``..man doth not live by bread _alone_, but man doth live by bread. Unite and take the bread from the Man, and spread the bread... CB
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Get the Bread and spread the Bread, Amen brother. Get down, Reverend Brown.
Butt seriously. I was thinking about jobs in religion. Religion used to have plenty of jobs, and they were all art jobs. So, I have to reconsider this whole business. I guess that's why I was always attracted to the Catholics and didn't much care for the Protestants. Not enough jobs. Paint, plaster, some interior finish work in hardwoods and that was it. The Protestants just didn't have much to do, except stand around dressed in black and talk shit about other people.
The Catholics on the other hand changed their clothes all the time, sometimes twice an hour. And they had lots of jobs in stone work, fancy plaster work, gold leaf, lots of silver work in pots and pans, lace, stained glass, big projects in wood, fresco, tile and mosaic. Here look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:StMarkBasilicaCeilingView.JPG
I think everything you see in this picture is made out of little cut pieces of venetian mosaic. That's a lot of work, a lot of religion jobs.
Some of my first art projects were mosaic done in high school, because my teacher, Joe Gatto liked mosaic, and mosaics were popular for coffee table tops in that era.
The real key to it is the design, which has be gone over and over in order to get the desired effect. You sketch it out in pencil, then apply water colors in the approximate colors of the tiles you have. You set the tiles out, and then mix the watercolors to match (and you number the colors to the tiles). Then you paint the watercolor on between the lines like the paint by numbers painting kits. You rule a grid over the the design and project or proporition the grid on the surface you intend to cover, and estimate by eye the lines of the finished design drawn between the grid lines. For each area, you spread a thin layer of mastic, now made of industrial adheshive, but it used to be a very sticky mortar. Then you start cutting and setting the pieces of glass tile in place following your color chart. For large single color areas you can lay out a sheet of cloth (or paper) and cover it with a water base glue and set the tiles upside down, then cut the back of the sheet to fit the area. Lay on a thin smear of mortar and set the entire sheet in place at once. When the mastic dries, you soak the paper and scrub it off or soak the cloth backing in water and peal it off. This is probably how the large areas in St. Marks were covered. Since the pieces are small they will conform to the rounded surfaces.
The finish coat is a white, high lime content mortar (called grout) towelled or brushed into the steams, pressed between each piece and then wiped. (How to make lime. You mine limestone, crush it, and then burn it with charcole in a kiln. The calcium residue is lime. The lime is mixed with various grades of sand and water for finidhed product. Lime beaters are a separate trade by tradition. More jobs in religion).
After this has set, you go back over the whole surface with a stiff bristle scrub brush and polish the surface clean. Since these surfaces are never touched except for an odd millennium cleaning, they essentially last forever. Even the Roman baths that were used daily were covered in mosaic (same job, different religion) and essentially out lasted the fucking empire.
The Arabs, Persians, and Indians were real masters of this craft, even if most of their designs were non-figurative. They all had the same jobs in religion even if the religions were different.
Fresco is essentially a light duty variant. You mix the lime mortar in a different ratio to sand, spread it and paint directly with a crude watercolor made of finely ground earths or colored minerals mixed in water. The mineral color particles are fused to the curing lime and produce a very rich color. This shit is like magic. If you have ever liked to paint watercolors on expensive paper that sucks up the color and illuminates it, you should try fresco. One stroke on a warm lime surface and that's it. When everything is just right, it is watercolor on steroids and powered by neon.
Our gods were never created by philosophers or priests and there was absolutely nothing divine about them. They were created by the working class trades, all those nameless people, just doing their jobs in religion. From Tutakhamen to Venus, from the winged Victory and Diana to Shiva, Molach, Jesus and Allah---just a bunch of men hammering in stone, wood, brass, casting in bronze, working gold, or painting on lime, cutting glass tile or fitting tiny pieces of marble and alabaster onto a wall, or drawing letter forms in octopus or squid ink on sheep skin or recycled cotton cloth, screened and cured into paper.
And all through the millienia, these nameless minons never knew they were the gods they were so studiously making. But it doesn't end in the past. Our gods of modernity are forces, historical, ahistorical and beyond, laden with time and space, abstract entities, mysterious thrusts and pulls, and sure enough our arts are full of these abstractions that have no figurative element at all. Violent clashes by night dominate our imaginative interior landscapes, ironic icons full of self-reflextive cartoons and the manque of conscieousness, critiques absent a subject, and on and on. We can see them all in the art movements of the last century. These are the nameless entities of power and privilage that battle one another over our souls and our fate in a vast pantheon of obscure origin. Contrary to Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude, we are haunted by the din of the multitude of the gods that assail us...like Ovid's Song of Pythagarus,
Full sail, I voyage Over the boundless oceans, and I tell you Nothing is permenant in all the world. All things are fluent; every image forms, Wandering through change. Time itself a river In constant movement, and the hours flow by Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing, Forever fugitive, forever new.
That which has been, is not, that which was not, Begins to be; motion and moment always In process of renewal. Look, the night, Worn out, aims toward the brightness, and sun's glory Succeeds the dark. The color of the sky Is different at midnight, when tired things Lie all at rest, from what it is at morning When Lucifer rides his snowy horse, before Aurora paints the sky for Phoebus' coming.
The shield of the god reddens at early morning, Reddens at evening, but is white at noonday In purest air, farther from the earth's contagion. And the Moon-goddess changes in the nightime, Lesser today than yesterday, if waning, Greater tomorrow than today, when crescent. (Metamorphosis, Humphreys, 371p)
Even poets had regular jobs in the old days.
CG
