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Newsletter 522– 07 – 21 - 2010
In this issue:

1) FEATURED ARTIST
2) SPECIAL OFFER OF THE WEEK
3) CAN ARTWORK INFLUENCE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS?
4) DISCOVERY OF EARLIEST ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT


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1) FEATURED ARTIST – VALTER MORAIS

Imagine a colorful, romantic and fun world, where people celebrate peace, love, freedom and happiness. That’s the Valter De Morais art world. His works reveal his visionary impression of our everyday life and also reflect his great sense of humor that is always present in all of his paintings. Valter De Morais was born in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1948. As a child he had expressly wished to be a soccer player. However, his destiny was drawn to the arts. He has been committed to the fine arts since he was fifteen years old. Valter De Morais opted to dedicate his life to painting a happy world. “It’s a pleasure to know that my paintings can create an enjoyable environment”.

He became a professional painter in 1981, when he received a bachelor in Fine Arts degree in the University of Mogi das Cruzes in Sao Paulo. He also had an academic experience teaching for many years at the University, where he contributed his knowledge with many students. In 1988 Valter De Morais came to the United States and has been a full time artist since then. His works are deeply rooted in the cubism represented by Picasso and a pop art style, movement that emerged in the late 1950’s. His own romantic feeling of the world inspires his works.

Valter De Morais talents are very diverse, ranging from pop art to Caribbean landscapes to portraits and hyperrealism. As South Florida breathes arts, Valter De Morais moved from Boston to exhibit his paintings that perfectly combine to the tropical atmosphere. He became involved in painting different themes characterized by the deep perspective, colorful backgrounds and unexpected dimensions. His works are in galleries and collections all over the world including a portrait of Princess Ann which hangs in Buckingham Palace. In the early 70’s he won various awards for pop art style in Brazil. Valter De Morais is also very active in charity work. He has donated several paintings, which has been auction off with its proceeds going to research for Children with Aids, Cancer, and Adult Parkinson’s. One of Valter De Morais’ hobbies is playing billiard. This inspired his “Billiard Art Series” and the creation of the official logo for the Ladies Professional Billiards association.

Diverse, inspirational and creative, this is Valter De Morais!


2) INCREDIBLE SPECIAL OFFER OF THE WEEK- VALTER MORAIS

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3) CAN ARTWORK INFLUENCE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS?
BY: ELIZABETH LANDAU

The Russian capital's shiny new metro station is called Dostoevskaya, after author Fyodor Dostoevsky. But that's not what's getting the buzz in the international press.

The Moscow station has grayscale mosaics depicting scenes from Dostoevsky's stories, which are characteristically dark and violent. One image shows the "Crime and Punishment" protagonist murdering two women with an ax, and another shows a man holding a gun to his head. The latter isn't the focal point of the station; it's one of several artistic renderings of Dostoevsky's fiction on the walls.

Still, the artwork has been raising eyebrows among mental health professionals and bloggers alike. The question remains: Could this subway station become a place that encourages suicidal behavior?

It is, of course, too early to say what will happen, but having an image of someone with a gun to his head is problematic and could be inviting suicidal behavior, said Madelyn Gould, a psychiatrist at Columbia University.

"You certainly don't want to do anything that might in any way contribute to someone's motivation to die by suicide," Gould said.

Images of suicide, be they in art, cinema or news media, can make the act seem more real to vulnerable people, who have probably been suffering from depression or other mental illness and feel stressed, experts say. Something like the mosaic at Dostoevskaya isn't all bad or good, but it can affect people already at risk, said Nadine Kaslow, a psychologist at Emory University.

"For some people, it can be one more thing that makes them lean in an unsafe direction," she said.

People who have not already felt mentally distressed will probably not be affected by an image of a man with a gun to his head, she said.

Portrayals of suicide, both fictional and nonfictional, have been blamed for deaths by suicide for centuries.

"The Sorrows of Young Werther," a novel by Goethe published in the late 1700s, was implicated in suicides across Europe after its release, according to the World Health Organization. The hero shoots himself because he cannot be with the woman he loves, and many people who took their own lives soon after its publication did so in a similar manner.

More recently, many systematic studies have found that media reporting can lead to imitative suicidal behaviors and that young people and those suffering from depression can be especially vulnerable.

That's why organizations such as the International Association for Suicide Prevention caution media against describing or showing photographically the specifics of suicide method and location, as these details and images may encourage others to imitate the act. They also warn against glamorizing the suicides of celebrities, which can promote copycat suicides.

A growing body of research has looked at suicide prevention by way of blocking the means of access -- in other words, restricting access to a method that someone might use in taking his or her own life.

