Trento Italy Art Travel - Modigliani Scultptures Brought Together in Trento

Trento Italy travelers will be lucky enough to have the opportunity to see the sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani that remain today in museums around the world united by the Trento and Rovereto Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MART) for the first show of its kind since the Italian artist's death in 1920. The exhibit near the northern city of Trento, outside Venice, which runs until March 27, displays about a third of his known sculptural works, featuring loans from museums such as Washington's National Gallery of Art, London's Tate and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Modigliani, born in Livorno in 1884 in the Italian port city of Livorno, famous for its canals on Tuscany's coast known by Italy cruise travelers for its Italy cruise port, where Italy cruise shore excursions typically visit Florence and Pisa, is far better known for his portrait paintings, which are identifiable by their mask-like, asymmetrical faces and elongated form. For a brief interval though, from 1911 to 1913, Modigliani dedicated himself entirely to sculpture.

In 1909, Modigliani returned home from Paris to Livorno. Modigliani was sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi.

Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, by 1914 he abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty in acquiring sculptural materials due to the outbreak of World War I, and by Modigliani's physical debilitation.

MART museum curators argue his sculptures represent an under-recognized, seminal period of artistic development, when Modigliani evolved beyond the post-impressionism of his early work to the distinct expressionism that characterized his pieces after 1913. The exhibit features a series of elongated stone heads that bear a striking resemblance to archaic, oriental and tribal art in their simple, highly stylized form. The curators, who worked for six years on the exhibit, verified through extensive research that Modigliani completed 28 sculptures, three more than previously ascribed to him. The show also strives to reconstruct Modigliani's life and influences, retracing the marks of critics, collectors and other artists as well as cultural fashions of his time. Drawings, paintings and sculptures place Modigliani's heads in context, such as an early version of Constantin Brancusi's sculpture The Kiss, oriental sculptures of gods from the seventh and eighth centuries, and a 15th-century marble bust of Battista Sforza by Francesco Laurana, which Modigliani used as a model. Modigliani's portrait of Pablo Picasso, completed in 1915, is also on display, as is a nude by Picasso from 1907.

In life, Modigliani exhibited his sculptures only once, selecting a group of seven heads for the Salon d'Automne of 1912.

To many, Modigliani came to represent the tragic figure of the Bohemian artist. His life inspired nine novels, a play, a documentary and three feature films. Although he frequented the artistic avante-gard in Paris, where he lived from 1906 to 1920, Modigliani developed a style entirely his own, never falling in step with Fauvism or Cubism.

Modigliani, Picasso & Salmon

Friends who posed for Modigliani's characteristic portrait paintings include Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Diego Rivera, although Modigliani's reputation as a major artist soared only after his premature death from tubercular meningitis at the age of 36. Prey to self-destructive indulgences in hashish and alcohol, Modigliani was as well known during his life for erratic behavior as he was for his talent. He died destitute, when his young lover, Jeanne Heburterne, was nine months pregnant with their second child. Two days after his death, she plunged from a fifth-storey window, killing herself and their unborn child. During his career, Modigliani only pulled off a single one-man show, which was shut down for obscenity shortly after opening, as it featured a number of nudes. A Modigliani nude fetched $42.7 million (42.7 million euros) at auction last November in New York City, setting a new price record for his work. Other Modigliani paintings have recently sold for tens of millions of dollars.

The MART exhibit represents the first major effort to rehabilitate Modigliani's sculptural work since four high school students and a dockworker dumped fake Modigliani heads in a Livornese canal in 1984. The falsified sculptures were found by workers dredging for lost work by the artist, who was rumored to have tossed away pieces in a moment of despair. Art critics who embraced the discoveries saw their reputations dented when the hoax was revealed, and Modigliani's sculptures have suffered a dearth of attention since.

For more on the Italian Arts click WebVisionItaly Italy Arts channel. Click to sign up for our Italy travel newsletter by entering email address in left column below the Italy destinations. If you would like to visit Trento for the Modigliani exhibit contact Italian Tourism Italy travel agents who have all inclusive Italian vacation packages to visit Venice and Trento, as well as Florence and Rome.  If you prefer a Italy cruise contact our Italy travel agents for a cruise from Venice that includes the Modigliani exhibit in its Italy cruise tour.

Exotic island of Bali Indonesia

Bali Weather

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island.

With a population recorded as 3,891,000 in 2010, the island is home to most of Indonesia's small Hindu minority. In the 2000 census about 92.29% of Bali's population adhered to Balinese Hinduism while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. Bali, despite being a tourist haven for decades, has seen a surge in tourist numbers in recent years.

