"Gimme a Pigsfoot and a Bottle of Beer, Some Reefer, and a Gallon of Gin."

Who says you couldn't have a wild time in 1936? Not Besse Smith!



This is a completely gratuitous posting. I just like it.

The Domes of Isfahan

"Isfahan is half the world" goes the old Persian saying. In the 16th and 17th centuries, this city had a population of more than half a million, making it one of the largest in the world at the time. Straddling several important overland trade routes, it was also one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world where the occasional visitor from Europe could meet visitors from Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, India and China. The city once had large populations of Armenian and Nestorian Christians. Shah Abbas the Great valuing their professional and business abilities, built churches for them. There was also a large and influential Jewish population here too.

The oldest mosque in the city, one of the oldest of all Persian mosques, and one of the great monuments of early Islamic art is the Masjid i Jameh, the Friday Mosque, built in the 11th century by the ruling Seljuk Turks as the centerpiece of their expansion of Isfahan as their capital city. It was first built in the 8th century as the city mosque; a simple structure of columns holding up a wooden roof around a central sahn or courtyard, by tradition, following the layout of Muhammad's house and oriented toward the city of Mecca. That structure burned in the 10th century. The architects incorporated the remains of the earlier mosque into their construction of the present mosque in the 11th century.

The domes and minarets of the Masjid i Jameh, Isfahan

The Jameh Mosque has been modified and expanded several times in its long history, but the bulk of the original 11th century mosque remains.

View of the Sanctuary of the Jameh mosque from the sahn.

The splendid sahn of the Jameh mosque was modified in the early 17th century by Shah Abbas who added the minarets and the magnificent mosaic work around the arcades facing the courtyard. The mosque follows the pattern of palace architecture in pre-Islamic Persia under Parthian and Sassanian rulers. A central courtyard contains four immense brick arches called iwans that face each other. The sanctuary facing Mecca is covered with an immense brick dome, 50 feet wide. At the time, this was the largest brick dome in the world, not to be eclipsed until the completion of the dome of the Cathedral of Florence in 1436.

Interior of the Jameh Mosque sanctuary. The great brick dome rests on whitewashed walls from the earlier 8th century mosque.

The great philosopher and scientist Muhammad ibn Sinna (better known to the West as Avicenna) probably taught class beneath these sober and splendid 11th century vaults resting on 8th century columns.

Exterior of the North Dome of the Jameh Mosque

Interior of the North Dome chamber of the Jameh Mosque.

The masterpiece of the Jameh Mosque is the North Dome, originally built as a separate structure along the mosque's central axis, and then gradually incorporated into the mosque. It has a unity of form and structure, and an exactitude of proportion that will not be seen again until the creation of Gothic architecture in Europe 2 centuries later. The whole sequence of form transitioning from the square room to the circular dome has an almost musical logic and inevitability. The pointed arch and vault, an Arab variation of a Roman building form, was never more pleasingly shaped and proportioned than here. Incredibly well built, it survives without a crack in a very earthquake prone part of the world.

The splendid capital city of the Seljuks, dominated by this great mosque, and filled with gardens and palaces, was destroyed by Mongol invaders in the 13th century, and again by Timur (Tamerlane) in the 14th.

It would not be until the beginning of the 17th century that Shah Abbas the Great makes Isfahan the capital of the Safavid dynasty that ruled Persia into the 18th century. Shah Abbas was rich and powerful enough to repel an invasion by the great Ottoman Sultan Suleyman, who was the most powerful ruler on earth in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

Shah Abbas built a new city center adjacent to the old city, and connected to its bazaar. He placed at the end of the dark and crowded bazaar that leads through the old city center, a huge open square, still one of the largest in the world. He placed his most important buildings, including his palace, around this square.

The Nagshe Jahan Square, formerly known as the Maidan of Isfahan with the former Royal Mosque seen at the far end. The Ali Qapu, the gateway to the Royal Palaces, is seen on the right. The dome on the left is the Lutfullah Mosque, all built by Shah Abbas in the early 17th century.

Everything from military reviews to international trade fairs to polo games took place in this vast square. The Shah made public appearances and presided from the Ali Qapu.

The Royal Mosque, now known as the Imam Mosque, viewed from the Ali Qapu.

Shah Abbas built a magnificent new mosque for the city of Isfahan, intended to replace the old Jameh Mosque as the new metropolitan center of worship.

Sanctuary dome of the Royal Mosque. The practice of adorning the exterior of a brick building with brightly colored ceramic mosaic goes back to ancient Mesopotamia. This dome and others like it would be the inspiration for so much architecture in Mughal India, including the Taj Mahal. The Emperor Akbar imported Persian architects and master masons to work for him.

