Whistling, as an art form,  is not something that most people take seriously;  it's generally relegated to the bargain bin of artistic expression,  along with the kazoo and the musical saw.  Though there is a vibrant modern art whistling movement which attracts more people to the cause than in recent decades, whistling,  in the past, held a higher status.  In a previous article,  Whistling Wizards (which you can read HERE),  I discussed my love for artistic whistling,  and my personal discovery of it's amazing history in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Artists like Margaret McKee, Sibyl Sanderson Fagan, Guido Gialdini, Fred Lowry,  Carson Robinson and Elmo Tanner not only filled my ears with melodious sounds,  they informed my understanding of a lovely corner of musical history.  It seems, from my various searchings on the subject, that the history of musical whistling itself would be much less full and colourful without the efforts of one woman:  Agnes Woodward.

Ms. Woodward,  at her evidently prestigious California School of Artistic Whistling (at suite 21. 8th and Beacon street,  Los Angeles) seems to have put in tremendous efforts in furthering the cause of whistling as a legitimate career. Agnes,  the daughter of Charles and Martha Woodward (Charles was a military man and a noted surgeon),  had three sisters, Elizabeth, Martha, and Emma, as well as Bess, a cousin, (who went of to act in silent film as Bess the Detectress, as Bessie Pinkerton Holmes).  These talented girls were apparently quite musical; both Emma and Agnes were music teachers,  and soon, Agnes started the Agnes Woodward Whistling Chorus.  Things must have gone very well for the enterprising warbler,  as she moved to Los Angeles to open her famed whistling school in 1909.

Now,  if you can imagine whistling as high art, with sophisticated young ladies dressed much as classical lieder singers, in pearls and gowns, giving erudite and pretty speeches before dazzling discerning audiences (including presidents and kings), this is the environment in which Agnes Woodward dwelt and nurtured.  As a part of the Lyceum movement in America (read about it HERE), which fostered an appreciation of art and culture in adults across the country, her young ladies enjoyed a modicum of notoriety,  especially Margaret McKee,  whose appeared on numerous recordings, which still exist to be enjoyed today. 

To a great extent, as a higher expression, whistling was the purview of women, it seems.  Male whistling as an entertainment seems to have been more Vaudeville oriented (though one article about the California school states the following: "Comely young maidens with rosebud lips are not the only students. Nay--there is a railroad engineer, a postal clerk, a merchant, and a man totally blind among the group of men aspiring to be whistle artists.")  In this spirit, note the amusingly wistful  final statement in the article to the left, speculating on the biological determinism in the whistling craft.

So,  like the other high-browed whistling matron of the era, Sibyl Fagan,  Agnes wrote a detailed instruction manual of musical whistling, entitled, Whistling as an Art, adding to the wonderful history of whistling in a charming, yet thoroughly credible way.  This book is available to read,  if you follow the link below.  How helpful it will be for a modern career in whistle-ism is questionable,  but as a fun read for lovers of history and fun artifacts.  Agnes seems to have been quite a woman,  and very typical of the go-get-em Edwardian-era gal;  her story creates a lovely wave of nostalgia in my heart.  This sort of non-ironic two-hands grasping of such a colourful skill is right in my wheelhouse,  and makes me wish that such things were still possible.  Believe me,  on a Sunday afternoon,  after a band concert in the park,  nothing would please me more than a grand whistling concert by Agnes and her lovely ladies.

 Here is an Internet Archive LINK to her book,  WHISTLING AS AN ART 

Gallery of clippings and images, many from The Lyceum Magazine, 1916-17
Click on images to enlarge

For those interested in Artistic whistling,  I'd like to recommend the Masters of Whistling organisation.  You can view their website HERE.  There are links to instruction,  Artists,  and histories much more informed and detailed that what I've written here.

