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Sketches from an Antique Shop The Mosaic of Time and Spirit (published in newspaper Finance) The time of the Christmas and New Year festive season is the time of all things nice and kind, when we solemnly reach out our hands and wish each other best wishes. At the end of the millennium we nostalgically remember the past periods. With a good thought woven into the past we enliven our memories and in the same way the sight of a nice antique piece uncovers the veil of the past. The End of the Second Millennium The hands on a clock are a symbol of a circular movement, while the historical view is quite the opposite. The end of the second millennium is terminated by minimalism in design as an antipode to the time surfeited with information using clean and strait lines, elementary shades of colour with strong accents, futurist materials such as glass and metal are caught into leather and wood. Fine art negates the classical form of figures, consciously presents forms broken to abstraction, installations become the used means to stir the spectator's emotional reaction. The Time Stops in the Period of Art Deco and Secession In 1925 time turns back as they prepare for the exhibition of decorative art and industrial design in Paris. This decor introduced the name for the new style Art Deco. Between the years 1907 and 1925 a series of new artistic movements appeared, such as futurism, dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, while cubism brought out from them a new Art Deco of a square form, a contrast in colour and created in exotic sorts of wood for customers of a selected taste. The new styles - Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and Secession marked the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. The flower decorations, imaginary motives and soft forms were the superiority of distinguished design masters such as Joseph Hoffmann, Victor Horte, Van de Velden and Thonet; Galle and Lalique played in glass, while the forms of butterflies, dragonflies and flowers softly mingled on the most beautiful products of goldsmiths. The Time of Napoleon and the Transition into Biedermaier 18th Century slowly turns towards the 19th, Napoleon is going to spend the rest of his life on the island of Elba, the Caesar is leaving his place to the Biedermaier middle class and comfort, the magnificent empire decorations turn into more classical, calm ones. The forms follow geometry, the nobleness of the nut-tree wood is slowly starting to shine on functionally designed furniture. The Arrival of the Luxurious Baroque and Spiritualised Renaissance The hands on the clock move back to the 17th Century. The baroque period in which Europe gets overflowed by the new spirit of luxury is shown in paintings and sculptures of richly gold-plated baroque statues and angels; artistic inlays and interesting details decorate drawer chests, console tables and mirrors. The free renaissance spirit is expressed through the thought of Erasmus of Rotterdam: 'I'm human and nothing human is unknown to me'. This is the spirit in which the renaissance giants created. Michelangelo and Leonardo - who is probably the last polymath - a man whose knowledge and inventions will always fascinate are accompanied by the names of Tizian and Durer who are forever engraved into the historic memory. The Gothic Caught in Christian Ethos The sight stops on the gothic corpus of Christ, which through its ascetic form tells us about the time of dedication to the divine. This art, thoughts as well as the individual himself stare upwards into the pointed arches of gothic cathedrals, fearing god within a Christian cult place. The Pure Beauty of the Antique Period The hands on the clock are slowly moving towards twelve o'clock and as they meet the art of the antique world is born, the art of Sumarians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. It is the time to bow with great respect to the artists, painters, architects, philosophers and their thoughts from which we are still pumping our knowledge and wisdom. In the forth coming millennium filled with information science, new technology, genetics, maybe with newly discovered life forms on planets beyond our galaxy, we will look into the memory of the past for every little stone composing the mosaic of the artistic and our own spirit. Karin Košak |
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