An exciting exhibition from above – guest blog from Dagmar Meneghello.
Guest blog from Dagmar Meneghello. To learn more about cultural events on Palmizana, follow them on Facebook.
On the occasion of the festivities for the Day of the Town of Hvar on Villa Meneghello, Križni rat, I. Vučetića 23, on the 30th september at 20:00 hours there will be the opening of exhibition.
TOUCH OF ANGELS
AND OTHER WINGED CREATURES THAT GUARD, AMAZE AND FRIGHTEN US
The eternal city has celebrated the turn of the century with a glorious manifestation – ANGELS ABOVE ROME, that started already on Easter 1997, wanting to put accent on humanity’s largest task – unity of the whole wolrd, all humans, all races, all religions…
Angels flew the sky, were projected on a large scale on buildings, new skyscrapers as well as on ancient remains from the past… The museums have taken the most guarded paintings from their vaults painted through all historical periods, the churches have lighted by thousands of lamps their unequalled treasures, the galleries have featured numerous various dreams by old and recent artists. One could hear angelic music from the concert halls, and the world’s greatest designers showed their angelic creations on catwalks.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands angels of all shapes, sizes, different to obscurity, but stilll majestic and amazing, guarded the eternal city, its citizens and myriad visitors that came from all the continents…
It was here, at the turn of the century, walking on the bridge of the magnificent Angelic fortress, surrounded by wonderous, really angelically beautiful, sculptures of angels, looking at the glistening light city I relized just how widespread and strong the power of angels still really is. They don’t exist just in churches, the Bible or in literature, or disgraced, kitchy, devalued by conumer society on numerous stands and counters of trivial shopping malls, massproduced in a billion copies. Even today they have remained beings of light. Powerful even in darkness, fearless in heaven and hell, as thought and forever immortalized by human consciousness, belief and imagination, in order to surpass the fear from short existence on this, earthly world, prolonging it into eternal, godly world.
The word angel came from the greek angelos and means the one who brings news, messenger. An important greek philosopher Socrates saw in the winged god Eros “a great demon” that inspires the lovers and pushes them into love madness… The godess of victory – Nike – surely contributed to the later depicting of angels. The Greeks depicted her floating with large, powerful wings… Little sensual angels of the Renaissance and Baroque directly follow the Greek god of love. Although their hands held flowers, flutes, trumpets or violins, while the arrows of love remained in front of church’s door and the history of the new age.
But the Greek culture took over the messenger from gods from the Hebrew tradition – from Malah. The Hebrews have again inherited him from the babylonian-persian culture. In Persian prophet Zarathustra we find the ancestor of all catholic archangels. In Asiria on the wall of the Assurnasirpals 1st palace, built in 883 B.C., there is a powerful male figure with wings. In the man’s world respect and trust is given to a male being, there won’t be a female angel for a long time.
In time, as human world developed and divided hierarchically, heaven became versatile and complicately structured. God, Archangels, seraphims, cherubs. Complete armies of angels that had strict tasks and duties.
Like human worlds, even God’s had it’s share of turmoils and disorders, mutinies, that ended in huge conflicts, the fall of angels, their banishing from heaven and pushing into the deep dark of hell. There, in revesed mirror, government of evil hierarchy rose again. Still deeper, more horrid, devilish awful – Satan.
The angels are God’s connection to humans. There are countless. As Mohammed said – when it rains every raindrop is followed by an angel. Like numerous raindrops, numerous are also works by today’s artists that have never lost interest in those creatrures of light and darkness.
Even today we are breathless by the flight of falcon or eagle…
No matter how many various flying machines we invented, how many stars and star worlds we have discovered, the mystery of the universe still frighten us with the secret.