Also, here are a few videos which I think most closely resemble the old school whistling concert. A wonderful mix of classical and popular that these Lyceum concerts would have had.  It makes me happy to see whistling presented in a relatively serious way in a public environment.  Notice that people seem to be enchanted by the performances, in a way normally reserved for singers.  I think Agnes' school would have a major presence today!

And, for you whistling geeks (like me),  here's an excerpt from the September 21st, 1939 episode of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour,  featuring the overtone counterpoint whistler of a visiting Brit fellow.  Enjoy!

I'm a big Victorian and Edwardian culture enthusiast; novels, paintings, poetry, history, as well as film and television dramas,  are really satisfying to me.  I can't get enough.  Also being a history buff,  I occasionally grab onto a bit of background minutia, obsessing about it until all resources are exhausted.  In these episodes, I stumble on quite a few things from these periods that are somewhat lost to time,  at least for most of us.  If you consider the period between 1900 and the first world war, you'll realise that most of the music and much of the art and poetry has been distilled down to a very few characters, if even that.  The 1920's are lucky enough to have Jazz, bootleg hooch and flappers,  but even then, that's all that most people know.  Well, the Edwardians and Victorians were more than just colonial wars, Sherlock Holmes, pith helmets and perceived emotional repression;  they were creative and vibrant,  multi-layered, and above all, interested in life.  They were among the most curious and inventive people in the history of humankind.

Now that I've talked them up thus (hopefully stopping shy of a rant),  I'd like to point out a somewhat minor, if lovely,  bit of their world.  A bit of a personal discovery.  Often, while enjoying paintings and my beloved 70's period dramas,  I would notice a particular piece of mystery  furniture in a household,  usually next to a fireplace.  I asked myself, "What in the heck is that?" numerous times.  I'll confess that logically the answer was there all along,  and painfully obvious, but apparently it was my time to be a thicko. 

What I'm talking about turned out to be  fireplace screens.

While gas and was used for lighting, the primary heating source for the home at that time was fire.  Yes,  that hallmark of prehistoric man,  the gift of Prometheus, was still the standard mode of both heat and cooking within the lifetimes of people still living...which I find amazing.  Now,  having grown up with a wood burning stove,  I can attest to the single-minded attitude of fire.  It has one setting:  HOT.  Here's where our practical bit of artwork comes in,  to create a barrier between us and the heat.  Though it seems a bit foolish to put a frame of wood covered with cloth between us and flame,  they seem to have been quite practical, as there are a great still-existing used examples from the period, unburnt,  looking every bit as pretty as they were when new.  Wonderfully, during the warmer months, these screens also served as an aesthetic protection from the draft,  and the ugliness of an unused, blackened hearth.  A beautiful bit of practical framed art, existing to provide both physical and artistic comfort.  I like that.

Here are some examples of this practical Victorian/Edwardian art.  Though there are some beautiful copper screens,  the needlework versions strike me as especially interesting....I hope you feel the same way.

 The conventional bio of  Angelo Morbelli states that he was merely a proponent of the mildly discredited neo-classical divisionist (chromoluminarist)  style of painting.  An extreme relative to pointilism, divisionism was rooted in the concept that the separation of the of colours in a painting increased the luminosity of the image overall.  As with most artists reduced to the historical importance of their technique,  I feel that Morbelli was more than just a bookmark in some academic timeline;  his images ARE luminous.  To me they radiate a warmth that stands in defense against any sort of criticism of the concept.

In content,  Morbelli seems to find the serenity and unity opposing situations;  the bulk of his paintings are either extremely communal (often keeping the viewer quite at bay, closed out of the circle of characters. Notice the body language; each figure either has their backs turned to us,  is looking down, or looks away from the obverse point of view).  They radiate a beautiful solitude, reminiscent of another fave of mine, Carl Holsoe (my post about him HERE).  As I write this,  the springtime sun is making the air around me glow,  and as I look at Morbelli's artwork,  their contemplative nature seems to bleed into my own environment, creating a calming effect. 

