EXTRA, EXTRA! See all about it!
[ by Charles Cameron — a second, off-the-cuff Sunday Surprise this week ]
.
Here’s your basic DoubleQuotes-formatted pair of images — Rembrandt‘s Nightwatch which you’re probably familiar with in the top panel, and Bill Benzon‘s Night Light Standing Guard which I believe he only posted today:
**
Consider the differences.. then, and now.
I wanted them in DoubleQuotes format to make the comparison clear — but here are larger versions of the two images, still in sizes this blog column can handle:
and:
**
But for a really detailed digital looksee, click on these two links, and then if you’d like, click again for maximum magnification, very possibly too large to fit a computer screen & requiring some scrolling to catch significant detail:
Rembrandt, The Night Watch Benzon, Night Light Standing Guard
Even better, you could befriend and visit Benzon, and view the Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Either there, or by some other means, you and I and Benzon and Rembrandt should commune. As Emerson wrote:
The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately.
October 12th, 2015 at 2:00 am
Charles, you are probably aware that the title ‘Night Watch’ for the painting ‘Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq,’ of 1642 (one of a series of images of the assorted Militia companies of Amsterdam paid for by members’subscription — so many paid to be included as standing figures that Rembrandt make enough money from the gig to move into a new house) is a popular nickname for the painting, dating back only to the mid C18th century, acquired after the varnish had darkened. There is a very fine, almost infinitely enlargeable, recent image available from the Rijksmuseum which can be downloaded also:-
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/praktische-informatie/gebouw-en-presentatie/nachtwachtzaal/objecten#/SK-C-5,0
Another lesser known example from the series, this by Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-1670), Militiamen of the Company of Captain Roelof Bicker and Lieutenant Jan Michielsz. Blaeuw: Officers and other Marksmen of the VIII District in Amsterdam before the De Haan Brewery at the Corner of the Lastaadje , 1639:-
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/praktische-informatie/gebouw-en-presentatie/nachtwachtzaal/objecten#/SK-C-375,1
(Apologies for the long links but have forgotten the code to insert these in the Zenp ‘comments’ field)
October 12th, 2015 at 3:28 am
Hi Michael:
.
I knew the full title existed, but didn’t know, or at least didn’t remember, that it was given as a result of a darkening of the varnish.
.
Do you have any opinion concerning the two films Peter Greenaway devoted to the painting?
October 12th, 2015 at 3:29 am
October 12th, 2015 at 3:31 am
October 12th, 2015 at 5:14 am
Michael, all commenters:
.
The way to get separate paras in the comments is to insider a period between paragraphs. The way to get links attached to text is to write and post the text, and then use the edit button next to the timestamp once the comment has been posted to get a second bite at the apple, this time with HTML, and then insert the link.
.
If you don’t get an edit option once your comment is up and visible, you can contact me via gmail, where I am hipbonegamer, telling me the URL and where it should go, and I’ll do the edit myself.
October 12th, 2015 at 7:09 am
Greenaway is a very fine film maker, and dramatist. However, his essentially romantic sensibility never permits itself to be constrained by documentary and other period evidence. From what I understand his Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (2008/9) is almost a parody of a paranoid with an obsession finding hidden meanings and as a result disclosing more about their pathology than the world — the syndrome known as Apophenia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia).
.
If he had been aware of this example (Frans Hals, Pieter Codde, Militia Company of District XI under the Command of Captain Reynier Reael, Known as ‘The Meagre Company’ 1637 from the same series of paintings his modern and existentialist reading of the period codes of gesture and dress would I believe have reduced him to incoherent gurgling and grunting:-
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/explore-the-collection/overview/frans-hals/objects#/SK-C-374,1 .
.
For the dangers of Apohenia see a recent story about the success of Kitt Williams Masquerade, and the assorted clues readers found embedded to solve the treasure hunt concealed in its illustrations. Irony upon irony even the person who was successful in first finding the buried treasure discovered it for the ‘wrong reasons’ — but since ‘reality’ confirmed his reasoning would have believed his inferences and method to be correct.
http://hazlitt.net/feature/goes-all-way-queen-puzzle-book-drove-england-madness .
.
[Thanks for the reminder. Alas for me there is no ‘edit’ button once the comment is posted. I may have too many assorted security blockers in the browser.]
.
October 12th, 2015 at 11:33 am
OP, very interesting, and such a clever idea for a book topic.
From the last paragraph of the article:
“For hundreds of thousands of others, the treasure was meaning—the belief that, for a little while, within specific boundaries, everything could make sense.”
.
That’s close, but doesn’t quite dig deap enough. What people really want is the process.
Joseph Cambell once wrote:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
October 12th, 2015 at 10:12 pm
“Joseph Cambell once wrote:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.””
Sounds logical to me. The potential we experience on the purely physical plane is somehow satisfying, while the kinetic energy in the feeling of rapture in being alive feels good.
The potential and kinetic energy we observe every time we get up in the morning and put our pants on, if you are so inclined.