Posts Tagged With: Religion

Mount Olympus: Origin of the Olympic Ideal

greek statue close up museum mount olympus the vibes

Home of the gods and the origin of the Olympic ideal. Mount Olympus was the seat of Zeus, and the games were held in his honour at Olympia. A permanent crown of angry clouds reign above the peaks, ample inspiration for legends and myth.

clouds above mount olympus greece
I’ve stood at the foot of this mountain gazing in awe, wondering if Spielberg was inspired by such an imposing view. You can imagine how the ancient Greeks saw gods in these clouds.

ancient greek carving museum mount olympus the vibes
Exploring the mountain itself is an adventure: wild boar bigger than cars, shrines, snakes and giant waterfalls.

mount olympus greece view from olympic beach the vibes

In the shadow of the mountain is a museum, containing art, jewellery and sculpture so sophisticated you would think it was crafted in modern times. Walking round with my mouth open, I was amazed at how advanced ancient Greek culture was. It’s easy to see how this was the cradle of modern civilisation.

ancient greek statue museum mount olympus the vibes

ancient greek earthenware pot museum mount olympus the vibes

ancient greek mosaic greece mount olympus museum the vibes
Greek culture is rich and colourful, and wandering from Mount Olympus down to Olympic Beach you can see how a different kind of deity dominates. The churches have brightly decorated interiors, adorned with icons, murals and relics.

greek church mural katerini greece
If there isn’t a church to hand, there are shrines everywhere. Even on the beach!

shrine olympic beach greece the vibes

shrine interior olympic beach the vibes

Beach Bar, Olympic Beach greece the vibes
We finally found some holy wine…(don’t run, Panos!)

tyre flower displays olympic beach the vibes

beach sports olympic beach greece the vibes
Angela Merkel was spotted swimming in the sea…

Sea life, Olympic beach greece the vibes
Greece is a wonderful country which I’ve visited many times. Unfortunately Germany is hell-bent on destroying this proud nation, imposing draconian sanctions on the people, causing widespread poverty and suffering. For some bizarre reason, the western media portrays the Greek people as deserving of punishment, and nothing could be more wrong. The people unfairly pay the price of their corrupt government (Spain and Italy seem exempt from similar penalties: I mean, really. Italy!) As Sea Monster Merkel spies oil in the Greek sea, you can rest assured she will make the nation a slave to her appetites.

Despite the economic upheaval, tourism is alive and well, and you can support the Greek people by taking your vacation there. Take a look at my trip to idyllic Santorini here.

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Prey – Oil on Canvas

The Vibes Prey Male Nude Oil on Canvas

Prey by Mark Wallis,  2000, oil on canvas.

Click on the image to see the uncensored version (PG – frontal nudity)

This is a detail from Prey, my second attempt at oil painting. In the full work, the model is stretched out in cruciform, and the photograph I worked from (by Jim French) appealed to my atheist nature. I was fascinated by the religious overtones and dramatic lighting, and the implied restraint of such physicality. There is drama in the male form which is rarely mined.

The piece was exhibited in Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat, a bohemian stretch of galleries and bars between Centraal Station and The Dam Square.

One of the things which intrigued me about this painting was people’s reactions: people either loved it or hated it with nothing in between. Most people saw a face in the torso, found it striking and evocative or grotesque and offensive. It was good to provoke such extreme reactions. Art should always aspire to be something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

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Psychedelic Blue Man

Kaleidoscope image oil painting delft kooleidoLast week I showed you my oil painting, Blue Man and this week I fed the image through Kooleido, a kaleidoscope app on my iPhone. I love the religious overtones of mandala-style psychedelic images, and I’ve found the movement of a kaleidoscope quite hypnotic (Believe! Believe!) The result is almost like Dutch Delft ceramic tiles, although with sprawling knots of naked men. Imagine that…

Kaleidoscope image oil painting delft kooleido Kaleidoscope image oil painting delft kooleidoKaleidoscope image oil painting delft kooleido

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Tales of the City

28 Barbary Lane Victorian house san francisco

Picture it: San Francisco, 1976. Big hair and hedonism, disco dancefloors and decadence.

