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Michael Cheval – On the Way Of Destiny

Unchained Art has moved to a new home

♥Colours

I do hope you enjoy it.
Jonie

Whistlejacket

Stubbs’  huge picture was painted in about 1762 for the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, Whistlejacket’s owner and a great patron of Stubbs.

Mont Saint-Michel

Mont Saint-Michel  is a rocky tidal island in Normandy, France. It is located approximately one kilometre off the country’s north coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches. The population of the island is 41.

In prehistoric times the bay was land. As sea levels rose, erosion shaped the coastal landscape over millions of years. Several blocks of granite  emerged in the bay, having resisted the wear and tear of the ocean better than the surrounding rocks. These included Lillemer, the Mont-Dol, Tombelaine (the island just to the north), and Mont Tombe, later called Mont-Saint-Michel.

Mont-Saint-Michel was used in the sixth and seventh centuries as an Armorican stronghold of Romano-Breton culture and power, until it was ransacked by the Franks, thus ending the trans-channel culture that had stood since the departure of the Romans in AD 460.

History of Tango

Tango is a dance, music and poetry that originated in Buenos Aires at the turn of the century, developing in the melting pot of cultures that was Buenos Aires. Immigrants from Europe – Italy, Spain, Britain, Poland, Russia, Germany and every other European country mixed with earlier generation of settlers of all races from other South American countries. They brought their native music and dances with them, and continued to assimilate new innovations from abroad.

Traditional polkas, waltzes and mazurkas were mixed with the popular Habanera from Cuba, to form a new dance and music, the milonga, which was popular in the 1870s . This was known as the “poor man’s Habanera”. Central to the emergence of the milonga is was the culture of the black population, with their dances such as the candombe, a mix of many different African traditions.

Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a “dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.” Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada it was founded in  1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier.

After securing funding from the Canadian government for a second year, Laliberté took steps to renovate Cirque from a group of street performers into a “proper circus”. To accomplish this he hired the head of the National Circus School, Guy Caron, as Cirque Du Soleil’s artistic director.

The influences that Laliberté and Caron had in reshaping their circus were extensive. They wanted strong emotional music that was played from beginning to end by musicians.

Frida Kahlo

Born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico. Considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, she began painting at the age of 18 after she was severely injured in a bus accident in September 1925.

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.

The Little Prince

The Little Prince (read story here)

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince), published in 1943, is French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s most famous novella. Saint-Exupéry wrote it while living in the United States. It has been translated into more than 180 languages and sold more than 80 million copies making it one of the best selling books ever.

An earlier memoir by the author recounts his aviation experiences in the Saharan desert. He is thought to have drawn on these same experiences for use as plot elements in The Little Prince. Saint-Exupéry’s novella has been adapted to various media over the decades, including stage, screen and operatic works.

SS Great Eastern

The SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built on the River Thames, England. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refuelling.  Brunel knew her affectionately as the “Great Babe”. He died in 1859 shortly after her ill-fated maiden voyage during which she was damaged by an explosion.

After repairs, she plied for several years as a passenger liner between Britain and America, before being converted to a cable-laying ship, with the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1865. Finishing her life as a floating music hall in Liverpool, she was broken up in 1889.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59)

The Last Victorian Leviathan Steam Ship

SS Great Eastern

Geertgen tot Sint Jans

Geertgen tot Sint Jans (ca. 1455-1485) is one of the most beloved primitive painters from the Netherlands, noted for his charming naiveté and the purity and simplicity of his style.

The Nativity at Night (ca 1490, oil on oak, 34 x 25.3 cm) is one of the most engaging and convincing early treatments of the Nativity as a night scene.  The brilliant light in the foreground comes from the Christ Child in the crib. It illuminates the figure of the Virgin, who bends forward, hands joined in prayer, Saint Joseph in the background, and the figures of the delighted small angels to the left.
The radiance of the angel announcing the birth to the shepherds on the distant hillside provides another contrast between darkness and divine light. A third and lesser source of light comes from the shepherds’ fire.
The idea of the infant Christ illuminating the Nativity scene comes from the writings of the 14th-century Saint Bridget of Sweden. She wrote that in her visions the light of the new-born child was so bright ‘that the sun was not comparable to it’. A century later, the interest of artists such as Geertgen in depicting naturalistically the contrasts of extreme light and shade served to heighten the sense of the miraculous birth.

The National Gallery, London

Lalibela, Ethiopia

The small town of Lalibela in Ethiopia is home to one of the world’s most astounding sacred sites: 11 rock-hewn churches, each carved entirely out of a single block of granite with its roof at ground level.

Were it not for these extraordinary churches, Lalibela would almost certainly be well off the tourist radar. A dusty rural town nestled into rolling countryside, Lalibela only recently got electricity. It has few motorized vehicles, no gas stations and no paved streets. Isolated from the modern world, the town goes about its business much as it has for several hundred years.

Of Lalibela’s 8-10,000 people, over 1,000 are priests. Religious ritual is central to the life of the town, with regular processions, extensive fasts, crowds of singing and dancing priests. This, combined with its extraordinary religious architecture and simplicity of life, gives the city of Lalibela a distinctively timeless, almost biblical atmosphere.