Sanctuary of the Shah Mosque from the sahn.

Interior of the Sanctuary dome of the Royal Mosque.

As magnificent as the Royal Mosque is, the masterpiece from Shah Abbas' reign is the small Lutfullah mosque built as a memorial to the Shah's sainted father-in-law, a Sufi holy man, and as a private oratory for the Shah and his court. It is a simple building built in a form that goes back to pre-Islamic Persia, a square brick building topped by a brick dome. Like the Royal Mosque, it is built at an angle to the Maidan to accurately point toward Mecca. It is the masterpiece of Persian architectural mosaic work.

Entrance to the Lutfullah Mosque from the Maidan.

Interior of the Lutfullah Mosque.

Lutfullah Mosque dome.

The architecture of a great mosque, like that of a great Gothic cathedral, speaks about the nature of God in all of its parts great and small. In the beautifully proportioned architecture and magnificent mosaic decoration of this amazing room, God is proclaimed as one and infinitely full. The Sufi mystics teach that every individual person and their entire life stories are but single and unrepeatable manifestations of God's infinite fullness. Variety and multiplication are endless, and yet all joined together in the single point of their Creator. And yet this infinity is not chaotic, but ordered, as the structure of the building is built according to numerical proportions, and the mosaic is laid out according to geometric progressions and tessellations. The Paradise of God is infinitely full, and yet orderly, harmonious, and united.

I've loved these buildings for most of my life, even though I've never visited them, and probably never will. I knew them long before the present regime came to power in Iran, a group that would be very alien to the many brilliant and generous spirits who dwelt in this magnificent city and inspired its design. I remember these buildings every time I hear "clash of civilizations" rhetoric from either side now. I remain amazed at how little known they remain in the USA and in the West in general, especially when so much of Gothic art in many of our own churches (the ribbed vault, the pointed arch, the centralized pattern) was inspired by Islam. Let us also remember that it was Islam (including the scholars of Isfahan) who preserved Greek philosophy and science long after they were forgotten or discarded in the West. It was Sufis like Rumi and Rabiah who pioneered religious universalism long before the idea appeared in the West.

Here is Bethlehem Church in Isfahan, one of the churches built by Shah Abbas for the Armenian community.

Interior of the church.

My Latest Show

I have 2 paintings in a small show of alumni of the New York Academy of Art at Figureworks Gallery deep in the most gentrified part of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  For those of you in the New York area who would like to see it, the show will be up from January 9 to March 8.  There will be 2 opening receptions, Thursday January 8, and Friday January 9 from 6 to 9PM.  I will try to make both of them.  I will definitely be at the Thursday opening. 

UPDATE:

By request, here is the first picture, and the second.

Michael Levey, RIP

Michael Levey was a former director of the National Gallery in London, a great art historian, and one of the very few scholars on art who could write about it beautifully.   There are too few like him out there.

The Temple of Liberty

The dome of the US Capitol is so familiar that we take it for granted like our furniture. And yet, the US Capitol is a building without precedent. There is really nothing else like it, a palace and temple built to house a national legislature. The Capitol predates all of the parliamentary buildings of Europe, including London's Houses of Parliament. The English House of Commons met for centuries in St. Stephen's church which formerly stood in the confines of Westminster Palace. Its present chamber is a post World War II rebuild of a structure built in the mid 19th century. The Roman Senate met in its own house in the Forum (the present structure dates from the time of the Emperor Diocletian), and also in other places. It was meeting in the theater of Pompey when Julius Caesar was murdered. The Athenian Assembly met on a slope of the Pnyx hill through its entire history.

William Thornton's winning design for the Capitol competition.

George Washington took an active interest in the design of the city that bears his name. The architect Pierre L'Enfant intended a great legislative house to be the centerpiece of his plan for the city. Washington wanted the building to be much more than a simple legislative chamber. He wanted a "temple" to liberty, a large monumental centerpiece that embodied the idea of popular sovereignty. It was Washington who coined the term "Capitol" that we use today, after the Roman Capitol, the temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline hill, the most important temple in Rome. Washington wanted the new American Capitol to face east toward the rising sun, an enduring testament to the "Novus Ordo Seclorum."
Washington chose the entry of Dr. William Thornton as the winner in the competition for the design of the new Capitol, praising it for its "elegance and simplicity." Thornton's design was for a smaller version of the Roman Pantheon with a shallow dome flanked by legislative chambers for the House and Senate each. Only the Senate wing was completed from Thornton's design. It was burned by the British army in 1814 during the War of 1812 (a calamity that remains unknown to most Americans; "What say ye we adjourn this Yankee parliament?" said a British soldier as he set a pile of desks and furniture on fire in the Senate chamber).