 

Armistead Maupin chronicled life in San Francisco in the 1970s in his newspaper column, and then in a series of captivating novels centered around the bohemian homestead of 28 Barbary Lane, high on Russian Hill.

It’s the home of one of the most fascinating and ingenious characters in modern fiction, garden-variety landlady Mrs. Madrigal, the enigmatic Earth Mother who views the world from a unique perspective, embodying both yin and yang. Whether she’s wafting around in a kimono and a cloud of smoke, or out-facing an adversary with the steely gaze of a gunslinger, she shines like a beacon as the disposessed are washed up at the gates of number 28.

Four years ago, one of my best friends gave me the complete set of novels, which became an instant addiction. Maupin was describing a golden age in the first three novels, which are rich, warm and humorous, humanitarian like Dickens, with a dark undercurrent straight from classic Hitchcock. The first great mystery in Tales of the City is Anna Madrigal herself. The name’s an anagram: a key to the door of her secret past…

Arguably the pivotal quote from the entire series is where Mrs. Madrigal refers to the logical family, as opposed to the biological, and here we see how gay people, rejected by their families, adapt in the face of homophobia. This forms the firm foundation on which the wonderful world of Barbary Lane is built. Maupin has talked about emotional reactions from fans at book signings and as strange as it sounds, it highlights the serious lack of positive depictions of gay people in popular culture, and how he threw us all a line. No one was writing about aspirational happy characters, and there were consequently no real gay role models.

He also deals with subjects like racism, and religious zeal with wit and ingenuity, and then he stands back and lets the bigots have it with both barrels. Maupin was the last American serviceman to leave Vietnam and the first mainstream author to write about Aids, as a major character dies in one of the early novels before the advent of drug therapy.

Maupin captures the natural rhythms of speech and observes human behaviour so acutely that he adds a whole dimension of realism that few authors can achieve, one of the reasons for his phenomenal success and the enduring love for his characters over the years.

On May 26th it will be 36 years since the first Tales of the City column appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and more than a quarter century later, we have e-books, three epic TV mini series and a musical. Stay tuned for more about the Tales of the City series…

Golden gate Bridge san Francisco

Check out my trip to San Francisco

http://www.armisteadmaupin.com/

Armistead Maupin on Facebook

Here’s an update for you: we’ve been visited by the man himself! Scroll down to comments…

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Happy Eostre

Spring time at stonehenge

Eostre was originally a Pagan festival, with it’s roots in the Norse and Germanic ritual of the Vernal Equinox, or Spring. It’s heartening to know that ancient man had an instinctive respect for Mother Nature, thousands of years before the spread of Christianity. It’s only comparatively recently in our history that the traditions of Eostre were adapted by modern religions.

The Rites of Spring and also Harvest show an understanding of the planet which sustains us, and the Sun and the Earth were worshipped as the givers of life.  As we pollute and over-populate our world and regard our own planet with cynicism, I wonder if a return to a more spiritual innocence might be the salvation our ecology needs. Organised religions become increasingly redundant as they fail to embrace the human condition. True spirituality means a respect for the planet, and for each other, and yet distracted religious figureheads still make astonishingly ill-judged comments about contraception. If that energy could be focused on our future on Earth rather than the obsessive, hand-wringing preoccupation with the sex lives of others, then we might actually be able to sustain the planet we live on.

Stephen Hawking says that if we continue to expand at our current rate, then our future lies only in the stars and our window for the colonisation of other planets is less than two hundred years. Is our tenancy on Earth due to end? Is it impossible to reverse the damage that we’re doing? In the spirit of Eostre, fertility and rebirth, we need to consider renewable clean energy, such as Solar Power, stop poisoning the bees with chemicals and seriously consider the size of our population.

I don’t want to be one of the last of the Earth-dwellers: Easter should be about the celebration of nature and awareness of our position in the ecology of Earth. Not zombies in diapers.

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