Journal articles on the topic 'Painting, Israeli'

Flowers of Galilee breaks new ground in modern political discourse. Thisbook recommends a democratic one-state solution in all of historicalPalestine and the return of the Palestinians to rebuild their villages. Thebeautiful front cover painting by Suleiman Mansour of Jerusalem lovinglydepicts a Palestinian family, children seated on a donkey, walking past a hillcovered with olive trees. Similarly, Israel Shamir’s essays portray the peaceful,pastoral landscape of the Holy Land and the humanity of its inhabitants,juxtaposed against the ugliness and inhumanity of Jewish racism.These thought-provoking essays, written in Jaffa during the al-AqsaIntifada in 2001-02, call for Jews to leave their sense of exclusivity andplead for human equality. The author, a Russian immigrant to Israel in 1969,followed his meditations to their inevitable conclusion, renounced Judaism,and was baptized in the Palestinian Orthodox Christian Church ofJerusalem. A brilliant storyteller with a vast knowledge of history, he discussescurrent events and their global implications with brutal honesty andtenderness. His clear insights and lyrical use of language to illustrate social,religious, and political complexities make him the Khalil Gibran of our time.An important chapter, “The Last Action Heroes,” memorializes theSpring 2002 siege of Bethlehem. The Israeli army surrounded 40 monksand priests and 200 Palestinians seeking refuge in the Church of Nativity.For a month, “people starved ... Stench of corpses and of infected woundsfilled the old church” (p. 63). The UN did nothing, but a few InternationalSolidarity Movement activists from America and Europe, including theauthor’s son, broke the siege. One group distracted the soldiers while theothers rushed into the church’s gates, brought food and water, and helpednegotiate a surrender.Shamir deconstructs the legal fictions of the state of Israel and the elusivePalestinian state: “Israelis who would like to live in peace with theirPalestinian neighbors ... cannot counteract the raw muscle of the AmericanJewish leadership” (p.179). He further dissects the Jewish Holocaust cultand other Zionist public relations tactics. He exposes the two-state solutionas a political bluff, calls on the world to cut off aid to Israel, and admonishesthe Muslim world for indulging in usury ...

This paper explores the developments and trends in higher education from a pedagogical perspective (specifically, multidisciplinary curricula) and research perspective (the interdisciplinary approach), and traces them from a last resort option to their recognition as a legitimate development with added value. The paper focuses on a case study that integrates two disciplines, art and literature, based on the poem by the Israeli poet Rachel entitled My Book of Poems and the painting The Scream by Norwegian artist Eduard Munch. The interdisciplinary approach opens up possibilities of enriching, expanding horizons, and breaking boundaries, and can grant graduates of the higher education system a cultural perspective suitable for the current generation of students, who typically use multiple interactive media and platforms, often simultaneously. This paper may shed light on teaching and learning of many diverse fields. The case study illustrates the joy of interdisciplinary learning and its academic benefits, despite the fact that for years, higher education institutions have tended to refer to researchers’ specializations in specific academic disciplines. This case study may serve as a model or source of inspiration for multidisciplinary learning involving motifs and topics that traditionally represent specific disciplines.

Dorot Ruth, Mosaic of Israel’s landscapes as an expression of geographical, cultural, and religious diversity. “Images” vol. XXV, no. 34. Poznań 2019. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Pp. 87–113. ISSN 1731-450X. DOI 10.14746/i.2019.34.06.
 Israel is tiny in its dimensions, yet huge in the spectrum of its landscapes. It is ancient in its history, yet young as a state. In honor of the 70th independence day of the State of Israel, celebrated in 2018, this paper presents a mosaic of 12 landscape paintings, from the country’s most southern point to the most northern one, by Israeli artists who represent, in diverse styles, the state’s geographic and historic wealth in a visual-artistic sense.

Abstract. In 2008, excavations at Herodium revealed magnificent secco wall paintings and stucco decorations adorning the central chamber at the top of the royal theatre. The wall paintings, dated to the first century B.C.E., have been preserved up to a height of 6 meters. However, shortly after the discovery, salts weathering and structural faults caused severe damages to the decorations. The conservation process to restore the wall paintings lasted almost a decade. These efforts helped stabilize the state of wall painting, but in a very fragile manner, while the deterioration factors are still present, any slight change in the condition of the enclosure, could damage the paintings. This study is aimed at assisting the conservators in developing a tool that will offer a glance to the hidden threats at the subsurface, and by that help protect historic monuments from salt weathering. This paper will describe an innovative methodology with particular emphasis on novel multimodal convolutional neural networks (CNNs) technologies to process data of non-destructive testing (NDT) for detection and mapping soluble salts at the subsurface of ancient wall paintings. Prior to preforming the system protocol in situ, a laboratory simulation was carried out to study thermochemical behaviour of soluble salts, chlorides and sulphates, within different subsets. The preliminary results of the simulation will be presented in this paper.