Bali

Bali is renowned for its diverse and sophisticated art forms, such as painting, sculpture, woodcarving, handcrafts, and performing arts. Balinese percussion orchestra music, known as gamelan, is highly developed and varied. Balinese performing arts often portray stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana but with heavy Balinese influence. Famous Balinese dances include pendet, legong, baris, topeng, barong, gong keybar, and kecak (the monkey dance). Bali boasts one of the most diverse and innovative performing arts cultures in the world, with paid performances at thousands of temple festivals, private ceremonies, or public shows.

The Hindu New Year, Nyepi, is celebrated in the spring by a day of silence. On this day everyone stays at home and tourists are encouraged to remain in their hotels. But the day before that large, colourful sculptures of ogoh-ogoh monsters are paraded and finally burned in the evening to drive away evil spirits. Other festivals throughout the year are specified by the Balinese pawukon calendrical system.

Bali Island

Celebrations are held for many occasions such as a tooth-filing (coming-of-age ritual), cremation or odalan (temple festival). One of the most important concepts that Balinese ceremonies have in common is that of désa kala patra, which refers to how ritual performances must be appropriate in both the specific and general social context. Many of the ceremonial art forms such as wayang kulit and topeng are highly improvisatory, providing flexibility for the performer to adapt the performance to the current situation. Many celebrations call for a loud, boisterous atmosphere with lots of activity and the resulting aesthetic, ramé, is distinctively Balinese. Oftentimes two or more gamelan ensembles will be performing well within earshot, and sometimes compete with each other in order to be heard. Likewise, the audience members talk amongst themselves, get up and walk around, or even cheer on the performance, which adds to the many layers of activity and the liveliness typical of ramé.

Kaja and kelod are the Balinese equivalents of North and South, which refer to ones orientation between the island’s largest mountain Gunung Agung (kaja), and the sea (kelod). In addition to spatial orientation, kaja and kelod have the connotation of good and evil; gods and ancestors are believed to live on the mountain whereas demons live in the sea. Buildings such as temples and residential homes are spatially oriented by having the most sacred spaces closest to the mountain and the unclean places nearest to the sea.

Most temples have an inner courtyard and an outer courtyard which are arranged with the inner courtyard furthest kaja. These spaces serve as performance venues since most Balinese rituals are accompanied by any combination of music, dance and drama. The performances that take place in the inner courtyard are classified as wali, the most sacred rituals which are offerings exclusively for the gods, while the outer courtyard is where bebali ceremonies are held, which are intended for gods and people. Lastly, performances meant solely for the entertainment of humans take place outside the walls of the temple and are called bali-balihan. This three-tiered system of classification was standardized in 1971 by a committee of Balinese officials and artists in order to better protect the sanctity of the oldest and most sacred Balinese rituals from being performed for a paying audience.

Bali Indonesia

Tourism, Bali’s chief industry, has provided the island with a foreign audience that is eager to pay for entertainment, thus creating new performance opportunities and more demand for performers. The impact of tourism is controversial since before it became integrated into the economy, the Balinese performing arts did not exist as a capitalist venture, and were not performed for entertainment outside of their respective ritual context. Since the 1930s sacred rituals such as the barong dance have been performed both in their original contexts, as well as exclusively for paying tourists. This has led to new versions of many of these performances which have developed according to the preferences of foreign audiences; some villages have a barong mask specifically for non-ritual performances as well as an older mask which is only used for sacred performances.

Balinese society continues to revolve around each family's ancestral village, to which the cycle of life and religion is closely tied. Coercive aspects of traditional society, such as customary law sanctions imposed by traditional authorities such as village councils (including "kasepekang", or shunning) have risen in importance as a consequence of the democratization and decentralization of Indonesia since 1998

Safety Airplane

Golden Gate Bridge history and information

Possibly the most famous bridge in the world, here is the history and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as the planning concept behind the architectural marvel.

The Golden Gate Bridge links San Francisco with Marin County in absolute splendor. The bridge is one of the architectural marvels of the Twentieth Century and a testament to human strife, as it was constructed during the years of the Great Depression. For years, the Golden Gate Bridge held the title as the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Before its completion in 1937, the bridge was considered impossible to build, due to persistently foggy weather, 60-mile-per-hour winds, and strong ocean currents, which whipped through a deep canyon below. In fact, the bridge is commonly known as the "Bridge that couldn't be built." Despite these unforgiving natural elements, the bridge was constructed in a little more than four years. The total cost was $35 million. The total length of the bridge spans 1.2 miles. Eleven men lost their lives during the construction of the bridge.
Even today, the massive spans of the bridge are often shrouded in fog. The bridge sways 27 feet to withstand winds of up to 100 miles per hour. International Orange was the color chosen for the bridge because it blended well with the bridge's natural surroundings. The two great cables extending from the bridge contain 80,000 miles of steel wire, which is enough to circle the equator three times. The concrete poured to cement the bridge into the stormy waters below could have also been used to pave a five-foot sidewalk from New York to San Francisco.

