Showing 250 articles
Hilma Af Klint: Painting the Unseen
Author: Siobhan FarrarNovember 12, 2016
Earlier this year the Serpentine Gallery held an exhibition described by the Telegraph as “a sense of unfathomable mystery”. Hilma Af Klint, a Swedish born female painter who began producing work in the early 1900s, is beginning to be recognised as the first artist ever to have produced a piece of ‘abstract art’. Prior to [...]
John Dee – Magician, Mathematician and Angelologist
Author: Julian ScottNovember 12, 2016
Earlier this year a remarkable exhibition was shown at the Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, London: Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee. Born in 1527, of Welsh ancestry, John Dee was one of Tudor England’s most extraordinary and enigmatic figures. A brilliant mathematician, he was offered the chair of mathematics [...]
Down the Rabbit Hole: Tasneem Zakaria Mehta on Preservation of Heritage
Author: Manjula NanavatiSeptember 24, 2016
In five years Tasneem Zakaria Mehta revitalized a decayed and dying museum, transforming it into a vital and accessible cultural focal point for Mumbai. As vice-chairman of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and Honorary Director of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad (BDL) Museum, Tasneem spearheaded the exhaustive research and the [...]
Education: To What End?
Author: Archana SamarthSeptember 23, 2016
“Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the make [...]
Philosophy in ancient Egypt
Author: Julian ScottSeptember 7, 2016
It is a commonly held view that ‘the Egyptians had no philosophy’ and that philosophy began with the ancient Greeks. However, some of the major Greek philosophers, including Thales, Pythagoras and Plato, recognised their huge debt to the sages of Egypt for their knowledge and ideas. Plato, for example, spent 13 years studying with the [...]
Recycling the Planet Earth
Author: Istvan OrbanAugust 22, 2016
The recently released Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, Interstellar, which is about the possible future of mankind, has a strong premise that staying on the Earth is senseless, because natural disasters will make impossible to sustain life here. So the heroes of the film set off to find another galaxy where humanity can carry on (presumably a [...]
Saying it Right – Doing it Right
Author: Michael LassmanJuly 30, 2016
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was a little ditty chanted in the school playgrounds of the 1960s as a retort from one child to another after being teased or taunted. In truth, it should have been “…but words will really hurt me” – why? Because they can [...]
Renaissance Art and the Enigmatic Genius of Giorgione
Author: Agostino DominiciJuly 25, 2016
The Royal Academy of Arts has recently put together an excellent exhibition presenting some of the greatest painters of the high Renaissance (c. 1490-1530) in a single show. The main intent of the exhibition was to revisit in particular the enigmatic figure of Giorgione, considered by many to be the founder of Venetian painting of [...]
Gobekli Tepe – A New Look at Ancient Civilisation
Author: Florimond KrinsJune 16, 2016
A German archaeologist called Klaus Schmidt found the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey in the early 1990s. It took Schmidt almost two decades of digging to unravel only a small part of the site, which is huge (around 30 times larger than Stonehenge). It is composed of large circles of T-shaped columns, most [...]
Prometheus the Awakener
Author: Natalya PetlevychJune 10, 2016
Busy as we are, it’s not easy to stop to admire the awakening of life in nature, but the growing light seems to be rekindling us too. Ancient myths tell us a story of another awakening that took place a very long time ago – the awakening of the human mind. One courageous, quick-witted and [...]
The Various Faces of the Divine Feminine
Author: Sangeeta IyerMay 26, 2016
O Mother, Thou who art present everywhere, Thou who art the embodiment of Power and Energy, I Bow to Thee! I Bow to Thee! I Bow to Thee! – Invocation to Shakti, the Feminine Principle The universe is a place of balance…Yin and Yang, night and day, summer and winter, masculine and feminine. A balance [...]
Best of the Human Potential through Sports
Author: Kurush DordiMay 26, 2016
The year is 1936. The Olympic Games in Munich are underway and Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, publicly comments, “The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn’t separate, but unites, the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That’s why the Olympic [...]