AbstractIn 1906, on the occasion of the Rembrandt jubilee, Jozef Israels bore witness to his lifelong admiration of Rembrandt and his art, conjuring up a picture of the master working on the Night Watch. The vision he evoked was of a painter in the throes of creation, 'dipping his broadest brushes deep into the paint of his large palette' in order to give more power and relief to certain areas of the painting. The author contends that this description is not consistent with what really went on in 17th-century studios. Numerous arguments support the hypothesis that up into the 19th century palettes were not only much smaller than the 19th-century ones envisioned by Jozef Israels, but that they did not usually carry the complete range of available oil-based pigments. On thc contrary, painters adhered to the diehard tradition of loading their palettes with a limited number of tints suitable for painting a certain passage. Support for this proposition comes from various directions. The most important sources are paintings of studio scenes and self-portraits of painters with their palettes. Examination of the depicted palettes, an examination conducted on the actual paintings, has yielded plausible grounds for assuming that painters strove for verisimilitude in their renderings of palettes. This is borne out by the surprising consistency of the examined material. On certain 15 th and 16th-century representations of St. Luke painting the Madonna, his palette is seen to contain only a few shades of blue, with occasionally white and black. Other palettes on which a greater variety of colours are depicted are incomplete, representing the range needed for the parts of the painting which were the most important and most diflicult to paint - the human skin. Texts by De Mayerne and Beurs gave rise to this assumption. One of the chief duties of the apprentice was to prepare his master's palettes. According to a dialogue in the late 17th-century Volpato manuscript, the master's mere indication of which part of the painting he was going to work on sufficed for the apprentice to prepare the palette. This implies that a specific number of pigments were necessary for the depiction of a particular element of reality. The idea is supported by the countless recipes for the depiction of every part of the visible world which have been handed down to us, notably in Willem Beurs' book but in other sources too. The implication is that the method of a 17th-century artist differed fundamentally from that of artists of the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century. Whereas there are substantial grounds for assuming that painters of the latter period tended to work up an entire painting more or less evenly, painters of earlier centuries executed their work - over an underdrawing or an underpainting in sections, on a manner which is best compared with the 'giornate' in fresco painting. This kind of method does not necessarily mean that a painter did not proceed from a tonal conception of an entire painting. Indeed, Rembrandt's manner of underpainting shows that his aims did not differ all that much from, say, Jozef Israels. Technical and economic circumstances are more likely the reason why painters continued to work in sections in the Baroque. With regard to the economic aspect: grinding pigments was a lengthy operation and the resulting paint dried fast. Consequently, no more pigments were prepared than necessary, so as to avoid waste. With regard to the technical aspect: before the development of compatible tube paints, whose uniformity of substance and behaviour are guaranteed by all manner of means, painters had to take into account the fact that every pigment had its own characteristics and properties; some pigments were not amenable to mixing, others were transparent by nature, other opaque, etc. This is best illustrated by paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. However, the tradition persisted into the 17th century and was also carried on by Rembrandt, as scientific research has shown. Neutron-activating radiographic examination reveals that certain pigments only occur in isolated areas (as far as these pigments were not used in the monochrome undcrpainting). Scrutiny of paint samples has moreover revealed that a layer of paint does not as a rule contain more than two to five, or in very exceptional cases six, pigments. Having been made aware of this procedure, however, we can also observe it in stylistic characteristics of the painting, and we realize that for the aforesaid reasons a late Rembrandt is more akin to a Raphael than to a Jozef Israels. In the 19th-century discussion of the relationship of style and technique, figures like Semper contended that this relationship was an extremely close one. Riegl, proceeding from the concept of 'Kunstwollen', regarded technique as far less important, more as the 'frictional coefficient' in the realization of a style; while not denying technique's effect on style, Riegl did not consider its influence to be as crucial as Semper did. Paul Taylor's recent research into the concept of 'Houditng' have demonstrated the extent to which aspects as tone and colour served to create an illusion of space in the 17th century, the chief priority being the painting as a tonal and colouristic entity. If we assume that the working principles of a 15th and a 17th-century painter did not fundamentally differ, it becomes clear that the pictorial 'management' involved in attuning tones and colours so convincingly as to produce the tonal unity so typical of Baroque painting, was quite an achievement. The technical and economic limitations mentioned above in connection with the palette may thus be seen as exemplifying Riegl's view of technique as a frictional coefficient in achieving pictorial ends.

In this contribution the author goes deeper into the life, the oeuvre and the network of the all but forgotten artist Bramine Hubrecht (1855-1913). At the centre is one of her paintings – four veiled young girls entirely dressed in white in a church interior. This work is now in Museum Catharijneconvent. The painting was previously attributed to Isaac Israels (1865-1934) on the basis of two false signatures. New information has meant that it can now be identified as a work by the painter Bramine Hubrecht. One of her sketchbooks in the Rijksmuseum and a watercolour in the Pulchri Cabinet, a unique artists’ initiative in The Hague, helped in unravelling the story. These two works, which show exactly the same girls, can beattributed to Hubrecht with absolute certainty. New biographical information has reinforced this new attribution and also sheds light on the meaning of the subject. These ‘brides’ prove to be part of the Processione dei Misteri del Venerdì Santo,which is still held every year on the evening of Good Friday in Taormina, the little village in Sicily where Hubrecht lived at the beginning of the twentieth century. The new attribution has also prompted research into Hubrecht’s life and works – research which has not been carried out until now.

Abstract My article examines various artworks from Europe and Israel that portray and are inspired by the Book of Ruth. While in Jewish sources such as the Talmud (Yevamot 47b) Ruth is seen as an immigrant and a convert to Judaism, European artists since the seventeenth century highlighted different episodes and aspects of the biblical story that suited their social, political, and religious worldviews. Notably, the expansion of colonialism during the nineteenth century transformed the depictions of Ruth. While in the canvases of painters such as Pieter Lastman and Jan Victors Ruth is depicted as a model of religious identification, in the paintings of Joseph Anton Koch and Francesco Hayez she epitomises “oriental” otherness. Furthermore, while early European painters underscore the immigration of Ruth, Hayez represents Ruth as a dweller of the “East.” Zionist artists were influenced by European traditions of depicting the Book of Ruth but developed a unique fusion between strategies of identification and differentiation. Artists such as Ze’ev Raban (1890–1970) portrayed the story of Ruth as both ancient and contemporary, while imitating and appropriating Palestinian tropes in order to imagine the Zionist narrative of homecoming. The contemporary Israeli artist Leor Grady (b. 1966), on the other hand, addresses questions of immigration and homecoming while exploring the Book of Ruth in his solo exhibition Bethlehem (2019, Tel Aviv). While Raban’s illustrations ignore the Jewish experience of exile, Grady’s oeuvre epitomises what the Israeli historian Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin sees as “exile within sovereignty.” Instead of recounting a linear historical narrative that begins with exile and culminates with the return to the Promised Land, Grady underscores that every return is also a departure and every departure a return. In this manner, Grady foregrounds the voices silenced by Zionist historiography and challenges the exclusion of the Palestinian narrative.

This paper claims the heraldry of the twelve tribes of Israel as a distinct iconographic invention in post-Reformation England. It is argued that the theme became popular during the reign of King James, a period usually regarded as iconophobic. Little-studied examples of church wall-painting are understood in relation to analogous bible illustrations and writings which have been ignored by historians of this period. The depictions of the twelve patriarchs themselves, part of a ‘Laudian’ beautification of Burton Latimer church in the 1630s, during the incumbency of Robert Sibthorpe allows exploration of the shifting meanings of this Reformation subject.

The Holocaust and Rebirth in the Works of Sara Gliksman-Fajtlowicz, a Painter From Łódź, 1909–2005 Sara Gliksman-Fajtlowicz, a painter, came from a well-off family of Majerowiczs, the owners of opticians’ shops in Łódź. She studied at private painting and drawing schools in Łódźand Warsaw. Before the outbreak of World War II, she was active in the Polish art milieu. In 1933, she became a member of the Trade Union of Polish Artists (Związek Zawodowy Polskich Artystów Plastyków, ZZPAP) and participated in its exhibitions in Łódź, Warsaw, Kraków,and Lviv. She painted mainly landscapes, still lifes, and—less frequently—portraits. She published her works in the union magazine Forma. In 1940, she was displaced to the Łódźghetto where she worked as a graphic artist at the Statistics Department. Thanks to this she could obtain art materials. Her clandestine activity was documenting life in the ghetto in paintings and drawings. She survived the liquidation of the ghetto and then was forced to work on cleaning that area. Liberated on 19 January 1945, she returned to her house where some of her prewar works had survived. After 1945 she continued her artistic career and exhibited with the ZZPAP, as well as with the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. In 1957, she emigrated to Israel. Gliksman died in Tel Aviv in 2005. The aim of this article is to verify and describe Sara Gliksman’s biography, to present her activities in the Polish-Jewish artistic community of postwar Poland, as well as to place her works in the context of issues concerning survivors’ memory and artistic attitudes toward the Holocaust, and art as a manifestation of hope for the rebirth of Jewish life and culture in postwar Poland in the second half of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s.