"Temple of Liberty," a political print from the 1780s commenting on the ratification of the new constitution.

Washington was not the only one who thought of the Capitol as a kind of temple. The idea of the Constitution as a kind of edifice, a temple with the states or the people as its supporting pillars, was common in political commentary of the time. The Capitol as built is a version of the Constitution in stone. The Roman classicism is very deliberate. The founders, including Washington, were all very well read in Classical literature, especially the Greek and Roman historians. The design of the Capitol deliberately recalls those ancient first experiments in democratic and republican rule in Greece and Rome.

The US Capitol in 1846

Above is the oldest surviving photograph of the US Capitol. This is how it was completed by architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Charles Bullfinch. Bullfinch gave the Capitol the prominent wood and copper dome that appears in this photograph. The ambitions of Congress were not satisfied with the comparatively modest dome of Thornton's original design. This design would not last for long. Quickly, the country outgrew its Capitol, and a new larger building was required to house a much bigger legislature.

Architect Alexander Jackson Davis' drawing of the interior of Bullfinch's Capitol rotunda in the 1840s

Thomas U. Walter's design for the expanded Capitol.

The Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter was hired to design extensions for the Capitol; new larger chambers for the House and Senate. Bullfinch's wood and copper dome which once seemed too large now seemed too small. Walter was requested to design a new larger dome for the expanded Capitol.

Thomas U. Walter's section drawing for the new Capitol dome.

Walter's design for a new much larger dome over the original rotunda is a combination of classical design and modern engineering. It is based on Wren's design for the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, as reinterpreted by Soufflot in his dome for the Paris Pantheon (both of those domes were in turn modeled on the Tempietto designed by Bramante in Rome, which was modeled on round Roman temples like the "Temple of the Sibyl" at Tivoli, to complete the Classical pedigree). Unlike those earlier domes built of brick and marble, Walter's Capitol dome is built largely of cast iron. What we assume to be marble is in fact cast iron painted to look like marble. The dome is painted with a fresh coat carefully mixed to match the marble every 4 years.

The Capitol dome under construction photographed during Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration, 1861.

When the Civil War broke out, most people expected, and demanded, that construction on the dome would stop. The labor and the material were more desperately needed for the war effort, especially with rebel troops encamped within sight just across the Potomac river. Lincoln decided to continue the construction, even with Confederate campfires visible from the White House. The dome would rise as testament to the durability of the Union and its founding principles.

The Capitol under construction, circa 1864

Interior of the Capitol dome today with Constantino Brumidi's Apotheosis of Washington in the oculus.

Brumidi's Apotheosis of Washington showing a deified Washington with personifications of the original 13 states, and below, the gods Neptune, Mercury, Vulcan, Ceres, and Minerva standing for trade, commerce, industry, agriculture, and science respectively together with the goddess of Liberty slaying Tyranny.

The Capitol dome acquired its meaning through history. Thornton originally intended the dome to be a reminder of the Roman origins of republican government. As the building and its dome grew, it came to be associated with the imperial expansion of the United States. It was Lincoln and the experience of the Civil War that returned the Capitol to Washington's original intention to create a Temple to Liberty. Only now the concept of Liberty changed in the wake of the war from the privilege of freeborn white male property owners to a birthright of all Americans. The great Capitol dome, a traditional design in a modern material, becomes an embodiment of the timeless and expanding ideal of universal enfranchisement and popular sovereignty.

Starting The New Year Right

Mimi forgot the black eyed peas and corn bread meal this year, so to make up for it, let's do the Viennese ritual and join the Vienna Boys Choir and sing "The Beautiful Blue Danube" together. I'll bet you didn't know there were words to this thing.



And as we slide further into the crapper that our Betters have made for us, let's remember the old Viennese saying, "The situation is hopeless, but not serious."

"FDR was a Big Fat Failure"

So says the conventional wisdom manufactured by the right wing and thoughtlessly parroted by the corporate media.

Hale Stewart begins a series of posts looking at just how bad the Depression really was, and just what difference government intervention made.  Instead of talking points, he is using data and facts.  He begins his analysis with Milton Friedman's own description of just how bad the Depression really was.

Paul Krugman points to the underlying racial component in the last 30 years of Republican anti-government ideology, beginning with the words of Lee Atwater, always a candid source whether boasting after the latest victory or remorsefully confessing and repenting all on his deathbed.

My father hated FDR with a black passion (even though he was a kid during the New Deal and WWII).  The New Deal was the Original Sin from which so much subsequent upheaval and decadence began.  Roosevelt destroyed the greatness of Gilded Age America.

I used to remind my father of how much he hated FDR every time he deposited his Social Security check into his federally insured bank account.