Because of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco is one of the premier skyline cities in the nation. It was a triumphant day in the history of the city when the bridge was completed on May 27, 1937. Over 200,000 people celebrated the grand opening of the Golden Gate Bridge by walking its length. The following day, a dedication ceremony was held to officially christen what would become the architectural trademark of the city. The regular flow of vehicular traffic began the next day.
Efforts to begin the construction on the bridge began as early as 1928. The process would entail the efforts of six counties in Northern California. In 1928, the counties formed a Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District. In 1930, the voters appropriated a $35 million bond issue to finance the building of the bridge. For many years following, Joseph Baerman Strauss, a distinguished engineer, dreamed of raising a span across the Golden Gate. It was in response to his vision that people first started saying that the bridge could not be built. But, amazingly enough, Strauss held fast to his vision, and a span was eventually raised across the Golden Gate Bridge. The actual work on the bridge began on January 5, 1933.
It was completed four-and-one-half years later. The result astounded the fiercest of Strauss's critics. To this day, the bridge is admired for its magnitude and beauty.

The bridge is nothing short of a powerful force meant to combat nature. The often mighty winds from the Pacific Ocean are sustained by a mid span swing of 27 feet. The two towers of the bridge rise an impressive 746 feet, which is 191 feet taller than the Washington Monument. The pier of the bridge is only 1,215 feet from the shore, the distance between the two towers that support the cables, which in turn, support the floor of the bridge is 4,200 feet. These two cables are the largest bridge cables ever made at a little over 361 feet in diameter.
Today, pedestrians and bicyclists are still allowed to cross the bridge on pathways with breathtaking views of the city, Alcatraz, and the Marin Headlands. The bridge toll for vehicles is $3 when entering San Francisco.

The first exit of the Marin side of the bridge is Visa Point, which provides a magnificent view of the San Francisco skyline. But, the best way to view the bridge is to walk across. This usually takes about an hour.

Vermont Tourism 2011

stowe vermontState of Vermont are many beautiful places you can visit one of the reasons is a good place to relax. If you're planning a holiday in the state, should not fail to check these places. If you will be charmed by the pleasant atmosphere of farm life. You want to take away from city life, adventure, especially it is best to plan escapes. Following a statewide perspective places.rutland

Adventure with a dragon on Komodo Island

Komodo Island is an island located in the Nusa Tenggara Islands. Komodo Island is known as a habitat for native animals dragons. This island is also the Komodo National Park which is managed by the Central Government. Komodo Island in the eastern island of Sumbawa, which are separated by the Sape Strait.

Administratively, this island including the District of Komodo, West Manggarai regency, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. Komodo Island is the most western tip of Nusa Tenggara Timur province, bordering the province of West Nusa Tenggara.

On the island of Komodo dragons animals live and breed well. Until August 2009, on this island there are about 1,300 dragons tail. Coupled with other islands, such as Island and Rinca and Gili Motang, their numbers totaled about 2500 tails. There are also approximately 100 individuals dragons in Wae Wuul Nature Reserve on the mainland island of Flores, but not including the Komodo National Park.

Besides Komodo, the island is also store a variety of exotic flora Sepang timber which by local people used as medicine and dye clothes, this nitak tree or sterculia oblongata in the believe is useful as medicines and seeds are tasty and delicious like peas

In 1910 the Dutch named the island in the southern province of East Nusa Tenggara is the nickname of Komodo Island. This story begins with Lieutenant Steyn van Hens Broek who tries to prove statements about the presence of Dutch troops large animal resembling a dragon on the island. Steyn then killed a dragon and bring documentation to the Museum and Botanical Garden in Bogor to be investigated.

In 2009, the Park has been named a finalist in the "New Seven Wonders of Nature" newly published in 2010 by online voting at www.N7W.com

Curacao Tourism 2011

Curacao Water MagicCuracao Netherlands Antilles ABC islands of Aruba and Bonaire, in conjunction with the three southern islands of the Caribbean, with an area of approximately one hundred and seventy square miles big. It is interesting to twelve degrees north of the island is located in the equator.Curacao Beach However, the fact that rents are not a lot of hot climate, although the reasons for

Paricutin, Surtsey, Volcan Paricutin, Paricutin Volcano, volcano Paricutin 2011

paricutin volcano factsParicutin currently buried under volcanic lava of our community takes its name from its famous. Complete village was transferred to a nearby empty field. Shocking, just three losses Paricutin volcanic history of the epidemic has to be filled. Volcanic action was most important to Paricutin 1952. Currently, about 424 meters high volcano stands. Cinder cones have been quiet