The article is devoted to the biography of Justine Frank (1900-1943), a marginalized member of the surrealist movement, a painter and writer who combined Judaism with pornography, a critic of the Zionist project who tragically died in Palestine. Written by an Israeli artist and an expert on the interwar avant-garde, Roee Rosen, it is not only an artistic provocation – a part of a larger experiment in the field of the so-called parafiction also including editions of Frank’s novel Sweet Sweat and exhibitions of her paintings – but also an interesting statement in the discussion on the possibilities and limitations of feminist criticism, as it points out the problem of fabrication of the indispensable precursors.

This semblance is a post mortem tribute that the Mexican Society of Soil Science A. C. (SMCS), concedes to Dr. Yoav Bashan, one of the most prominent researches of soil microorganisms. Dr. Bashan was born on October 12, 1951 in Haifa, Israel and died on September 19, 2018 in Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. He was an active researcher of the interaction among plant growth promoting bacteria, plants of anthropogenic importance and the environment. Due to his hard work, in 2013, he was awarded by the SMCS, A.C. with the “Award for Merit in Soil Biology Dr. Jesús Caballero Mellado”. Two little-known facets of Dr. Bashan were his passion for painting and the hobby for collecting handicrafts. His scientific legacy is recorded in the annals of the Terra Latinoamericana journal, the official magazine of scientific outreach of the SMCS, A. C., as well as many journals around the world (Figure 1).

When in 1714 the artist Israel ben Mordecai Liśnicki from Jaryczów painted the interior of the wooden synagogue of Chodorów, today in the L'viv (Polish, Lwów) region of western Ukraine, he did not know that one of his paintings would be the subject of divergent interpretations by art historians some three hundred years later. The controversy centers around the depiction of an eagle grasping in its talons two hares trying to escape outward. The hares are grasped by the neck (fig. 1). This depiction, located in the center of the ceiling, is surrounded by a decorative medallion inscribed with the verse “Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young, so did He spread His wings and take him, bear him along on His talons” (Deuteronomy 32:11). In the background are the twelve signs of the zodiac.

Abstract The article highlights the added value with which the scene of David with the head of Goliath has accumulated in the seventeenth century. During this period these paintings were intended to represent the young David as a penitent saint atoning for his sins rather than the divinely supported triumph of the young shepherd over Goliath, the skilled and talented military hero. What is emphasized is the a-temporal nature of this iconography, using David, the boy who killed Goliath as atoning for his most grievous sin that he committed many years later when he was already king of Israel toward Uriah the Hittite. In what follows I would like to characterize the unique iconography developed in the early seventeenth century, which represents the young David as a penitent while Goliath’s head signals the memento mori. Goliath’s severed head stands for the skulls appearing in other visual representations of penitent saints.

AbstractThe sparse literature on Dutch collectors around 1900 makes no mention of Hendrik Spaan (1851-1915; ill. I), a rather unfair omission. A baker of the Hague who lived at Korte Beestenmarkt 2, Spaan concentrated almost exclusively on the work of contemporary artists of The Hague, whether established or not. He was on good and even friendly terms with many of them. The younger ones regarded him as a kind of patron, not only because he purchased work at a time when it was extremely hard to find buyers, but also because he quite literally provided their daily bread when times were hard. One of his closest and longest contacts was undoubtedly with Jozef IsraelS. Interesting evidence of their relationship takes the form of a number of drawings, now scattered, which Israels dedicated to Spaan in gratitude for the pastries which the baker sent to Israels on St. Nicholas' Day for seventeen years (ills. 3a-f). Spaan owned some 1 14 paintings and watercolours, all described in detail in the 19 12 sale calalogue - the only source at our disposal, incidentally. No correspondence pertaining to his purchases exists, nor have any photographs or detailed visitors' descriptions surfaced which might hav e told us something about the hanging of the pictures and the growth of the collection. We do know that Spaan started to collect relatively late, in the early eighteen-eighties. He tended to buy fairly recent work, meaning early work by young artists and late work by such established masters as Israels, Bosboom or Weissenbruch. Judging by his personal contacts and undoubtedly limited funds - certainly in comparison with well-known collectors like Mesdag or Hidde Nijland - we may assume that he often bought pictures directly from artists' studios, avoiding accredited art-dealers whenever possible. Perhaps this accounts for the relatively large number of watercolours in his collection, and for the modest formats of many paintings, especially those by more established artists. Another reason for the latter circumstance may well have been the size of his house, which had to accommodate not only the bakery but his family of five children too. Since the much of the work cannot be traced with any certainty, it is difficult to assess the quality of the collection. Spaan exhibited a marked preference, though, for more or less 'impressionistic' work by representatives of the Hague School and younger artists closely connected with it: Arntzenius, for instance, and notably Willem de Zwart, with eighteen works by far the most generously represented artist in the collection. A striking feature of Spaan's collection, in comparison with others that focused on the Hague School, is the absence of its French precursors, the like-minded artists of the Barbizon School. Spaan was interested solely in Dutch art, preferably from his home-town of The Hague. In this, his collection is 'narrow' rather than specialized: work by younger artists who pursued a different, more audacious or more experimental path - figures such as Breitner, Witsen, Verster or Suze Robertson, not to mention the symbolist movement - is almost totally absent. Although his collection displayed a great variety of themes, he was not concerned with representative surveys either. Nor was he interested in medium or technique: his collection does not contain any drawings or the etchings that were so popular in his day. What remained was nonetheless a good and certainly representative cross-section of Hague, or Hague-oriented, art of the period of the Marises and Israels, pictures which fetched enormous prices on Spaan's death. Willem Maris' 'Morgenstond' ('Daybreak', ill. 12), which went for 12,000 guilders, beat them all. 'Together with portraits of Spaan and his wife (ill. 2), it was bequeathed in 1977 to the Haags Cemeentemuseum.

Abstract In the last few years there has been a world wide increase in the incidence of multiple myeloma (MM). Epidemiologic studies have suggested that certain occupational and chemical exposures are likely to increase the risk for MM. We performed a retrospective clinical and epidemiological study of MM on 110 cases diagnosed during 2000–2005 in our area, which is a rural and agricultural zone of approximately 400000 people. The incidence of MM in our population was 5.5 new cases /100000 people / year. 43% were females (n= 48) and 57 % males (n = 63). 22% of the patients were younger than 60. 58 patients were of European descent (52%), the vast majority of them from the former USSR (including people from near-Chernobyl); 40 from Asia (36%) and 16 patients (14%) from Africa. We separated the population into three categories: non exposed (physician, teacher, housekeeper, secretary, shop assistant, employee, scientific), suspected (painting, cleaning, microbiology, engineer, aviation, building-worker), and exposed: (petroleum, agriculture, plastic manufacture, textile, ammoniac, asphalt, Chernobyl). 65 % did not have any evidence of toxic exposure, in 23% we could document a significant exposure and in 12% there was a possible such exposure. 57% of the patients were in ISS stage I (b2m< 3.5 and albumin > 3.5), 33%- ISS stage II (b2m < 3.5 and albumin< 3.5) and 10% -ISS stage III (b2m > 3.5). Only 13% displayed lytic lesions at the time of survey. Fifty five patients requiring treatment received conventional therapy including APSCT and thalidomide for residual disease. In a cohort of 10 patients thal/dex was given as second line after achievement of a plateau with MP. This oral treatment allows a convenient ambulatory management and does not hamper stem cell harvesting made several months after discontinuation of MP. New clinical trials allowed us to include six patients for treatment with bortezomib. In conclusion: the high incidence of MM in our area is in accordance with the world wide trend, possibly with a relationship with occupational and environmental risk factors. The heterogeneity of the population of Israel including arabs and new immigrants as well as additional data from others centers of Israel will help us to create a larger data base and to gain a better knowledge of MM in Israel.

