Cordier submitted a plaster cast of the bust of an African visitor to Paris to the Salon of 1848, and two years later he again entered it as a bronze. A young African woman served as the model for the companion piece in 1851 (Walters 54.2665). Regarded by 19th-century viewers as powerful expressions of nobility and dignity in the face of grave injustice, these sculptures proved to be highly popular: casts were acquired by the Museum of National History in Paris and also by Queen Victoria. The Walters’ pair were cast by the Paris foundry Eck and Durand in 1852.

This bizarre creation originally had little candleholders attached to the antlers. Chandeliers made from wooden half-figures with elk antlers attached at their backs called “Lüstermännchen” or “Lüsterweibchen,” literally “little chandelier man” or “woman” were popular in Germany. Even major artists such as Tilman Riemenschneider designed them. They hung in town meeting halls, inns, hunting lodges and domestic spaces. While the spreading forms of antlers may have suggested its use as a natural chandelier, the addition of a half figure is the kind of hybrid creation that appealed to the medieval taste for fantasy. Many of the existing chandeliers represent a woman holding a coat of arms (with the antlers growing from her back). The motif of a huntsman praying is unusual and may allude to the story of St. Hubert, a huntsman who came across a miraculous stag in the forest and fell on his knees before it in prayer.

Brian from MyArtSpace has asked some interesting questions on his Spiritual Side of Art post .. “Has a specific work of art touched your soul? Can you recall a specific work of art that helped your through a difficult time or defined a time of joy for you? I know that some people suggest that there is no longer room for the spiritual in the art of today– do you agree? Or would you say that the spiritual aspects of art surround us just as they did in other periods of time? In your opinion, why does visual art have this power– why do viewers establish these personal connections?” My ArtSpace I think most of the spirituality in art is in the making of art, with the artwork simply being the byproduct. So a painting can be of something unspiritual, if there is such a word, but the artist may have felt that he/she was touching god while painting it. I have never seen an artwork that has “touched my soul” or moved me to tears, even though I have looked at lots of art and think of myself as a reasonably sensitive person. Installations and moving images have come close as they have more tools to play with. A painting or sculpture has to work harder to affect the viewer as it simply sits there with no movement or sound, so we have to do all the work ourselves if we are to end up in tears. Film on the other hand has more tools available to press our emotional buttons at will. Art affects us on a more subtle level, it seeps into our soul rather than blows our mind on the spot. Good art will linger, it will hang around for weeks and months after viewing it, but it probably won’t make you cry or save your life. I think the viewer has to be content with knowing that the artwork is just the waste byproduct of something spiritual, which doesn’t necessarily make the finished piece spiritual. Sometimes that waste product works as a mirror or points to something greater and it affects a person deeply, but usually it just ends up as something pretty hanging a wall.

In the 1870s, Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris on the Seine River, northwest of the city, was a gathering point for a number of Impressionist artists. In this fully developed Impressionist work, Monet portrays his first wife, Camille, seated on the lawn beneath lilac bushes in the garden of the Maison Aubry, their first residence in the Paris suburb. Monet moved to Argenteuil in December 1871. Many of the motifs that he and the other Impressionists favored could be found in this small town, conveniently connected by rail to nearby Paris. While in Argenteuil, Monet set up a comfortable residence for himself, his wife, and their son Jean, enjoying a period of stability that resulted in great productivity over the next seven years. During the early 1870s, Monet frequently painted views of his backyard garden that included Camille as his model. Here, her voluminous pink dress appears to float over the grass. The canvas glows with dappled sunlight, suggested by the artist’s quick, unblended dabs of color. Camille’s serene absorption in her book and the delicacy of her form recall 18th-century representations of women reading. “Springtime” is a prime example of Monet’s commitment to painting outdoors and was included in the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876.

One of the main areas for art galleries and activity in Dubai is the Al Quoz Industrial Zone. As the name suggests the area is grimy, dusty and mechanical, inhabited by warehouses, factories, storage depots and wholesale outlets. When rents were skyrocketing elsewhere in Dubai this area was still relatively cheap and the large and empty premises were ideal for conversion to gallery spaces so over the past five years or so a lot of galleries have set up here. There are risks to living in an industrial zone and reports of warehouse fires are frequent. However a massive explosion and fire last year resulted in several casualties, 3 destroyed warehouses and a thick cloud of toxic smoke which hung over the whole city. Luckily none of the galleries were close enough to the site of the fire to be seriously affected and since then it seems that fire safety precautions have been improved. This is the background to the current exhibition at Total Arts gallery that has to rate among the most memorable I have seen in Dubai during my two years here. Total Arts was founded by architect Darius Zandi and artist Shaqayeq Arabi and was the first gallery to set up in Al Quoz way back in 1996. After the fire Zandi and Arabi visited the burnt out warehouse and were so affected by what they saw they began a long process of transporting things from the site back to the gallery. The result is Scraps, an installation composed entirely of materials, artefacts and incidental objects found at the site with site photos projected against two of the gallery walls. The scale of the installed pieces varies from huge warped sheets of corrugated metal suspended from ceilings and used to create artificial walls, to small and fragile fragments of paper or cloth. Some pieces stand on plinths like highly original sculptures, most amazingly a collection of hundreds of pairs of metal scissors all melded together by the heat of the fire. A partially collapsed bicycle stands precariously upright surrounded by different piles of objects fused in plastic, metal and wood. There are melted tins, jars, knives, safety pins, toothbrushes, bicycle pumps, a cash register and many other everyday objects rendered almost unrecognisable by the furnace they emerged from. Many of the smaller finds have been transformed by the artists into installations in their own right. One wall is covered with blackened food trays set with piles of melted forks and spoons and a metal sheet is covered with knife blades. A series of boxes contain a curious mix of objects, scraps of documents, textiles and electrical wires. The exhibition is a unique and moving memorial to those who died. It is a wondrous and disturbing sensory experience crystallised by a soundtrack of muffled explosions and the all pervading odour of burnt metal, wood and plastic. It manages to address several different levels and aspects of its own particular local context as well as referencing wider points of aesthetics and art history – a dual achievement still very rare in exhibitions here. Created by Valerie Grove On 05/22/09 At 10:08 AM