It's powerful stuff, from a painter that I admire.

Roy Krenkel.   On it's own,  that name isn't necessarily evocative.  But to me,  a lifelong  devourer of DAW and ACE science fantasy novels, it conjures images of cave men, barbarians, swordsmen and dinosaurs.  My kind of stuff.  Along with masters like Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo and J. Allen St. John,  Krenkel was greatly responsible for the look and feel of my imagination.  His paperback covers are the best and most colourful in my memory (beaten, perhaps, only by Frazetta),  and when I think of lost worlds and mysterious planets, his wild and brutish imagery is what I see.

I think the first of his covers that I saw were those of Lin Carter,  particularly of the FANTASTIC (in more ways than one) GREEN STAR series.  After that,  his covers for the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs,  Otis Adelbert Kline and Phillip Jose Farmer exploded my teenage brain cells with excitement,  much as N.C. Wyeth and Frank Schoonover  had taken my child brain on adventures with King Arthur and Natty Bumppo.  It turns out,  in an anecdotal sense,  that this sort of thing is vital in informing our inner universes;  I mean, what would we do without THE TWILIGHT ZONE,  THE LORD OF THE RINGS,  SHERLOCK HOLMES, TARZAN, or STAR WARS?

The purpose of a cover illustration is to inspire one to read the book;  in this sense, in my opinion,  Roy was the among best of the best.  Below is a selection of his cover work;  I can't imagine not being inspired to go online and purchase these great stories!

I've made no secret of my enduring loyalty to the Dutch artists;  again and again, they seem to have the stuff to capture my imagination, and at times, my heart.  Usually this special status is reserved for the painters,  but I make an exception here for the wonderful illustrator, Anton Pieck.  His images are full of colour and whimsey,  with almost magical settings and people.    There's almost a Disney-esque aura about his work,  which, I found while researching this post, he comes by honestly.  He was crucial to the design of the Efteling theme park,  apparently one of the hot theme parks in Europe.  It also apparently has had a historical relationship with Disney, which is quite a suitable relationship, in my mind. 

Anton Pieck is a rare and wonderful treat.

I did a post at one time about paintings of crimson Cardinals enjoying life,  being humans,  and generally going wild (HERE),  so I thought I'd continue the fun with a post about monks doing the same,  but this time painted by a single artist,  the German,   Eduard von Grützner (technically Polish now, as he was born in Gross Carlowitz, a chunk of what was formerly Prussia).  The guy had style.  He had a huge range of subjects in his art,  but he also did a large number of depictions of monks at various stages of play.  I dig that.

With my typical caveat about negative opinions on religious subjects and figures,  von Grützner goes well beyond people's potential prejudices in this area.  His monks are eminently human,  showing all the joy and foibles which are the hallmark of the human being.  His colours are warm and muted,  his lines are organic and lively,  and there's a spry liveliness to all his figures that just make one feel good.  One thing we know from his work;  monks are fun.  And fat.  And potentially alcoholic!   Even being the 200% tetotaller that I am,  I still find these chaps HIGHLY amusing.

I hope you will enjoy his stuff as much as I do;  he's worth your art-looking time.

Even as a very little kid,  I loved to hear whistling.  My dad had a breathy whistle that he did between his teeth and tongue, badly interpreting Hank Williams tunes...I thought it was cool, in spite of the fact that it was only actually about 10% whistle to 110% breath. I wanted to do it!  After hearing it on a song on the radio, for some reason it suddenly made sense.  After that it was a nearly pathological habit;  I whistled while walking, riding a bike, and even during school, often with unfortunate punitive results.  I didn't care...it was fun!