AbstractFor more than a century the only eyewitness account of Rembrandt's Portrait of an old woman (fig. 1) was a description made by Wilhelm Bode in 1883. At the time, he was unable to decipher the date, 1632; nor did he know anything about Aeltje Uylenburgh or the history of the panel. However, the painting's provenance has since been revealed, and it can be traced back in an almost unbroken line to its commission, a rare occurrence in Rembrandt's oeuvre. A pendant portrait, now lost, featured the preacher Johannes Sylvius, who is also the subject of an etching by Rembrandt dating from 1633 (fig. 2). Rembrandt had a close relationship with the Sylvius couple and he married their cousin Saskia Uylenburgh in 1634. After Aeltje's death in 1644, the couple's son Cornelis Sylvius inherited the portraits. We know that Cornelis moved to Haarlem in 1647, and that in 1681 he made a will bequeathing the pendants to his son Johannes Sylvius Junior. For the most part of a century they remained in the family. We lose track of the portrait of Johannes Sylvius when, in 1721, Cornelis II Sylvius refurbishes a house on the Kruisstraat in Haarlem. However, thanks to a handful of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century copies, it has been possible to reconstruct the trail followed by Aeltje. In 1778, a copy from Dessau turned up at auction in Frankfurt. It was bought under the name of Johann Heinrich Roos by Henriette Amalie von Anhalt-Dessau. There is a copy of this copy in the museum of Marseilles, attributed Ferdinand Bol (fig. 3). In 2000 an article in the Tribune de Genève revealed that the original had belonged to the Burlamacchi Collection in the eighteenth century, and was then thought to be a portrait of Rembrandt's mother. Jean-Jacques Burlamacchi (1694-1748), a prominent Geneva collector, acquired major works of art, including probably the Rembrandt portrait, while travelling in Holland and Britain around 1720. It was the heirs of Burlamacchi, the Misses de Chapeaurouge, who opened the famous collection to the public. In 1790 or thereabouts, the Swiss portrait painter Marc-Louis Arlaud produced a copy, now in the museum at Lausanne (fig. 4), which for many years was thought to be an autograph work by Rembrandt. The painter Georges Chaix also made a copy, which he exhibited in Geneva in 1823. This work still belongs to the artist's family; unfortunately it has not been possible to obtain an image. After the Burlamacchi Collection was sold in about 1825, the painting was referred to somewhat nostalgically as 'Un Rembrandt "genevois"'. It was bought for 18,000 francs by the Paris art dealer Dubois, who sold it to the London banker William Coesvelt. In 1828, Coesvelt in turn sold the portrait through the London dealer John Smith, who described it as 'the painter's mother, at the age of 62'. We know that the picture was subsequently acquired from Albertus Brondgeest by the banker James de Rothschild (1792-1868) for his country house at Boulogne, as this is mentioned in the 1864 description of Rothschild's collection by Charles Blanc. Baron James's widow, Betty de Rothschild, inherited the portrait in 1868 and it was in Paris that the Berlin museum director Wilhelm Bode (fig. 5) first saw the painting. In his description of 1883 he states that the woman was not, in his opinion, Rembrandt's mother. In 1886 the portrait fell to Betty's son, Baron Alphonse (1827-1905). Bode published a heliogravure of the work in 1897, which remained for many years the only available reproduction (fig. 6). Rembrandt's portrait of a woman was a showpiece in Baron Alphonse's Paris smoking room (fig. 7). Few art historians came to the Rothschild residence and neither Valentiner nor Bredius, who published catalogues of Rembrandt in 1909 and 1935, respectively, had seen the painting. Alphonse's heir was Baron Edouard de Rothschild, who in 1940 fled to America with his daughter Bethsabée. The Germans looted the painting, but immediately after the war it was exhibited, undamaged, in a frame carrying the (deliberately?) misleading name 'Romney' (fig. 8). In 1949, Bethsabée de Rothschild became the rightful owner of the portrait. She took it with her when she moved to Israel in 1962, where under the name of Bathsheva de Rothschild she became a well-known patron of modern dance. In 1978, J. Bruyn en S. Levie of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) travelled to Tel Aviv to examine the painting. Although the surface was covered with a thick nicotine film, they were impressed by its condition. Bruyn and Levie were doubtful, however, that the panel's oval format was original, as emerges from the 'Rembrandt-Corpus' report of 1986. Not having seen the copies mentioned earlier, they were unaware that one nineteenth-century replica was also oval (fig. 9). Their important discovery that the woman's age was 62 was not further investigated at the time. Baroness Bathsheva de Rothschild died childless in 1999. On 13 December 2000 the painting was sold by Christie's, London, after a surprising new identity for the elderly sitter had been put forward. It had long been known that Rembrandt painted portraits of Aeltje Uylenburgh and her husband, the minister Cornelis Sylvius. Aeltje, who was a first cousin of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia Uylenburgh, would have been about 60 years old at the time. Given that the age of the woman in the portrait was now known to be 62, it was suggested that she could be Aeltje. The portrait was acquired for more than 28 million US dollars by the art dealer Robert Noortman, who put it on the market as 'Aeltje' with a question mark. In 2005, Noortman sold the portrait for 36.5 million to the American-Dutch collectors Mr and Mrs De Mol van Otterloo. At the time, the Mauritshuis in The Hague felt that trying to buy the portrait would be too extravagant, while the Rijksmuseum was more interested in acquiring a female portrait from Rembrandt's later period. Aeltje was thus destined to leave the Netherlands for good. A chronicle of the Sylvius family published in 2006 shows that Aeltje Uylenburgh would have been born in 1570 (fig. 10), demonstrating that she could indeed be the 62-year-old woman depicted by Rembrandt in 1632. We know that Aeltje was godmother to Rembrandt's children and that Saskia was godmother to Aeltje's granddaughter. Further evidence of the close ties between the two families is provided by Rembrandt's etching of Aeltje's son Petrus, produced in 1637. It is now generally accepted that the woman in the portrait is Aeltje. She was last shown in the Netherlands at the 'Dutch Portraits' exhibition in The Hague. In February 2008 the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston announced that it had received on long-term loan one the finest Rembrandts still in private ownership.