A study published this week in the British Medical Journal examined the effect of putting up a barrier on the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto, Ontario, which had about nine suicides a year from 1993 to 2002. The barrier was put up in 2003, and there had not been any suicides there afterward.

Researchers found, however, that the annual rate of deaths by suicide from other bridges went up from 8.7 to 14.2, suggesting that some people who might have taken their lives at the Bloor Street Viaduct may have merely found other places to do so.

But other suicide experts say barriers are crucial.

It's important to note that the Toronto study was very small, and it is impossible to draw conclusions from it, said Matthew Miller, associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who co-wrote the editorial that accompanied the study.

There have been many instances in which lives have been saved by restricting access to a culturally acceptable method of suicide, Miller said.

When domestic gas was detoxified in England and Wales in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a drop in the suicide rate of about a third, researchers have argued.

However, a 2000 study led by David Gunnell at the University of Bristol suggested that some people may have turned to drug overdoses instead, with those rates rising at the same time that suicides by gas decreased from 1973 to 1975.

There is also evidence that the United Kingdom has had success reducing suicide attempts involving the pain reliever acetaminophen, also called paracetamol, by restricting the number of tablets of medication that could be sold in a packet, Gould said.

"Saving lives in the short run by making it harder for people to die when they make an attempt saves lives in the long run," Miller said. "People can then get the help they need once the crisis has passed."

While some people will simply turn to other methods, suicidal behavior is generally impulsive, and motivation waxes and wanes, Gould said. Any method of deflecting a person thinking about suicide can buy valuable time that may allow him or her to reconsider.

But Kaslow cautioned that there is a broad range of impulsivity among people who are vulnerable to suicide, and some deaths are quite premeditated.

The emphasis, she said should be on reducing stigma about mental health problems so that more people get the help they need.

"If they get appropriate treatment, they don't feel as suicidal, and they're less likely to kill themselves, and that should be the first thing we do," she said. "That's going to matter more than blocking off hot spots."


4) DISCOVER OF EARLIEST ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT
BY: MARTIN BAILEY

What could be the world’s earliest illustrated Christian manuscript has been found in a remote Ethiopian monastery. The Garima Gospels were previously assumed to date from about 1100AD, but radiocarbon dating conducted in Oxford suggests they were made between 330 and 650AD.

This discovery looks set to transform our knowledge about the development of illuminated manuscripts. It also throws new light on the spread of Christianity into sub-Saharan Africa.

The Garima Gospels are preserved in an isolated monastery in the Tigray region, set among mountains at 7,000 feet. No other Ethiopian manuscripts can be dated from before the 12th century. So the Garima Gospels represent a unique survival of an early Christian text in sub-Saharan Africa—pre-dating all others by more than 500 years.

The radiocarbon dating could even link the manuscript to the time of Abba (Father) Garima, who established the monastery. Originally from Constantinople, the monk is traditionally believed to have arrived in Ethiopia in 494. Legend has it that he copied the Gospels in a single day. To assist him in completing this lengthy task, God is said to have delayed the setting of the sun.

The Garima Gospels were recently conserved by an Anglo-French team, sponsored by the Ethiopian Heritage Fund. None of the conservators had ever faced such challenging conditions, and work had to be done outdoors, with two funeral biers serving as tables.

The discovery
The first report about the existence of the Garima Gospels came in 1950, from British art historian Beatrice Playne. Women are not allowed inside the monastery, but as she was considered an honoured visitor, its treasures were brought outside for her to view. She recorded that “there were several illuminated manuscripts whose ornamental headings struck me as Syrian in style”.

In the 1960s the manuscripts were studied by French specialist Jules Leroy. He found there were two separate sets of Gospels, now known as Garima I and Garima II. Both date from the same period, and Leroy concluded that they were created in around 1100. He found it difficult to envisage that they could have reached the country in the early centuries of Christianity.

The Garima Gospels have never left the monastery, and because of its remote location and the reluctance of the monks to show them, few scholars have had the opportunity to even briefly see them (although listed in the 1993-96 catalogue of the touring US exhibition “African Zion: the Sacred Art of Ethiopia”, they were never lent).

Jacques Mercier, a French specialist in Ethiopian art, has seen them on five brief visits. On one trip he took two, loose small samples of parchment, the size of a modest coin. The manuscript was then in an extremely fragile state, and fragments of brittle parchment broke off almost every time it was opened.

Mercier later arranged for the two parchment fragments to be radiocarbon dated at the Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology. A sample of the parchment (probably goat skin) from Garima II was dated to 330-540 and one from another illustrated page to 430-650. Radiocarbon dating can only yield a range of dates (the Garima figures are subject to a 96% probability), not a precise date, but the middle year of these two samples would be 487 or 488.