The first whistler I ever heard on record was probably, considering how much country music my parents listened to,  the wonderful singer Roger Whittaker.  He did quite a few whistling songs, as I recall,  but I hadn't remembered him until a friend recently reminded me.  The first whistler that I actually remember, and who inspired my own whistling,  was the big band whistler and singer Elmo Tanner.  When I got the 78 RPM disc of the Ted Weems orchestra doing their huge hit, Heartaches, Tanner's solo blew my mind.  He was so melodious and stylishly ornate; it was like a bird had learned to sing jazz!

That set me on the path to melodic whistling.  I learned the tongue whistle and the pucker whistle, then moved on to glottal trills and finally to double-chamber whistling.  It was an amazingly fun road to walk creatively, and I was always on the lookout for records with whistling on them.  That's when I discovered that,  in the early days of recording, whistling had been a mainstream novelty entertainment. I found recordings by Sibyl Sanderson Fagan, Joe Belmont, Guido Gialdini and the like,  and was thrilled to see that whistlers did every style of music that was popular at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.  Waltzes, Cake Walks, Fox Trots, Mazurkas, Jazz, classical melodies, and much more were brought to life by these colourful artists.  In fact,  there were many songs which paired whistlers with known singers of the day;  it was not unusual for Billy Murray,  Ada Jones,  Arthur Collins, etc. to have a bit of whistling on a recording.

As usual,  the internet has made it possible to procure recordings of this kind like never before.  Cylinder and 78 RPM collectors are graciously making these things available.  That's how I discovered the virtuoso Margaret McKee;  I accidentally stumbled on her while link-surfing on Youtube...I almost passed out, she's so completely amazing.  It was like  doorway opened into an alternate universe.

Though there was an artistic whistling movement at the turn of the 20th century on the Lyceum circuit, the vast majority of these people were in Vaudeville;  it thrills me to imagine that you could go to a theatre reasonably regularly and see someone whistling with an orchestra!  As you will see in the images below, whistling artists advertised themselves as such; they toured, they advertised in industry periodicals, and they recorded fairly prolifically...there is a surprisingly large number of whistling solos in the Edison cylinder catalogue.   There was even a dedicated school of whistling in Los Angeles, headed by Whistling virtuosa Agnes Woodward!  (read more about her HERE)  Whistlers traveled across America,  treating audiences to daintily warbled versions of "La Boheme" and "Old Black Joe".

Of course, whistling, in spite of the occasional classical melody and fancily dressed puckerer,  was still not completely accepted by the long-hairs as a high entertainment, though whistlers (especially whistling ladies), did whistle for presidents and kings).  Here's a charming whistler's anecdote pulled from the March 1907 issue of the entertainment magazine, "The Clipper", that proves that point:

Victor V. Vass, the vaudeville performer of whistling specialties, proudly declares that he is the only variety man who has ever had the honor to dress in the same room with the late Henry Irving [ See: www.henryirving.co.uk ]. Vass was on tbe bill at the Broadway Theatre, In 1890, at a benefit performance for the Actors' Fund. Arriving late, be found no room assigned to him, so knocked on the door of the nearest dressing room. A gruff voice bade him "enter," and on opening the door Vass discovered the occupant to be tbe eminent Englishman. Turning hastily, intending to leave, he apologized for intruding, explaining, at the same time, that he had no place to dress.

"I'd be pleased to share my room with you, and especially so on this grand occasion," said Mr. Irving. Somewhat embarrassed, Vass accepted the Invitation, and began to get ready for his turn. Unfortunately, he bad forgotten his grease paint, and Mr. Irving offered some of his own special preparation. Vass carefully saved as much of this as possible, and wrapped it safely In his dressing case. While dressing, the most prominent actor in the land chatted genially on equal terms with the variety man, making kind inquiries about his work in the vaudeville field. Later, after Vass' turn, be ran into the thespian in the wings, and was warmly complimented on his work, and at the same time the actor expressed the hope that his fifteen minute sketch, "Waterloo," would please tbe audience as well as Vass' whistling act.

