Does anyone know specifically about dance performances in the Hoysala Temples?

Hi,

I am preparing an inventory of the archaeological monuments that meet with the following three criteria:

1. It should be a piece of sacred architecture, which is equipped with an inner shrine (naos, garbhagriha, sanctum sanctorum) that is square in shape.

2. Should be prior to c. 460 CE (based on primary evidence / other scientific factors)

3. Region: West Asia, South Asia

Please ignore the query if you are not too sure of the dating.

Thank you in advance!

'Paradise Now' is a avant-garde theatre was Performed in Living Theatre in America in 1960.

I have reviewed the paper Specificity of Esthetic Experience for Artworks:

An fMRI Study - Di Dio, Canessa, Cappa and Rizzolati. The study compares photographs of two classical Greek sculptures with two contemporary young men in underwear and purports to derive some useful knowledge about the nature of aesthetic judgement. While I am not qualified to critique the experimental methods, I question assumptions underlying the study.

The study seems to ask this question: "What is the difference between looking at a Greek sculpture and looking at a dude in the gym change room?" As if the difference were simple. I contend the mater is far from simple. Let me elaborate why. The first complexity is the question of who is looking?

The first set of assumptions are about the normative (white? western? male?) viewer. Did the experimenters ask a Nuigini native or an Inuit? An Australian Aboriginal or a Mixtec?

Some people might be immediately outraged by being requires to view an image of a near-naked young male human, some might find the experience pleasurable.

In the case of viewing the images of two near-naked young men -  if the viewer is a gay male or a straight female, they might look at the images and wonder:

 Is he 'well hung'? Are his nipples pierced? Does he have a tattoo?

They might become sexually aroused.

A straight male or lesbian would likely not pursue such inquiry, but any viewer might ask "Am I looking at a genre of soft porn?"The images bear some resemblance to those by 'Tom of Finland'. 

They might look for markers of ethnic or social status:

What brand/style of underwear is he wearing?

Does he look smart or stupid?

What does his haircut tell me? Does he look like a neo-nazi skinhead?

Would I want to have conversation with him?

These and many other considerations will occur in any experimental subject.

Clearly, few are going to ask these questions about an archaic Greek sculpture.

To add another dimension of complexity:  these are images, representations, not the things themselves. As a moderately educated westerner, I know immediately I’m looking at an image of an archaic Greek sculpture, which fits into a particular version of cultural history which I am, to a greater or lesser extent, enculturated to. I can take a position, not about the sculptures as representations of naked guys, but as icons which stand for an entire historical and ideological narrative – I can endorse, reject, qualify, etc. Indeed, art history asks us to de-eroticise 'art', lest it become debased. This, in my opinion, is Victorian nonsense, but still very much part of the idea of 'art'.

The authors seem confident that there is such a thing as 'art', that we can distinguish between art and non-art, and that these Greek sculptures epitomise it. As an art professor, I dispute these assumptions. 

Further, as a culturally educated person, I read these images - regardless of what they represent - as, not just black and white (chemical) photographs indicative of a certain period of C20th image technology, but as offset lithographic translations of these photographs in mass paper media publication, possibly a compendious history of world art, circa 1970.

I may have opinions about such compendious histories of world art, and the way they reduce all artworks to small flat rectangles, and the way they thus create a false sense of continuity supporting a thesis about the history of art.

 The authors seem to feel that the Archaic Greek sculptures automatically qualify as some epitome of 'beauty'. This is indicative of an axiomatic endorsement of a theory of art history by the authors. I do not endorse this version of art history. I therefore do not automatically confer 'beauty or aesthetic value on these images. 

As I hope to have indicated,the ways contemporary westerners think about images is profoundly complex. To assume that fMRI data collected from subjects viewing these images represents aesthetic response, it to me, an unjustified assumption.

Simon Penny

Archduke Leopold-Willem of Habsbourg, emperor Ferdinand III's brother, lived from 1647 to 1656 in Brussels, where he was general governor of the Low Countries.  He was a great collector of paintings; he bought no less than 1400 paintings of, among others, Holbein, Bruegel the Elder, Van Eyck, Mantegna,Giorgione, Veronese.

On May 6th, 1656, Léopold-Willem goes back from Antwerp to Vienna, bringing with him his collection of paintings, which he made install in 1657, partly in the Stallburg, in the Hofburg palace, partly in the Neue Burg.  He makes the Flemish painter Jan Anton van den Baren his manager of his collection.  In this collection, stands the Tower of Babel, as testifies the inventory written in 1659.  

In this inventory, the painting is described as follows : «581. Ein grosses Stückh von Öhlfarb auf Holz, warin der babilonische Thurn.  In einer alter Ramen mit verguldten Leisten, 6 Spann 4 Finger hoch, vnndt 8 ½ Spann braith.  Original vom älten Brögel.» (f° 255)

My question is : which was the value (in cm) of a Spann in this time ?  I didn't find a more recent book about the ancient measures than this (a bit old) one : Horace DOURSTHER : Dictionnaire universel des poids et mesures anciens et modernes, contenant des tables des monnaies de tous les pays, Bruxelles : M. Hayez, 1840.  But the author says nothing about the Spann.  Can anyone help me ?  I would be very glad, and thankful.

(Please, forgive me my bad english; I do my best, but it is not my mother language.)

Xavier de COSTER

There are some better maps than others, to give some examples: Linschoten (1595), Pedro Barreto de Resende (1635), Plan de Goa (1750), Lopes Mendes (1863), Direcção das Obras Públicas (1910), etc

If one could should at least 5 in order of relevance what would they be and why.

I am working on interpretation of combat images from Roman pottery, to this end I am looking for any newly discovered images of fighting men on Roman pottery, I am particularly anxious to know of any new discoveries on Arretine ware.

Since this paper is in Spanish at this time, I am unable to give you any assistance please send me a copy of your La reconsruccion de siniestros ... paper in English

I am searching for NOISEMAKERS in ANCIENT GREECE and ROME, in art depictions and archaeological finds.

I know that "Draco" in the Roman army is one possibility but I need one more simple piece.  It is possible exist as music instrument.  Please I am not interested in children's toys.  

I attach one actually and traditional noisemaker, it is very similar to the one I am searching but isn't the same.

Thanks.

If so, how? If not, why not?