Although it may well be coincidence, Abba Garima is said to have arrived in Ethiopia in 494. So the radiocarbon dating raises the possibility that the 1,500-year-old oral tradition associating the Gospels with the monk may be true—even if he did not complete the work in a single day.

However, Mercier believes that on stylistic grounds the Garima Gospels are slightly later, perhaps around 600. Even this later date would make them among the earliest surviving illustrated Christian manuscripts. The oldest dated are the Rabbula Gospels in Syriac, completed in 586 and now housed in the Laurentian Library in Florence.

The other renowned expert on the Garima Gospels independently suggests a similar date. US scholar Marilyn Heldman has visited the monastery, but she was not shown the Gospels, probably because of her gender. But, based on photographs, Heldman concluded they are from the sixth century.

The texts date from the same period as the illuminations, although these pages have not been radiocarbon dated. They are written in Ge’ez, the ancient Ethiopian language, and they are by far the earliest texts (other than a few stone inscriptions).

Early Byzantine style
Garima I, the first of the two volumes of the Gospels (348 pages), opens with 11 illuminated pages, including canon tables (which provide a concordance for the four Gospels). This is then followed by the text of the Gospels in Ge’ez.

Garima II is similar (322 pages), with 17 pages of illuminations. It has fine portraits of the four Evangelists. There is also an unusual depiction of the Temple of the Jews, a building with a staircase in a form otherwise unknown in Christian iconography (the architecture is possibly based on a Persian Sassanid garden pavilion for exotic animals, representing paradise). The Ge’ez is by a different scribe from that of Garima I (the texts are slightly different, as is the spelling).

The illuminations are all in the early Byzantine style, but the question is where they were painted. Mercier believes that the images of Garima I probably come from Syria or around Jerusalem (stylistically the canon tables are similar to those of the Rabbula Gospels, probably made at a Syrian monastery). Garima II has illuminations that show some affinity with those of Coptic Egypt. It is also possible that the illuminations were done by a Middle Eastern artist working in Ethiopia or an Ethiopian in a Middle Eastern studio.

Around 20 different species of birds occur in the illuminations. A preliminary analysis suggests that most are found throughout the Middle East and none are strikingly Ethiopian, but they could have been taken from a model book or another canon table. However, further analysis of the birds might help pinpoint where they were painted.

The text itself was probably copied in Ethiopia (rather than by a Ge’ez scribe in the Middle East), since it appears to have been added after the illuminations had been completed. This is particularly clear in Garima I, where the spacing in the canon tables does not fit the Ge’ez.

The covers of the Gospels are important. London binding specialist Nicholas Pickwoad, who has visited the monastery, told us that the cover of Garima I could well be contemporaneous with the contents. This would make it the world’s earliest bookbinding still attached to its text. It is a copper-gilt cover over a wooden board, which, although ornately decorated with a cross, is made in a rather crude style. There are holes, which may have originally been plugged with jewels. The silver cover of Garima II dates from the tenth to the 12th centuries.

The future
The survival of the Garima Gospels is astonishing, since all other early Ethiopian manuscripts seem to have been destroyed during turbulent times. Very little is known about the history of the Abba Garima Monastery, but it may have been overrun in the 1530s by Muslim invaders. More recently, in 1896, the area was at the centre of resistance to Italian forces. The monastery’s main church was destroyed by fire in around 1930.

The survival of the Garima Gospels may have been due to the fact that they were hidden, perhaps for centuries or even for more than a millennium. The hiding spot may have been forgotten, and it could have been rediscovered by chance in relatively modern times.

In 1520, Portuguese chaplain Francisco Álvarez visited the monastery and recorded that there was a cave (now lost or destroyed), where Abba Garima was reputed to have lived. Álvarez reported that the monks would descend into it by ladder to do penance. Although speculation, it is possible that the Gospels may have been hidden in this cave.

What will become of the Garima Gospels now? Ethiopia’s Holy Synod and scholars feel that an appreciation of their importance will mean they will be protected more carefully. For the monks, the Gospels are primarily regarded as holy relics, linked directly with Abba Garima, who is a saint.

A museum is now being set up to provide a secure place where the Gospels can be seen by visitors. On the edge of the monastery is a 19th-century church for female worshippers, but this has just been replaced by a modern building. Work is therefore underway to convert the old church into a museum. Its windows are small, which is good both for security and to keep light levels down, and steel bars are being inserted. The building will also be protected by armed guards.

Michelle Brown, a former British Library curator and manuscripts specialist, is extremely excited about the discovery: “The Garima Gospels cast vital light upon early Christian illuminated manuscript production and upon the role of sub-Saharan Africa…It is the sort of model that inspired such vibrant later Ethiopic art and is an important early witness to the way in which the churches of the Christian Orient both absorbed the courtly Christian culture of Constantinople and developed their own voices and styles.”


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