A week later the whistler was putting on his paint for his turn at one of the "continuous" houses. To his two companions in the dressing room be, in an off-hand sort of way, remarked: "It is not everybody that can use Henry Irving's specially prepared grease paint, as I'm doing."

"Listen to the whistler!" exclaimed one of the performers, "I wonder what brand he's smoking!"

A rare and wonderful story, wot?

The history of popular whistling at the turn of the last century is tragically forgotten by most people these days,  most of which would either consider it a corny blotch on human culture, or at best, a kitschy novelty, one of those (from their perspective) zany and surreal oddities that make the present time oh-so-vastly improved.  I see it as yet another thing that made previous generations great;  a time when people made entertainment for  themselves,  and nothing was off the table.  If you could make a melody with it, or dance on it, or spin it, or make it disappear,  people would watch you do it.  It's not like that today,  or at least not in the mainstream. There are some amazing whistlers in the last half century that have taken it to the high level that those earlier generations did, and even beyond, in a technical sense,  but very few that have made careers from it.  I have yet to see a poster advertising a whistling concert. 

Fortunately, the internet does provide a little solace...you can find recordings of master whistler Ron McCrobey, Swedish expert Leo Eide, also the 60's Hungarian songbird Hacki Tamás (HERE), and if you haven't heard Geert Chatrou, the current world whistling champion, or K. Sivaprasad, the South Indian classical whistler, you're in for a treat.

            Just don't look for their recordings in any store near you, or expect anyone you know to have heard of them:

On that note,  I leave you with a few nice images culled from the web, some nice examples of early whistling, as well as the most virtuosic whistling recording that I know of,  courtesy of my old music collection:  Carson Robinson, with a peppy 20's dance melody, accompanied by piano ~ "Whistle-itis"!

I really, really love classic Russian academic art.  It digs into my guts,  and though entirely representational,  it plays with my emotional interior as much as any impressionist ever could.  To imagine a thing that never existed,  with people conjured up from the imagination (with the help of marginally paid models), while also inspiring deep feeling and contemplation is the real gift of these guys.  You can't photograph what has never existed,  no matter what the (so-called) modern art folk say.

Now,  if I were going to pick a singl favourite,  it would certainly be the stunning master Ilya Repin (1844 - 1930).  His paintings live inside me,  and his technique is unparalleled, while at the same time existing mainly to create the story on his canvas.  The next three are the ones I present here. Together they're a juggernaut of imagination, with differing artistic temperaments, but aesthetically connected (in my fevered mind, anyway) by more than simply their first names.  Historical themes are their bread and butter,  along with the orientalist paintings that ruled their era.

If you enjoy their work,  please consider researching their histories;  fascinating fellows, all.

Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (Васи́лий Васи́льевич Вереща́гин) 1842 - 1904

I have a conundrum on my hands.

Recently I did a post about one of my favourite Flemish painters,  Frans Snyders.  I mentioned his unique, individual, singular style, blah, blah, blah.  Well,  on a research jaunt for another post,  I ran into what I thought were his paintings; ones that I'd not seen.  They actually turned out to be those of his brother-in-law, Paul De Vos, from Antwerp.

Apparently (!!!),  he was HEAVILY influenced by Snyders.  So much so, in fact, that I'm mildly suspicious of my identifications;  I am not an expert by any means, and there is so much similar.   I'm confused.  As an amateur lover of the canvas and brush, I get painted into these little corners more often that I would care to admit.

So, I recommend that you decide for yourself.  Below are what have been identified by various sources on the web as de Vos,  and you can find my post and the images of Frans Snyders HERE.   Whatever the case,  the chaos of each provide a similarly startling experience,  so,  as the kids say,  it's all good.

Of all the artists in history,  I have a deep affection for the work of Flemish artists.  Why?  Well, along with Russians,  the Dutch and Flemish painters simply have what it takes to get inside my guts and build a nest.  They crawl in there,  then they start tugging at the bits of spiritual entrails inside me,  tearing at the unnameable gobbets that hang from my innards.