The article focuses on both theoretical and artistic activities of Bracha L. Ettinger, an Israeli artist, author of the matrixial theory, psychoanalyst, feminist, and daughter of Holocaust survivors. It endeavours to prove that Ettinger’s artistic gesture – on the one hand – stands for almost-borderless closeness to traumatic events and – on the other hand – may occasion the viewer’s suspension between such notions as now and then or presence and absence. To specify, it attempts to demonstrate that gesture can move the viewer towards the traumatic experience of the Other. As Ettinger herself admits that in her case art and theory are strongly interconnected, this article follows a similar path, trying to show how these two instances affect each other in a productive way. The article begins with an introduction to Ettinger’s artistic technique, the notion of trauma(s) in her oeuvre, and the matrixial take on memory. It moves on to the interpretation of chosen paintings from Ettinger’s most famous series, Eurydice, based on the 1942 picture of the execution of naked women in the Mizocz ghetto, and of selected works of art with a mother theme; these artworks are read through the prism of, among others, the trauma of the World and the fort/da game. Lastly, the article hints at ethical implications of chosen Ettingerian concepts that apply to the aesthetic practice.

In this series, entitled home/land, documentary photographs by Christopher Cowperthwaite provide the foundation for works that are meditations on the disruptions – cultural, political, and ecological – that result from conflict and crisis. The paintings present fragmentary images of the construction of the Israel-Palestine separation wall (and its concomitant fragmentation of the land), which are fused with collaged images from other conflicts and other times, asking the viewer to consider how an ever-deepening palimpsest of conflicts has become etched in our collective memory and on the surface of the earth since the World Wars. I created this series as an attempt engage my artistic practice with the complex history and contemporary reality of globalized conflict, which, via globalized media, has become imbricated with the flow of our daily lives and thoughts. As a Canadian artist and educator, I have no direct contact with the daily crises occurring in conflict zones, yet I am impelled to respond creatively, to translate my affective response to these global catastrophes into a visual elegy and a plea for awareness of the human and ecological impacts of warfare.

TPS466 Background: Many cancer patients, especially those with pancreatic cancer, suffer from severe back/epigastric pain. Contemporary approaches (opioids, celiac blocks, systemic chemotherapy) are often inadequate. This clinical trial investigates a new approach in which high-dose radiation (radiosurgery) is focused on the retroperitoneal celiac plexus nerve bundle. Preliminary results from a single institution pilot trial NCT02356406 are promising: pain relief is substantial and side effects minimal. The main aim of the trial is to establish safety/efficacy in the setting of an international multicenter study. Exploratory analyses will examine the relationship between pain reduction and subjects’ quality-of-life, functionality, and caregiver burden. Methods: Eligibility criteria include a diagnosis of metastatic/unresectable malignancy, uncontrolled pain defined as ≥ 5 on 11-point BPI-SF scale despite analgesic use, typical retroperitoneal pain syndrome, prognosis > 8 weeks, ECOG 0-2, anatomical involvement of the celiac plexus (e.g. any pancreatic cancer, or any other cancer involving the celiac trunk). Exclusion criteria include previous upper abdo. radiation. The intervention consists of a single 25 Gy radiation fraction delivered to the celiac plexus, using anterolateral aspect of the aorta from the 12th thoracic to 2nd lumbar vertebral body as a surrogate structure. The primary tumour may be irradiated at physicians’ discretion. Dose-painting technique limits dose to organs at risk. Pain intensity will be measured using Brief Pain Inventory Short Form (BPI-SF), and quality of life with FACT-Hep. The primary endpoint is complete or partial pain response, defined as a decrease between the score immediately before treatment and 3 weeks’ post-treatment. A change of two or more on the BPI 11-point pain scale is defined as clinically significant. Secondary endpoints include other BPI pain endpoints, pain at 6 weeks, analgesic use, toxicity (CTCAE v4.03), quality of life and functional measures. Analgesia is not restricted. Expected accrual is 100 subjects over three years. Supported by Gateway for Cancer Research, additional support from Israel Cancer Association. Clinical trial information: NCT03323489.

This edition is the first issue of Dewa Ruci’s Journal, in which all articles are in English. We deliberately changed the language of publication to English to facilitate information delivery to a wider audience. We realize that English is the official language for many countries rather than other languages in this world. The number of people who have literacy awareness and need scientific information about visual and performing arts regarding the archipelago’s cultural arts is also quite large.The decision to change the language of publication to English does not mean that we do not have nationalism or are not in love with the Indonesian language. This change is necessary to foster the intensity of scientific interaction among writers who are not limited to Indonesia’s territory alone. We desire that the scientific ideas outlined in Dewa Ruci’s Journal are read by intellectual circles of the arts internationally. We also want to express our scientific greetings to art experts from countries in New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Europe, especially Britain, and other English-speaking countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Canada. Of course, a change in English will also benefit intellectuals from countries that have acquired English as a second language, such as Malaysia, Brunei, Israel, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. In essence, Dewa Ruci’s Journal editor wants to invite writers to greet the scientific community at large.We are grateful that six writers can greet the international community through their articles. The first is Tunjung Atmadi and Ika Yuni Purnama, who wrote an article entitled “Material Ergonomics on Application of Wooden Floors in the Interior of the Workspace Office.” This article discusses office interiors that are devoted to workspaces. The purpose of this study is to share knowledge about how to take advantage of space-forming elements in the interior design of a workspace by utilizing wooden floors like parquet. The focus is on choosing the use of wood by paying attention to the elements in its application. This research result has a significant meaning in the aesthetics, comfort, and safety of wooden floors in the workspace’s interior and its advantages and disadvantages.The second writer who had the opportunity to greet the Dewa Ruci Journal audience was intellectuals with diverse expertise, namely Taufiq Akbar, Dendi Pratama, Sarwanto, and Sunardi. Together they wrote an article entitled “Visual Adaptation: From Comics to Superhero Creation of Wayang.” This article discusses the fusion and mixing of wayang as a traditional culture with comics and films as contemporary culture products. This melting and mixing have given birth to new wayang creations with sources adapted from the superhero character “Avenger,” which they now call the Avenger Wayang Kreasi. According to them, Wayang Kreasi Avenger’s making maintains technical knowledge of the art of wayang kulit. It introduces young people who are not familiar with wayang kulit about the technique of carving sungging by displaying the attributes in the purwa skin for Wayang Kreasi Avenger. This creativity is an attempt to stimulate and show people’s love for the potential influence of traditional cultural heritage and its interaction with the potential of contemporary culture.The next authors are Sriyadi and RM Pramutomo, with an article entitled “Presentation Style of Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun Dance in Pura Mangkunegaran.” This article reveals a repertoire of Yogyakarta-style dance in Mangkunegaran, Surakarta, namely the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun. The presence of this dance in Mangkunegaran occurred during the reign of Mangkunegara VII. However, the basic character of the Mangkunegaran style dance has a significant difference from the Yogyakarta style. This paper aims to examine the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance’s presentation style in Mangkunegaran to determine the formation of its presentation technique. The shape of the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance style in Mangkunegaran did not occur in an event but was a process. The presentation style’s formation is due to a problem in the inheritance system that has undergone significant changes. These problems arise from social, political, cultural, and economic conditions. The responses to these problems have shaped the Bedhaya Bedhah Madiun dance's distinctive features in Mangkunegaran, although not all of them have been positive.Hasbi wrote an article entitled “Sappo: Sulapa Eppa Walasuji as the Ideas of Creation Three Dimensional Painting.” This article reveals Hasbi’s creative process design in creating three-dimensional works of art, named Sappo. He got his inspiration from the ancient manuscripts written in Lontara, namely the manuscripts written in the traditional script of the Bugis-Makassar people on palm leaves, which they still keep until now. Sappo for the Bugis community is a fence that limits (surrounds, isolates) the land and houses. Sappo’s function is to protect herself, her family, and her people. Sulapa Eppa means four sides, is a mystical manifestation, the classical belief of the Bugis-Makassar people, which symbolizes the composition of the universe, wind-fire-water-earth. Walasuji is a kind of bamboo fence in rhombus rituals. Eppa Walasuji’s Sulapa is Hasbi’s concept in creating Sappo in the form of three-dimensional paintings. The idea is a symbolic expression borrowing the Lontara tradition's idiom to create a symbolic effect called Sappo.Mahdi Bahar and his friends wrote an article entitled “Transformation of Krinok to Bungo Krinok Music: The Innovation Certainty and Digital-Virtual Contribution for Cultural Advancement.” Together, they have made innovations to preserve Krinok music, one of Jambi’s traditional music themes, into new music that they call Bungo Krinok. He said that innovation is a necessity for the development of folk music. In innovating, they take advantage of digital technology. They realize this music’s existence as a cultural wealth that has great potential for developing and advancing art. The musical system, melodic contours, musical grammar, and distinctive interval patterns have formed krinok music’s character. This innovation has given birth to new music as a transformation from Jambi folk music called “Bungo Krinok” music.Finally, Luqman Wahyudi and Sri Hesti Heriwati. They both wrote an article entitled “Social Criticism About the 2019 Election Campaign on the Comic Strip Gump n Hell.” They explained that in 2019 there was an interesting phenomenon regarding the use of comic strips as a means of social criticism, especially in the Indonesian Presidential Election Campaign. The title of the comic is Gump n Hell by Errik Irwan Wibowo. The comic strip was published and viral on social media, describing the political events that took place. In this study, they took three samples of the comic strip Gump n Hell related to the moment of the 2019 election to analyze their meaning. From the results of this study, there is an implicit meaning in the comic strip of pop culture icons' use to represent political figures in the form of parodies.That is the essence of the issue of Volume 16 Number 1 (April Edition), 2021. Hopefully, the knowledge that has been present in this publication can spur the growth of visual and performing art science in international networks, both in the science of art creation and in scientific research of art in general. We hope that the development of visual and performing art science can reveal the various meanings behind various facts and phenomena of art life. Therefore, the growth of international networks is an indispensable need.Thank you.

