Oil, Water and Royalty

Abu Dhabi: “Where petrol is cheap but water is expensive” - my Indian guide.

Price of one litre of petrol: 1.72 dirhams (51 AU cents)
Price of 250 mls San Pelegrino bottled water: 12 dirhams (AU$3.58) (hotel minibar)

Driving from the airport into the gleaming new city of Abu Dhabi, you could be forgiven a little surprise. This place seems to have discovered the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, which as fans of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ will know, is 42. Signs along the Corniche highway, brightly lit in the evening, proudly proclaim: ’42’. It turns out that this is not about metaphysics, however, but rather the 42nd anniversary of the establishment of the United Arab Emirates. And of course, the 42nd anniversary is a very important one...er, isn’t it? (Like many things to my Western eyes here, something might have become a little lost in translation.)

You can lookup the history of the Emirates on Wiki which will tell you the important details:

The United Arab Emirates i(Arabic: دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة Dawlat al-ʾImārāt al-ʿArabiyyah al-Muttaḥidah), sometimes simply called the Emirates or the UAE, is an Arab country located in the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south, as well as sharing sea borders with Qatar and Iran.
The UAE is a federation of seven emirates (equivalent to principalities). Each emirate is governed by an hereditary emir who jointly form the Federal Supreme Council which is the highest legislative and executive body in the country. One of the emirs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates. The constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah,Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The capital is Abu Dhabi, which is one of the two centers of commercial and cultural activities, together with Dubai. Islam is the official religion of the UAE, and Arabic is the official language.

The Royal Family plays a prominent role in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, from its patriarch Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, to his son the current ruler Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the numerous family members. The ruler’s half-brother is a kind of second-in-command, known as the Crown Prince (or “an extra”, as my guide put it). The patriarch is said to have had 19 sons (and an indeterminate number of daughters) from four wives. Knowing this helps explain why the city is stuffed with royal palaces (and new ones are being built everywhere), public buildings have large ‘VIP’ entrances, and there is a separate airport terminal for the Royal Family. It might also explain why said patriarch looks so fierce on the posters of him around town.

Abu Dhabi seems to run on the untiring work of thousands of immigrants. Though the Arab men in their cool, handsome white dishdash are at the immigration desks at the airport, and wait with their briefcases for luxury cars at the hotels, the waiters, doormen, check-in clerks, cooks, guides, cleaners, security staff, manicurists, hotel managers, taxi drivers, market sellers, construction workers...all seem to be immigrants, many from the Indian subcontinent and Asia, but with a good sprinkling of other nationalities too (including Polish and Australian). Arabic may be the official language, but English is the way of communication in the hotels.

Wiki tells us:

Abu Dhabi is the second most expensive city for expatriate employees in the region, and 67th most expensive city in the world. Fortune magazine and CNN stated in 2007 that Abu Dhabi is the richest city in the world. However, many residents of Abu Dhabi are blue collared workers who get paid very little, work in relative unsafe environments and live in squalid labour camps; this contrasts with senior managers or executives who earn exorbitant annual salaries and work in plush offices. Thus, it can be understood that the wealth is not shared equally.

The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is the largest area of the UAE, with a land surface of about 67,340 square kilometres, which is equivalent to about 87% of the UAE’s total land area. It has a population of around 920,000, although only 30% of the emirate is inhabited, with the remaining vast expanses covered mainly by desert and arid land — constituting about 93% of the total land area.

The land is utterly barren - flat desert as far as the eye can see (from a plane, or a high-rise). The city is situated on an island, with a number of smaller islands, natural and reclaimed, surrounding the city. There is a tiny pocket of the original mangrove left - where gazelle used to roam (giving the city its name: ‘Abu Dhabi’ means ‘Father of the Gazelle’). But any other trees you see are planted, and watered. Actually, the place is not completely barren - they do grow a lot of dates. Lovely dates, actually.