In other words, they get to me.

Foremost on that front is the 16th/17th century artist Frans Snyders.  The man took chaos and turned it into a visual symphony.   He grasped the real world and showed it to us at it's most brutal;  men killing animals,  animals killing animals,  animals engaged in hideous social cacophonies rarely witness in real life...yet somehow more true than life.  His specialty was excess.  If there was a table with butchered game,  it had corpse after corpse of a dozen or more types of animal and bird.  If an animal was being attacked,  it was locked in a terrifying, frenzied melee'!   I find that overwhelming hyper-reality invigourating.  There is nothing staid about Snyders' work.  Honestly,  I find it difficult to look at his paintings for too long, as they tap into something bestial inside me.  It's unsettling.

On the other hand, he has a fondness for paintings of hogs, which, as a former Banjo player,  I find highly amusing.

Here is a new name to me.  Though I'd seen one of his paintings,  The Flight of King Gradlon, based on a semi-historical Breton King,  I had no idea who had done it.  I was looking for images of the incredible painter Gustave Surand, and I stumbled on Luminais.

Talk about luck!  Such great style,  and such wonderful subjects!  As you may know,  I'm a sucker for a historical painting,  and even more so for depictions of legendary characters.  He strikes me as an ancestor of my hero N.C. Wyeth, but with a bit of Arnold Böcklin and Goya thrown in.

They're very exciting to me, and make me want to dig out some old historical novels and read until my eyes hurt.  I hope you enjoy them as much!

Having traveled to Asia extensively,  particularly to the various Muslim regions,  I consider myself at least reasonably acquainted with the various cultures and cultural expressions that can be found there.  I've played many of the musics of Asia,  and I'm a big fan of the carving traditions that can be found in all corners.  That said,  I'll admit to being a bit shocked when I discovered the Indonesian artist Raden Saleh Sjarif Boestaman.  His art is so generally contrary to the what I've come to expect.  It's very European in it's general style,  yet there's a very Asian feeling in it's execution;  if you look at enough images of Indonesian wood carving,  the kinship to the vibe of Raden Saleh's art can clearly be seen.  Layers upon layers of texture.

Born in Java,  his father was an Indonesian of Arab descent,  specifically Hadhrami Yemeni, so he certainly comes by his Orientalist themes honestly.  So colourful and full of dynamic action.  So many images of large cats attacking horses...I wonder if this was something that he himself feared at any point!

To learn about Hadhrami Arabs, go HERE

Cossack Mamay is a legendary hero in Ukrainian folklore.  For over three hundred years he has appeared in thousands of images and a multitude of folk tales.  Mamay personifies the national feeling and identity of Ukraine; he is part King Arthur, part Robin Hood, and like those mythic characters, he paints the history of the country with charismatic colour.

These paintings are part Orthodox Iconography,  part Persian miniature, and part primitive folk art. In these ubiquitous images,  Mamay is surrounded by typical symbols of the Cossack;  a saber,  a spear,  a pistol,  a strong horse, and a bottle of Ukrainian Vodka among them.  In these paintings he is uniformly depicted as playing the Kobza, the  traditional Ukrainian plucked Lute.  Often we see him beatifically plucking it with a man hanging upside down from the branches of a tree;  a firm reminder that, in spite of his charming and mildly impish appearance,  Mamay is a Cossack...a warrior down to his bones.  He is a romanticised distillation of the people of the steppe,  with the wild, unruly and free nature which is the linguistic source of their name.  The earliest surviving image of Mamay is from 1642.

The six-hundred-fifty year history of the Cossack is amazing and powerful,  and for better or worse,  they have made many fascinating chapters in the history of our planet.  Kozak Mamay is a symbol of that history; potent,  charming, somewhat intimidating, and entirely captivating.  This is the first of many posts of these amazing images.