Published each issue, this section strives to capture the tenor and content of popular conversations related to the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which are held on dynamic platforms unbound by traditional media. Therefore, items presented in this section are from a variety of sources and have been selected because they either have gone viral or represent a significant cultural moment or trend. A version of Palestine Unbound is also published on Palestine Square (palestinesquare.com), a blog of the Institute for Palestine Studies. Stories from this quarter (16 August–15 November) include the Palestinian hip-hop documentary Palestine Underground; the viral spread of one Great March of Return protester's photo, which was extensively compared to the famous French painting Liberty Leading the People; and Palestinian celebration over the resignation of Avigdor Lieberman as Irael's defense minister, which generated the hastag #Gaza_tantasir (Gaza_victorious).

A previously unknown painting of Christ’s face, recently discovered at the Byzantine site of Shivta in the Negev Desert of southern Israel, represents the first pre-iconoclastic baptism-of-Christ scene to be found in the Holy Land.

AbstractThe iconography of the biblical story of Balaam and the she-ass, told in Numbers 22-24, dates right back to the early Christian era. It depicts the confrontation of Balaam with the angel, whom he did not see blocking his way until his donkey opened his eyes by speaking to him. The simple scene, composed of a donkey rider beating his mount with raised club opposite an angel with raised sword, never before included a pouch containing papers and a kind of stick. From the fact that Rembrandt added this motif to the traditional image and gave it a prominent place in his composition (fig. 1) one may conclude that he meant to convey by this something very significant.Balak, king of Moab, induced the famous magician Balaam to come and curse the Israelites who had entered the plains of Moab. God, using Balaam as his temporary prophet, allowed him to go, provided that he would speak His words and bless Israel instead of cursing it. It was to this stringent condition that the angel reminded him halfway his journey. Upon his arrival Balaam blessed Israel three times. Beside himself with anger Balak sent him home without paying him. Before he went the prophet cursed the king, speaking the famous words: "I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth" (Numbers 24:17). This enunciation has always been taken as a Messianic prophecy.During the middle ages the sheer image of Balaam and the she-ass sufficed to evoke the Messianic prophecy. However, in some versions of the fifteenth-century Speculum Humanae Salvationis and Biblia Pauperum a star is added to the scene (fig. 2), obviously in order to remind one of the true meaning of the image.Depictions of Balaam and the she-ass had always been statical and emotionless but in the sixteenth century the dramatic potential of the story was recognized and fully exploited (fig. 3). At the same time the meaning of the scene was confined to the miracle of the speaking donkey, like any other miracle a sign of God's omnipotence. Moralistic interpretations were also possible. Maerten van Heemskerck, for instance, focussed on Balaam's reputation as being a miser (fig. 5). By the time Pieter Lastman painted Balaam and the she-ass (fig. 4) in 1622, the subject had become polyinterpretable.By adding a pouch with papers and a kind of stick Rembrandt indicated how his Balaam picture had to be understood. The leather pouch is an interesting object in itself, which Rembrandt and some of his contemporaries used several times in their work between 1615 and 1635 (figs. 7 and 8a-g). The papers with illegible writing in quasi-Hebrew letters represent Balaam's prophecies, one may assume, and the stick, in point of fact a commander's baton (figs. 9-11), metaphorically indicates which prophecy exactly is at issue. Unquestionably the Messianic one about the star coming out of Jacob and the sceptre rising out of Israel. In the late middle ages the star had been used occasionally as reference mark but this was no option for Rembrandt, because Balaam travelled by day. The alternative was the sceptre. The fact that Rembrandt depicted a commander's baton instead of a sceptre proves that he did not use a reformatory bible translation but either a catholic one or the Vulgata itself. Reformatory translations (all based on Luther's translation in German, which has 'Zepter') have 'scepter' (sceptre), whereas catholic translations (based on the Vulgata) have 'roede' (baton). The Vulgata has not 'sceptrum' but 'virga', i.e. verge, baton.Why did Rembrandt revive the Messianic meaning of the Balaam story? Most probably because his commissioner wanted him to do so. For Alfonso López, up to now known only as the first owner of the painting and who is supposed to have purchased it directly from Rembrandt, may very well have ordered it from him. Recent research has shown that he, a financial agent of Richelieu in Holland, was a 'morisco', a Spanish Muslim converted to Christianity. A convert may be interested in speaking donkeys but certainly more so in the coming of Christ.