As is well-known, Abu Dhabi and the Emirates sprang from poor, backward fishing villages and desert encampments into high-tech modern cities in the space of only one generation, fueled (pun intended) by the discovery of oil. A LOT of oil. Before the oil, the area was known for pirates, British colonial meddling, and pearls. People began looking for oil as early as the 1930s, but the big strikes were made in the 1960s. And the rest is history, as they say. However, it doesn’t take much imagination to appreciate that such a dramatic transformation in such a short time cannot have been easy, either for the people, or politically. According to the adulatory posters around town, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is much revered for the steady hand with which he navigated these times.

And the weather? In December, temperatures were around the mid-20s (Celsius), the humidity high but not uncomfortable. There was a light breeze from the sea. However, in high summer the temperatures are in the high 30s on average, and can reach the 50s, with sand-storms not uncommon. Luckily, someone invented air-conditioning, without which modern Abu Dhabi probably wouldn’t exist.

Here's a photo journal of some aspects of Abu Dhabi -- much to understand and investigate.

The Fourth Estate

"The Fourth Estate',  Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1901)

This fascinating painting hangs as an introductory and special exhibition on your way into the  Museo del Novecento, which houses twentieth-century Italian art. The Novecento site tells us:

Opening the Museo del Novecento with The Fourth Estate by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo means attesting to a divide more than preparing the visitor for what he or she is about to see in the rooms that follow. The purpose of this painting, which was completed in 1901, was to celebrate the ideals of humanitarian socialism using the theme of a procession of workers advancing and the pictorial technique of scientifically-based Divisionism; but it also marked the final important episode, for Italy’s figurative civilization, in artwork as program, thereby characterized by a search for a superior and concomitant clarity of form and content. But that was not all. The Fourth Estate also identified the end of a season in which the painter’s trade was governed by a respectful, almost natural coming to terms with the museum (here, in particular, the reference is to Raphael’s School of Athens, whose cartoon Pellizza had studied at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana), based on the belief that historic styles traced a continuity that was not just formal but also ideal between past and present.

The painting is an interesting example of the 'socialist ideal' school, painted quite early (well before the rise of Lenin and his crew, for example). The advancing workers are characterised by some as strikers. The point it marks in Italian history is an interesting as the point it marks in art history. The technique used - "Divisionism" - can't really be appreciated from a reproduction, but up-close-in-real-life you can see that the colours are all formed not by mixed but by the very careful placements of lines of colours next to each other, giving a subtle, and surprisingly gentle, result. The painting. by the way, is very big - 293 cm × 545 cm. The Novecento has devoted a great deal of research to this painting, and it includes and exhibition of the artist's preparatory drawings and sketches. The website goes on"

Notwithstanding its ambitiousness, the painting attracted little attention at the time: when it was first displayed at the 1902 Turin exhibition it was neither purchased by the royals (the subject was obviously a sensitive one) nor was it awarded the Premio degli Artisti. The great disappointment that came with these failures contributed to the artist’s deep crisis, which culminated in his committing suicide just a few years later.  After entering the Civiche Gallerie by public subscription in 1920 at a time when Milan was led by a Socialist council and the political climate seemed to be ripe for the concrete prospect of revolution, The Fourth Estate, especially in the aftermath of the Second World War, was considered to be on a par with a manifesto-painting of the ideals of the Left, whether reformist or revolutionary. Hence, for a great deal of time it was denied the status of representing a crucial episode in the history of Italian art, until its lofty pictorial values were reestablished with its restoration and permanent display at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna as of 1980.

 The painting was originally entitled 'The Path of Workers', and the artist had dealt with a similar theme in earlier works such as 'Ambassadors of Hunger', 'Stream of People' and a preparatory sketch of 1898, 'The Path of Workers.' It's said that the inclusion of a woman int he front-line of the workers was ground-breaking in its day. Whatever the politics of it, the painting is incredibly effective in suggesting that a crowd of people is about to walk straight out at you.