To read more about Mamay,  go HERE.
To read more about Cossack history,  go HERE.
To read about modern Cossack life,  go HERE.

Time for more hot stuff! This batch has monkeys,  some badass ladies,  lions, cowboys, and nuns!  What more could want in their art selection?  I don't have any real modern art in here,  so if you like that,  I think you'll be disappointed.  I'm an unapologetic representational art-type of chap.

I'm particularly fond right now of Gaetano Belli's works...he's the one who painted the two sets wind-whipped women below.  So much colour and energy.   Antonio Gomez gets another shot at showing us some Mexicana fighters,  to go with Marat Samsonov's steel-tough "Little Sister" (read THIS).  Here's the list:

Having recently done a post for my Albanian woodcarver/Pipemaker friend Sidrit Skender Vaqari (HERE),  I thought I'd  give another shout out to the double-eagle in the form of contemporary artist Artur Muharremi.  Normally a painter of colourful abstractions,  to me his interesting works are his nudes.  They're brash,  they're stark,  and in spite of some of the angles he presents them in (I don't have any of the more extreme ones here),  I don't find them particularly sexual.  Perhaps that's just me.  I just admire the blankness and frankness of the colours;  idiosyncratic and highly contrasting choices, across the board.

His work reminds me of the illustrator Robert Mcginnis,  who was also famous for nudes with atypical colour schemes.  I don't know much about Muharremi other than what I see,  though I believe that his career started when the Communists were in control of the country,  and crossed into the relative freedom of current times.

He's on Facebook, and you can see (and purchase) more of his work HERE

Of all the themes that I collect when it comes to art imagery,  paintings that feature Cavaliers are some of my favourite.  There's something about their colourful gear and rakish charm that exudes excitement and flavour.  This kind of fighting man, of course,  is most well known from Alexandre Dumas' most-classic novel THE THREE MUSKETEERS,  but they're all over the map in western European literature and art.  The wide-brimmed hat,  the puffy shirts with the frilled collars,  brightly coloured clothing,  knee boots,  long, curly hair and pointed chin beard and mustaches, with the addition of the deadly rapier,  all are the hallmarks of their flashy image.  I think of today's concept of masculinity and there is much in conflict there with the way these many fellows present themselves. 

Can you imagine a macho guy like Russell Crowe, or the MMA champ Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell walking around in a frilly collar and silk knee-britches?  I really can't.  Yet,  the Cavalier brings this look off with a Byronesque charm edged with deadly seriousness.  Flash and dash to the extreme, and for the second post in a row,  I invoke the name Errol Flynn (read the other post HERE) to illustrate my point.  Style, masculinity and badassness all in one.

I hope you enjoy these!

Swords, swords, and more swords!  In spite of the fact that a sword is essentially a long, skinny meat cleaver designed to cut human beings open and let their life juices drain out,  they have a kind of highly possessive magic,  don't they?  I have several swords;  I have two sword canes with excellent blades,  two new sabres with carbon steel sharpness,  and one antique English sabre that not only looks cool,  will cut one quite severely if mishandled!  I can totally see how the concept of Excalibur came about,  and how the Samurai, by all accounts, considered them a part of their soul.  It's a part of our DNA,  at least for boys;  it has been the bane of every hippie homeschooling  mother that boys with no TV or public school friends will pick up sticks and start doing their best Errol Flynn imitations...without ever seeing him in duelistic action.  I have lots of scars from such childhood battles. 

Art in general has benefited greatly from the depiction of this tool;  it has become an icon in classic painting on the level of the Lute and the chess set,  items that get popped in for colour in hundreds and hundreds of artworks.  It's a case of instant drama;  that thing in the scene that automatically implies that razor's edge between death and life,  and the contrast it adds in a scene of joy or fun is amusing...like, "yep, I'm having fun,  but I could open you like a piñata.  They're also wonderful in Movies!  THE MARK OF ZORRO, with Tyrone Power,  or THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, with the afore-mentioned Flynn?   Magical and exciting fun.

