government or status of a church, which has a tri-head and Satan as the head. Its goals are world power and worship.

The False Prophet= the Lamb Beast (Revelation 13) Satan is in this person—False Prophet—

The Beast: symbolic to Satan (wants to take the place of God the Father—

The False Prophet plays the role of the “Holy Spirit”

The Antichrist II

And Daniel Chapter 8 [Old Testament]:

We see in Daniel chapter eight, this individual (called the Antichrist) wants to be king of kings, taking the place of Jesus Christ; hence, in time the Antichrist will become Satan for the Antichrist is a man and both the Antichrist and Satan remain individuals.

The Dragon: is in essence, Satan in the bible, whom is the Beast also, in spirit, who rules the actions of the unholy Trinity.

The Antichrist III

The Antichrist. Christ’s Foe. This person will represent Satan, and wants to be the king and take the place of Jesus Christ.

The Eighth King; the Antichrist. Revelation demands an Eighth King, a world ruler to come. Five have fallen, one is currently in existence, and the other has not yet come. At the time of the writing of the last book in the bible, called, Revelation, five kings had come and passed. One was present, the Seventh King is unknown, and then from that same unknown cup, comes the Eighth King. For more readings on this review Revelation Chapter 17, Daniel chapters 2 and 7. I believe in most cases, Rome will be interrelated with the Eighth King, who will be the Antichrist, or final world ruler, not to include Christ.

[See part II, for “Symbolism in the book of Revelation]

[tags]Article[/tags]

British painter, designer, and illustrator Sir Edward Burne-Jones is one of the most well known of the second generation Pre-Raphaelite artists. Born in Birmingham, Burne-Jones mother died six days after giving birth. Having no siblings the lonely child escaped to the world of drawing.
Burne-Jones studied theology at Exeter College in Oxford where he met fellow poet and artist William Morris. The two read the writings of Ruskin and studied and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and decided they should devote their lives to art. In 1856, he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who became a great influence on directing Burne-Jones art.

In 1860, Burne-Jones married Georgiana Macdonald. Known for her quiet strength, Georgiana provided a balance to the artists high strung personality. He was also a partner in the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co along with William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Madox Brown, and Phillip Webb. ‘The Firm’, as it was called, began in 1860 and produced interior design, high quality furnishings, stained glass, metal work, tiles, and tapestries. Rossetti and Madox Brown both resigned from the company in 1874. Burne-Jones is known for his efforts in the revival of medieval crafts with the aid of his friend William Morris. His themes are taken from legends and history, often mythological and allegorical characters.

Edward Burne-Jones was elected to the Royal Academy in 1890 but resigned after three years. He designed stained-glass windows, mosaics, and tapestries along with book illustrations under the name of Edward Coley Jones. His designs, along with his medieval crafts style, paved the way for the Arts Nouveau movement. Burne-Jones was knighted in 1894 and died in 1898.

About the Author: Layla Dean is an art enthusiast and contributor to ArtistPages.info

This article may be reprinted in full so long as the resource box and the live links are included intact. All rights reserved. Copyright Layla Dean.

[tags]article submission, articles, writers, writing, publishing, ezine, email marketing, email newsletter, email[/tags]