piątek, 22 lutego 2013

TRIAD















 






























                   Vivid,  brilliant, colorful version. Author of polychromy: Paweł Count Wysocki



                                                     Dimensions height 46 cm
                                                                       width 35 cm
                                                                       depth  3cm




"Among historical figures, some were recorded as having relations with others of their own sex — exclusively or together with opposite-sex relations — while others were recorded as only having relations with the opposite sex. However, there are instances of same-sex love and sexuality within almost all ancient civilizations. Additionally, Transgender and third sex peoples have been recorded in almost all cultures across human history."

Ancient Assyria
"In the ancient Assyrian society, if a man were to have sex with another man of equal status or a cult prostitute, it was thought that trouble will leave him and he will have good fortune.[17] Some ancient religious Assyrian texts contain prayers for divine blessings on homosexual relationships.[18][19] Freely pictured art of anal intercourse, practiced as part of a religious ritual, dated from the 3rd millennium BC and onwards.[20] Homosexuality was an integral part of temple life in parts of Mesopotamia, and no blame appears to have attached to its practice outside of worship.[19][21] Some kings had male lovers — both Zimri-lin (king of Mari) and Hammurabi (king ofBabylon) slept with men.[19] Some Assyrian priests were gay men who cross-dressed.[22] There were homosexual and transgender cult prostitutes, who took part in public processions; singing, dancing, wearing costumes, sometimes wearing women's clothes and carrying female symbols, even at times pretending to give birth.[23]"


                                                       
Ancient Egypt
"An ostraca dating from the Ramesside Period have been found which depict hastily drawn images of homosexual as well as heterosexual sex. The duo Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, manicurists in the Palace of King Niuserre during the Fifth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, circa 2400 BC.[6] are speculated to have been homosexual based on a representation of them embracing nose-to-nose in their shared tomb. King Neferkare and General Sasenet, a Middle Kingdom story, has an intriguing plot revolving around a king's clandestine homosexual affair with one of his generals. It may reference the actual Pharaoh Pepi II, who was likely a homosexual.[7][8]"


Early modern Egypt
"The Siwa Oasis was of special interest to anthropologists and sociologists because of its historical acceptance of male homosexuality. The practice probably arose because from ancient times unmarried men and adolescent boys were required to live and work together outside the town of Shali, secluded for several years from any access to available women. In 1900, the German egyptologist George Steindorff reported that, "the feast of marrying a boy was celebrated with great pomp, and the money paid for a boy sometimes amounted to fifteen pound, while the money paid for a woman was a little over one pound."[9] The archaeologist Count Byron de Prorok reported in 1937 that "an enthusiasm could not have been approached even in Sodom... Homosexuality was not merely rampant, it was raging...Every dancer had his boyfriend...[and] chiefs had harems of boys.[10]
Walter Cline noted that, "all normal Siwan men and boys practice sodomy...the natives are not ashamed of this; they talk about it as openly as they talk about love of women, and many if not most of their fights arise from homosexual competition....Prominent men lend their sons to each other. All Siwans know the matings which have taken place among their sheiks and their sheiks' sons....Most of the boys used in sodomy are between twelve and eighteen years of age."[11] In the late 1940s, a Siwan merchant told the visiting British novelist Robin Maugham that the Siwan men "will kill each other for boy. Never for a woman".[12]"

                                             
Ancient Celts
"According to Aristotle, although most "belligerent nations" were strongly influenced by their women, the Celts were unusual because their men openly preferred male lovers (Politics II 1269b).[44] H. D. Rankin in Celts and the Classical World notes that "Athenaeus echoes this comment (603a) and so does Ammianus (30.9). It seems to be the general opinion of antiquity."[45] In book XIII of his Deipnosophists, the Roman Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus, repeating assertions made by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC (Bibliotheca historica 5:32), wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating that "the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused". Rankin argues that the ultimate source of these assertions is likely to be Poseidonius and speculates that these authors may be recording male "bonding rituals".[46] "

                                                             

Ancient Rome
"In Ancient Greece and Phrygia, and later in the Roman Republic, the Goddess Cybele was worshiped by a cult of people who castratedthemselves, and thereafter took female dress and referred to themselves as female.[14][39] These early transsexual figures have also been referred to as early gay role models by several authors.[40][41]
In Ancient Rome the young male body remained a focus of male sexual attention, but relationships were between older free men and slaves or freed youths who took the receptive role in sex. All the emperors with the exception of Claudius took male lovers. The Hellenophile emperor Hadrian is renowned for his relationship with Antinous.
In Roman patriarchal society, it was socially acceptable for an adult male citizen to take the penetrative role in same-sex relations.Freeborn male minors were strictly protected from sexual predators (see Lex Scantinia), and men who willingly played the "passive" role in homosexual relations were disparaged. No law or moral censure was directed against homosexual behaviors as such, as long as the citizen took the dominant role with a partner of lower status such as a slave, prostitute, or someone considered infamis, of no social standing.
During the Renaissance, wealthy cities in northern Italy—Florence and Venice in particular—were renowned for their widespread practice of same-sex love, engaged in by a considerable part of the male population and constructed along the classical pattern of Greece and Rome.[42][43] Attitudes toward homosexual behavior changed when the Empire fell under Christian rule; see for instance legislation of Justinian I."


Ancient Persia
"In pre-modern Islam there was a "widespread conviction that beardless youths possessed a temptation to adult men as a whole, and not merely to a small minority of deviants."[29] Muslim—often Sufi—poets in medieval Arab lands and in Persia wrote odes to the beautiful wine boys who served them in the taverns. In many areas the practice survived into modern times, as documented by Richard Francis Burton, André Gide, and others. Homoerotic themes were present in poetry and other literature written by some Muslims from the medieval period onwards and which celebrated love between men. In fact these were more common than expressions of attraction to women.[30]
Persian poets, such as Sa’di (d. 1291), Hafiz (d. 1389), and Jami (d. 1492), wrote poems replete with homoerotic allusions. The two most commonly documented forms were commercial sex with transgender young males or males enacting transgender roles exemplified by the köçeks and the bacchás, and Sufi spiritual practices in which the practitioner admired the form of a beautiful boy in order to enter ecstatic states and glimpse the beauty of god."

Ancient India
"Throughout Hindu and Vedic texts there are many descriptions of saints, demigods, and even the Supreme Lord transcending gender norms and manifesting multiple combinations of sex and gender. There are several instances in ancient Indian epic poetry of same sex depictions and unions by gods and goddesses. There are several stories of depicting love between same sexes especially among kings and queens. Kamasutra, the ancient Indian treatise on love talks about feelings for same sexes. In South Asia the Hijra are a caste of third-gender, or transgender group who live a feminine role. Hijra may be born male or intersex, and some may have been born female.[27]"

                                   
Africa

"Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships," named motsoalle.[4] E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors (in the northern Congo) routinely took on boy-wives between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex with their older husbands. The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by the elders he spoke to.[5]"


Americas
"Among indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European colonization, a common form of same-sex sexuality centered around the figure of the Two-Spirit individual. Typically this individual was recognized early in life, given a choice by the parents to follow the path and, if the child accepted the role, raised in the appropriate manner, learning the customs of the gender it had chosen. Two-Spirit individuals were commonly shamans and were revered as having powers beyond those of ordinary shamans. Their sexual life was with the ordinary tribe members of the same sex.[13]
American Native tribes had third-gender roles.[14] These include "berdaches" (a derogatory term for genetic males who assumed a feminine role) and "passing women" (genetic females who took on a masculine role). The term "berdache" is not a Native American word; rather it was a European definition covering a range of third-gender people in different tribes. Not all Native American tribes had transgender people.[15][16]"



                                                

czwartek, 14 lutego 2013

Leda and the Swan






















"Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces, or rapes, Leda."


"The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheos; small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing poses, in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance."





















                                                  Dimensions height 52 cm
                                                                    width 36 cm
                                                                    depth 4 cm







A mosaic from Cyprus (c. 3rdC AD)

o sobie



Rzeźba mnie kręci od zawsze. To, co jest w niej wspaniałe, to współudział światła. Światło nadaje jej życie, uwypukla wielowymiarowość. Percepcja jej formy zmienia się w ciągu dnia, powoli, stopniowo promienie Słońca zmieniają natężenie i barwę. Pod tym względem, podobnie jak architektura, jest materią dużo bardziej ożywioną niż zwykło się uważać.

Każda kolejna rzeźba jest nową przygodą, podróżą, doświadczeniem i wyzwaniem.

Zarówno to, co się dzieje na co dzień jak i kultury starożytne są dla mnie źródłem inspiracji.  Okresowo mieszkam w rejonach, gdzie ślady tych wspaniałości są na wyciągnięcie ręki…

Tematyką pokazanych tu rzeźb jest pochwała witalności, otwartości, libido. Afirmują one też tradycję, nie tylko starożytną. Mam nadzieję, że ich oglądanie sprawi Widzom radość.

Technika wykonania to odlew w wytrzymałych żywicach syntetycznych wysokiej jakości. Każda rzeźba jest unikatowa, wykonana w limitowanej serii kilku egzemplarzy,  czasami pokryta polichromią lub pozłocona.



 

czwartek, 7 lutego 2013

Helios




                                       



































                                                           Dimensions height 58 cm
                                                                             width  20 cm
                                                                             depth  5  cm



"Helios was imagined as a handsome god crowned with the shining aureole of the Sun, who drove the chariot of the sun across the sky each day to earth-circling Oceanus and through the world-ocean returned to the East at night. Homer described Helios's chariot as drawn by solar steeds (Iliad xvi.779); later Pindar described it as drawn by "fire-darting steeds" (Olympian Ode 7.71). Still later, the horses were given fiery names: Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon.


As time passed, Helios was increasingly identified with the god of light, Apollo. However, in spite of their syncretism, they were also often viewed as two distinct gods (Helios was a Titan, whereas Apollo was an Olympian). The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology was Sol, specifically Sol Invictus.



Helios was sometimes characterized with the epithet Helios Panoptes ("the all-seeing"). In the story told in the hall of Alcinous in the Odyssey (viii.300ff), Aphrodite, the consort of Hephaestus, secretly beds Ares, but all-seeing Helios spies on them and tells Hephaestus, who ensnares the two lovers in nets invisibly fine, to punish them."





środa, 6 lutego 2013

Mascaron



                         


                         





                                                     


 



                                                                   


                                                                   






                                                       
                                     



                               








                                         Dimensions height 26 cm
                                                          width  26 cm
                                                          depth  5 cm 


wtorek, 5 lutego 2013

Minotaur




















                               

























                                                                                                   

                                                                 
                     

                                                  Dimensions height 56 cm
                                                                    width 20 cm
                                                                    depth  5 cm




          "In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Ancient Greek: Μῑνώταυρος [miːnɔ̌ːtau̯ros], Latin: Minotaurus, Etruscan Θevrumineś), was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man[1] or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull".[2] He dwelt at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction[3] designed by the architect Daedalus and his sonIcarus, on the command of King Minos of Crete. The Minotaur was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus."

"The term Minotaur derives from the Ancient Greek Μῑνώταυρος, a compound of the name Μίνως (Minos) and the noun ταύρος "bull", translated as "(the) Bull of Minos". In Crete, the Minotaur was known by its proper name, Asterion,[4] a name shared with Minos' foster-father.[5]"


"The Minotaur is commonly represented in Classical art with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull. One of the figurations assumed by the river god Achelous in wooing Deianira is as a man with the head of a bull, according to Sophocles' Trachiniai."

"From Classical times through the Renaissance, the Minotaur appears at the center of many depictions of the Labyrinth.[8] Ovid's Latin account of the Minotaur, which did not elaborate on which half was bull and which half man, was the most widely available during the Middle Ages, and several later versions show the reverse of the Classical configuration, a man's head and torso on a bull's body, reminiscent of a centaur.[9] This alternative tradition survived into the Renaissance, and still figures in some modern depictions, such as Steele Savage's illustrations for Edith Hamilton's Mythology (1942)."




                                  Minotauros Myron NAMA 1664 n1.jpg

Minotaur bust, (National Archaeological Museum of Athens)




                            

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth, engraving of a 16th-century CE gem in the Medici Collection in the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence




                             

The bronze "Horned God" from Enkomi, Cyprus

niedziela, 4 listopada 2012

Amulet










                                     







                                       

                                     








                                   





                                        Dimensions height 20 cm
                                                          width 23 cm
                                                          depth  3 cm







Lost amulet of Amenhotep III ? :)

"Amenhotep III (Hellenized as Amenophis III; Egyptian Amāna-Ḥātpa; meaning Amun is Satisfied) also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC[4] after his father Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep III was the son of Thutmose by a minor wife Mutemwiya.[5]
His reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. When he died (probably in the 39th year of his reign), his son initially ruled as Amenhotep IV, but later changed his own royal name to Akhenaten."


"His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex inThebes, but unfortunately, the king chose to build it too close to the floodplain and less than two hundred years later, it stood in ruins. Much of the masonry was purloined by Merneptah and later pharaohs for their own construction projects.[45] The Colossi of Memnon—two massive stone statues, eighteen meters high, of Amenhotep that stood at the gateway of his mortuary temple—are the only elements of the complex that remained standing. Amenhotep III also built the Third Pylon at Karnak and erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the Temple of Mut, south of Karnak.[46] Some of the most magnificent statues of New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures.[47] Several beautiful black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from Tanis in the Delta.[47]
One of the most stunning finds of royal statues dating to his reign was made as recently as 1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep III's colonnade of the Temple of Luxor where acache of statues was found, including a 6 feet (1.8 m)-high pink quartzite statue of the king wearing the Double Crown found in near-perfect condition.[47] It was mounted on a sled, and may have been a cult statue.[47] The only damage it had sustained was that the name of the god Amun had been hacked out wherever it appeared in the pharaoh's cartouche, clearly done as part of the systematic effort to eliminate any mention of this god during the reign of his successor, Akhenaton.[47]"







                                          

                                            Amenhotep III, Musée du Louvre




                               File:Colossal Amenhotep III British Museum.jpg

                                        Colossal statue of Amenhotep III






                                    

Queen Tiye, whose husband, Amenhotep III, may have been depicted to her right in this broken statue






                                     

Faience decoration with Amenhotep III's prenomen from his Theban palace, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artillery





















                                        Dimensions height 16 cm
                                                          width  37 cm
                                                          depth  3   cm