Here are a few of my fave sword images.

She was born Amal Al Atrach in Syria, in 1917, but she would become famous across the Arab world under her stage name, Asmahan.  In the west, the primary Arab woman singers of note would be the legendary Egyptian Um Kalsoum and the Lebanese superstar Fairuz,  but Asmahan is equally popular in every country in which Arabic is the native language.

Asmahan's father was Syrian,  but her mother was Lebanese.  Both were of the Druze religion, which is a tertiary offshoot of Shia Islam (which is in itself an offshoot of mainstreat, Sunni Islam) through the Isma'ili sect.  She showed a profound musical gift at an early age,  and she was fortunate that her brother was (and is) the Oud master, singer, and actor, Farid Al Atrash, one of the most famous musicians in the history of Arabic song.  Not to say, by any means, that she didn't rise on the strength of her own talent,  but to have him as a brother couldn't hurt!

Upon her move to the Egypt, which is basically the Hollywood equivalent of the (so-called) middle east, her star rose dramatically.  She began making records and films, singing in several dialects of Arabic, performing classical music at the highest level.  In doing research for this post I've become mildly obsessed with her history (I was already obsessed with her voice and volcanic beauty). Alongside being a singing star,  she also had a role in the espionage-laden world of the second world war, in which she delivered messages to the Syrian Druze from the British and Free French!  I'll be reading much more about this amazing stuff, I assure you.

For some great basic info about Asmahan,  see the Wiki article, HERE.

It's very rare that I enjoy an artist working past 1930.  There are some,  of course,  but they're usually inspired by and deal very deeply in the skills that made, say, the academic classicists so powerful and compelling.  One of the current facets of art that still manages to grab me is woodcarving.  There are so many people doing wonders in wood (though still infinitesimally fewer than there were in the "olden days").  I've also fallen in love with the art of pipemaking,  and there are a legion of guys making wonderful things to puff tobacco from.  This is what brought me to this great craftsman,  Sidrit Skender Vaqari...he's got skills.

Born in Tirana,  Albania in 1982,  Sidrit studied sculpture at the fine arts academy there.  He's been a professional carver for fifteen years,  but with the incredibly mature skills that he puts to use in these pieces of practical art,  it seems like he should be a wizened old man!  His education in sculpture really shows in his eye for proportion,  and his taste in subject matter is quite broad;  everything from Michelangelo's David,  to the warrior Dwarf Gimli from the Fellowship of the Rings.  It's very inspiring stuff.  The professional European and Turkish pipemakers really put a great deal of time and imagination into their work,  and Sidrit is very much of that old school tradition...in spite of his youth and full-arm tattoos!  Look at the detailing in the Gimli pipe below;  the beard braids alone are exceptionally imaginative.   It's great work.  I imagine they must also be a pleasure to smoke,  as well,  so if you're interested in owning one of these masterpieces in briar wood,  click on this link HERE and/or HERE (if you're on Facebook).  He's a very nice guy and responds to inquiries quickly and politely.

In the former incarnation of this website, CLAYTONOLOGY,  I had a thing called "Hot Stuff",  where I would showcase some of the images that I enjoyed a bunch.  I harvest the bountiful web for this sort of thing;  it's a huge banquet for the eyes to the person patient enough to search.  That's how this page developed, actually.  I was finding so many outstanding images that I felt the need to share,  hoping some like-minded folk might find them amusing, and enjoy them as much as I have.  The search itself has been a wonderful education,  and as I find new images,  they lead me to other new ones,  and then I discover an army of great artists of whom I had previously not heard.  

Well,  I've commissioned from myself a new "Hot Stuff" endeavour...I hope that you enjoy!  I don't prefer to supply bios or info on the work,  but with the internet and a few names,  there is a great bunch of fun in searching.  Here are the artists: