“I owe you the truth in painting and I will tell it to you.” ~Paul Cézanne

 

 

Left: Henri Matisse, Seated Pink Nude (Nu rose assis [Le Torse]), 1935-36. Private Collection

Taking this ‘Columbus Day Moment’ to Consider…

As we enter the autumn season as a time for gathering in and nesting for the impending winter season , ARTES, a fine arts magazine, is focused like a laser on its mission. With so many readers (and writers) throughout the world, the magazine aims to reflect a diversity of interests and themes, relating the art, architecture and design story across so many cultures and historical periods. And with that responsibility comes a pervasive concern for the survival and safety of so many beloved artifacts and destinations that are currently threatened by political divisions and armed conflict. The loss of life and displacement of families from their homes in places like Syria, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Republic of Congo, in the face of tribal and ethnic disputes, may seem like a form of heartache far-removed from our comfortable lives here in the West. But the brutal treatment of women, the loss of multiple male members of a family who join itinerant militias to fight in the streets of their home town, and the deaths of children caught, literally and figuratively, in the crossfire of ancient disputes, is real—and so, too, is the cost being exacted on the cultural symbols of these nation states-in-flux. artes fine arts magazine

In recent days, the centuries-old covered market place in Aleppo, Syria was burned to the ground. The historic importance of this neighborhood is hard to measure in historical terms, except that it had been in existence for over a thousand years, as a place of commerce and social interaction for the people of the country’s largest and busiest city—and now it is no more. Perhaps on a comparable scale, think of what it would mean to Americans to lose all of the shops near Fisherman’s Pier in San Francisco or the Wall Street and the Fulton’s Market neighborhood of New York City to flames and explosions. We would be promising to rebuild within weeks. But, in poor and war-strife nations, there is no option but to move on, fight on or flee.

In the generational re-telling, we glorify and cleanse the narrative of our own history, remembering our ‘discovery’ at the hands of European explorers, the Revolutionary War, Civil War or Native American ethnic purges as a measure of our commitment to freedom and self-determination. We eventually force from memory how these conflicts divided family loyalties, sacrificed thousands of indigenous peoples’ lives for land and resources and pitted brother against brother in pitched, deadly battles. Where malls and residential subdivisions now sprawl, verdant farms and fields, sacred Indian ceremonial sites and city blocks of extraordinary Colonial architecture once stood—a testimony to the destructive price we pay for progress and a desired lifestyle.

In recent months, sacred mosques have been destroyed in the name of competing beliefs, museum-quality artifacts have been pillaged or trafficked on the Black market and priceless paintings defaced or burned merely because of what they symbolize. As we witness the death throes of one disenfranchised oligarchy or dictatorship after another in the context of the ‘Arab Spring,’ please recall that the crucible of our own desire for self-governance once burned as hotly; and that the cost in lives and treasures was every bit as dear. Bearing witness to comparable tragedy elsewhere in the world, though, makes it no less painful to comprehend.

Thank you for being a regular visitor to ARTES. Writers are always invited to contribute your thoughts and observations.

Best to you,

Richard Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor

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