At the start of the twentieth century, many young Australian artists travelled abroad to expand their art education and to gain exposure to the modern art movements of Europe. Most of these artists were active members of artist associations such as the Victorian Artists Society or the New South Wales Society of Artists. Male artists from Victoria were generally also members of the Melbourne Savage Club, a club with a strong association with the arts.This paper investigates the dual function of the club, as a space where the artists felt “at home” in the familiar environment that the club offered whilst they were abroad and, at the same time, a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London would have a significant impact on male Australian artists, as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world, which enhanced their experience whilst abroad.Artists were seldom members of Australia’s early gentlemen’s clubs, however, in the late nineteenth century Melbourne, artists formed less formal social groupings with exotic names such as the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, the Buonarotti Club, and the Ishmael Club (Mead). Melbourne artists congregated in these clubs until the Melbourne Savage Club, modelled on the London Savage Club (1857)—a club whose membership was restricted to practitioners in the performing and visual arts—opened its doors in 1894.The Melbourne Savage Club had its origins in the Metropolitan Music Club, established in the late 1880s by a group of professional and amateur musicians and music lovers. The club initially admitted musicians and people from the dramatic professions free-of-charge, however, author Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) and artist Alf Vincent (1874–1915) were not content to be treated on a different basis to the musicians and actors, and two months after Vincent joined the club, at a Special General Meeting, the club resolved to vary Rule 6, “to admit landscape or portrait painters and sculptors without entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club). At another Special General Meeting, a year later, the rule was altered to admit “recognised members of the musical, dramatic and artistic professions and sculptors without payment of entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club).This resulted in an immediate influx of prominent Victorian male artists (Williams) and the Melbourne Savage Club became their place of choice to gather and enjoy the fellowship the club offered and to share ideas in a convivial atmosphere. When the opportunity arose for them to travel to London in the early twentieth century, they met in London’s famous art clubs. Membership of the Melbourne Savage Club not only conferred rights to visit reciprocal clubs whilst in London, but also facilitated introductions to potential patrons. The London clubs were the venue of choice for visiting artists to meet their fellow artist expatriates and to share experiences and, importantly, to meet with their British counterparts, exhibit their works, and establish valuable contacts.The London Savage Club attracted many Australian expatriates. Not only is it the grandfather of London’s bohemian clubs but also it was the model for arts clubs the world over. Founded in 1857, the qualification for admission was (and still is) to be, “a working man in literature or art, and a good fellow” (Halliday vii). If a candidate met these requirements, he would be cordially received “come whence he may.” This was embodied in the club’s first rules which required applicants for membership to be from a restricted range of pursuits relating to the arts thought to be commensurate with its bohemian ideals, namely art, literature, drama, or music.The second London arts club that attracted expatriate Australian artists was the New English Arts Club, founded in 1886 by young English artists returning from studying art in Paris. Members of The New English Arts Club were influenced by the Impressionist style as opposed to the academic art shown at the Royal Academy. As a meeting place for Australia’s expatriate artists, the New English Arts Club had a particular influence, as it exposed them to significant early Modern artist members such as John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Walter Sickert (1860–1942), William Orpen (1878–1931) and Augustus John (1878–1961) (Corbett and Perry; Thornton; Melbourne Savage Club).The third, and arguably the most popular with the expatriate Australian artists’ club, was the Chelsea Arts Club, a bohemian club formed in 1891 by local working artists looking for a place to go to “meet, talk, eat and drink” (Cross).Apart from the American-born founding member, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), amongst the biggest Chelsea names at the time of the influx of travelling young Australian artists were modernists Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, and John Sargent. The opportunity to mix with these leading British contemporary artists was irresistible to these antipodean artists (55).When Melbourne artist, Miles Evergood (1871–1939) arrived in London from America in 1910, he had been an active exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club, a New York artists’ club. Almost immediately he joined the New English Arts Club and the Chelsea Arts Club. Hammer tells of him associating with “writer Israel Zangwill, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and anti-academic artists including Walter Sickert, Augustus John, John Lavery, John Singer Sargent and C.R.W. Nevison, who challenged art values in Britain at the beginning of the century” (Hammer 41).Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the Chelsea Arts Club as his postal address, as did many expatriate artists. The Melbourne Savage Club archives contain letters and greetings, with news from abroad, written from artist members back to their “Brother Savages” (Various).In late 1902, Streeton wrote to fellow artist and Savage Club member Tom Roberts (1856–1931) from London:I belong to the Chelsea Arts Club now, & meet the artists – MacKennel says it’s about the most artistic club (speaking in the real sense) in England. … They all seem to be here – McKennal, Longstaff, Mahony, Fullwood, Norman, Minns, Fox, Plataganet Tudor St. George Tucker, Quinn, Coates, Bunny, Alston, K, Sonny Pole, other minor lights and your old friend and admirer Smike – within 100 yards of here – there must be 30 different studios. (Streeton 94)Whilst some of the artists whom Streeton mentioned were studying at either the Royal Academy or the Slade School, it was the clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club where they were most likely to encounter fellow Australian artists. Tom Roberts was obviously attentive to Streeton’s enthusiastic account and, when he returned to London the following year to work on his commission for The Big Picture of the 1901 opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, he soon joined. Roberts, through his expansive personality, became particularly active in London’s Australian expatriate artistic community and later became Vice-President of the Chelsea Arts Club. Along with Streeton and Roberts, other visiting Melbourne Savage Club artists joined the Chelsea Arts Club. They included, John Longstaff (1861–1941), James Quinn (1869–1951), George Coates (1869–1930), and Will Dyson (1880–1938), along with Sydney artists Henry Fullwood (1863–1930), George Lambert (1873–1930), and Will Ashton (1881–1963) (Croll 95). Smith describes the exodus to London and Paris: “It was the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp” (Smith, Smith and Heathcote 152).Streeton, who retained his Chelsea Arts Club membership when he returned for a while to Australia, wrote to Roberts in 1907, “I miss Chelsea & the Club-boys” (Streeton 107). In relation to Frederick McCubbin’s pending visit he wrote: “Prof McCubbin left here a week ago by German ‘Prinz Heinrich.’ … You’ll introduce him at the Chelsea Club and I hope they make him an Hon. Member, etc” (Streeton et al. 85). McCubbin wrote, after an evening at the Chelsea Arts Club, following a visit to the Royal Academy: “Tonight, I am dining with Australian artists in Soho, and shall be there to greet my old friends. How glad I am! Longstaff will be there, and Frank Stuart, Roberts, Fullwood, Pontin, Coates, Quinn, and Tucker’s brother, and many others from all around” (MacDonald, McCubbin and McCubbin 75). Impressed by the work of Turner he wrote to his wife Annie, following avisit to the Tate Gallery:I went yesterday with Fullwood and G. Coates and Tom Roberts for a ramble … to the Tate Gallery – a beautiful freestone building facing the river through a portico into the gallery where the lately found turners are exhibited – these are not like the greater number of pictures in the National Gallery – they represent his different periods, but are mostly in his latest style, when he had realised the quality of light (McCubbin).Clearly Turner’s paintings had a profound impression on him. In the same letter he wrote:they are mostly unfinished but they are divine – such dreams of colour – a dozen of them are like pearls … mist and cloud and sea and land, drenched in light … They glow with tender brilliancy that radiates from these canvases – how he loved the dazzling brilliancy of morning or evening – these gems with their opal colour – you feel how he gloried in these tender visions of light and air. He worked from darkness into light.The Chelsea Arts Club also served as a venue for artists to entertain and host distinguished visitors from home. These guests included; Melbourne Savage Club artist member Alf Vincent (Joske 112), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Trustee and popular patron of the arts, Professor Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Professor Frederick S. Delmer (1864–1931) and conductor George Marshall-Hall (1862–1915) (Mulvaney and Calaby 329; Streeton 111).Artist Miles Evergood arrived in London in 1910, and visited the Chelsea Arts Club. He mentions expatriate Australian artists gathering at the Club, including Will Dyson, Fred Leist (1873–1945), David Davies (1864–1939), Will Ashton (1881–1963), and Henry Fullwood (Hammer 41).Most of the Melbourne Savage Club artist members were active in the London Savage Club. On one occasion, in November 1908, Roberts, with fellow artist MacKennal in the Chair, attended the Australian Artists’ Dinner held there. This event attracted twenty-five expatriate Australian artists, all residing in London at the time (McQueen 532).These London arts clubs had a significant influence on the expatriate Australian artists for they became the “glue” that held them together whilst abroad. Although some artists travelled abroad specifically to take up places at the Royal Academy School or the Slade School, only a minority of artists arriving in London from Australia and other British colonies were offered positions at these prestigious schools. Many artists travelled to “try their luck.” The arts clubs of London, whilst similarly discerning in their membership criteria, generally offered a visiting “brother-of-the-brush” a warm welcome as a professional courtesy. They featured the familiar rollicking all-male “Smoke Nights” a feature of the Melbourne Savage Club. With a greater “artist” membership than the clubs in Australia, expatriate artists were not only able to catch up with their friends from Australia, but also they could associate with England’s finest and most progressive artists in a familiar congenial environment. The clubs were a “home away from home” and described by Underhill as, “an artistic Earl’s Court” (Underhill 99). Most importantly, the clubs were a centre for discourse, arguably even more so than were the teaching academies. Britain’s leading modernist artists were members of the Chelsea Arts Club and the New English Arts Club and mixed freely with the visiting Australian artists.Many Australian artists, such as Miles Evergood and George Bell (1878–1966), held anti-academic views similar to English club members and embraced the new artistic trends, which they would bring back to Australia. Streeton had no illusions about the relative worth of the famed institutions and the exhibitions held by clubs such as the New English. Writing to Roberts before he joins him in London, he describes the Royal Academy as having, “an inartistic atmosphere” and claims he “hasn’t the least desire to go again” (Streeton 77). His preference lay with a concurrent “International Exhibition”, which featured works by Rodin, Whistler, Condor, Degas, and others who were setting the pace rather than merely continuing the academic traditions.Architect Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) served as secretary of The Chelsea Arts Club. When he returned to Australia he brought back with him a number of British works by Streeton and Lambert for an exhibition at the Guild Hall Melbourne (Underhill 92). Artists and Bohemians, a history of the Chelsea Arts Club, makes special reference of its world-wide contacts and singles out many of its prominent Australian members for specific mention including; Sir John William (Will) Ashton OBE, later Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Will Dyson, whose illustrious career as an Australian war artist was described in some detail. Dyson’s popularity led to his later appointment as Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club where he initiated an ambitious rebuilding program, improving staff accommodation, refurbishing the members’ areas, and adding five bedrooms for visiting members (Bross 87-90).Whilst the influence of travel abroad on Australian artists has been noted, the importance of the London Clubs has not been fully explored. These clubs offered artists a space where they felt “at home” and a familiar environment whilst they were abroad. The clubs functioned as a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London had a significant impact on male Australian artists as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world which enhanced their experience whilst abroad and influenced the direction of their art.ReferencesCorbett, David Peters, and Lara Perry, eds. English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Croll, Robert Henderson. Tom Roberts: Father of Australian Landscape Painting. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1935.Cross, Tom. Artists and Bohemians: 100 Years with the Chelsea Arts Club. 1992. 1st ed. London: Quiller Press, 1992.Gray, Anne, and National Gallery of Australia. McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17. 1st ed. Parkes, A.C.T.: National Gallery of Australia, 2009.Halliday, Andrew, ed. The Savage Papers. 1867. 1st ed. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.Hammer, Gael. Miles Evergood: No End of Passion. Willoughby, NSW: Phillip Mathews, 2013.Joske, Prue. Debonair Jack: A Biography of Sir John Longstaff. 1st ed. Melbourne: Claremont Publishing, 1994.MacDonald, James S., Frederick McCubbin, and Alexander McCubbin. The Art of F. McCubbin. Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing, 1916.McCaughy, Patrick. Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters. Ed. Paige Amor. The Miegunyah Press, 2014.McCubbin, Frederick. Papers, Ca. 1900–Ca. 1915. Melbourne.McQueen, Humphrey. Tom Roberts. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996.Mead, Stephen. "Bohemia in Melbourne: An Investigation of the Writer Marcus Clarke and Four Artistic Clubs during the Late 1860s – 1901.” PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009.Melbourne Savage Club. Secretary. Minute Book: Melbourne Savage Club. Club Minutes (General Committee). Melbourne: Savage Archives.Mulvaney, Derek John, and J.H. Calaby. So Much That Is New: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929, a Biography. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1985.Smith, Bernard, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote. Australian Painting, 1788–2000. 4th ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2001.Streeton, Arthur, et al. Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1946.Streeton, Arthur, ed. Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton, 1890–1943. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989.Thornton, Alfred, and New English Art Club. Fifty Years of the New English Art Club, 1886–1935. London: New English Art Club, Curwen Press 1935.Underhill, Nancy D.H. Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991.Various. Melbourne Savage Club Correspondence Book: 1902–1916. Melbourne: Melbourne Savage Club.Williams, Graeme Henry. "A Socio-Cultural Reading: The Melbourne Savage Club through Its Collections." Masters of Arts thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013.

By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero” into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro” that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house” of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it” happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center” until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be fucking joking.” He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?” The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.” The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,” not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.” Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,” one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.” Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.” I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,” but this was the “frozen zone.” There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,” she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.” Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,” Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero” that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,” Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family center”: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.” Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11” post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.” They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.” I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.” The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.” The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they” could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.” He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?” he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?” I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.” Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero” a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA” I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us” by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our” skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?”: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind”—whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles” of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero” such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly” bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).