Wiki gives a short potted bio of the painter, Pellizza:

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (July 28, 1868 – June 14, 1907) was an Italian neo-impressionist painter. He was born and died in Volpedo, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. He was a pupil of Pio Sanquirico. Pellizza used a divisionist technique in which a painting is created by juxtaposing small dots of paint according to specific colour theory. His most famous work, Il Quarto Stato ("The Fourth Estate"), has become a well-known symbol for progressive and socialist causes in Italy, and throughout Europe. The painting is shown during the opening credits of Bernardo Bertolucci's film 1900.

Have a look at this blog by Settimio Benedusi and the moving photograph he's made below. Pellizza might have been impressed?

Settimio Benedusi.

La Scala Premiere

'La Traviata' opens at La Scala

The most sought-after ticket in opera is to the opening night of La Scala's season in Milano, in early December. It's "invitation only", meaning seats reserved for political and local heavy-weights of all kinds - the President and Prime Minister attend - and the all-important sponsors. Any remaining tickets are sold to ordinary punters - for up to €4,600 per seat. So, although I was in Milan on the all-important date, my chances of scoring a ticket were slim to zero.

So near and yet so far...

Not that attempts weren't made. By an hour before curtain-up, the box office people were shaking their heads, but mentioning €2,000...Still, I didn't have a thing to wear. This is the fashion event of the calendar in the fashion capital of Europe, location of the Prada mothership and just about every other major Italian haute couture brand. After taking a photo beside the La Scala poster (the traditional design, printed fresh for every performance), noting the squads of police, dozens of TV trucks, barriers and security surrounding the venerable Opera House, dodging a mini-demonstration (all those politicos attract the demonstrators), and considering the broadcast on the big screen in the Galleria, it was back to the hotel to watch the performance on live TV feed. Not the greatest sound quality, but much more comfortable in the end. And cheaper. And I was only three blocks away!

High security and lots of TV.

It was Verdi's 'Traviata', and Violetta was sung by the wonderful Diana Damrau - reputed to be the best Violetta singing today, and on this showing, I can understand why. She completely inhabited the role. Divine. The conductor was Daniele Gatti; and the staging and sets were by the Russian Dmitri Tcherniakov. Here we entered the murky waters of controversy. Tcherniakov had updated our 'Traviata' and not everyone was happy about it. Apart from the modern setting (which worked for me, except perhaps Violetta's leggings in Act II) he'd also given some psychological massaging to the usual characterisations. Alfredo in particular was shown to be a rather weak soul - he seemed keen to leave Violetta's deathbed in the last act, and actually looked at his watch. There was much less of the usual flinging into each other's arms. However, it was an exceedingly believable death from Violetta, one of the best I've ever seen.

Here's Miss Damrau on Rai5, the television station that kindly did a live broadcast for the rest of us..

A very realistic death.

The loggionisti (those in the upstairs balconies) at La Scala didn't like the production. They booed. Yes, the famous boo-ing took place. Sadly, because they didn't like Alfredo's updated reactions, they booed the excellent tenor singing him, Piotr Beczala, which was totally undeserved. Germont was well-sung by Željko Lučić. But the biggest boos were saved for Tcherniakov and his artistic colleagues. I didn't agree with the boo-ers. The production worked for me.

Here's the link to La Scala's site if you'd like to check it out for yourself - I expect the ticket prices are a great deal more reasonable now.

Here's the NYT review which is balanced and sensible:

When Alfredo, bearing flowers and a gift, arrives at the dying Violetta’s bedroom for a reunion with his lover, he doesn’t immediately rush into her arms. Rather, he pauses timidly — he is slightly fearful of how he will be received. That is one of the many details that lift Dmitri Tcherniakov’s captivating staging of “La Traviata,” which on Saturday initiated a new season at Teatro alla Scala before an audience that included Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, and other representatives of the country’s elite....As cutting-edge theater goes, Mr. Tcherniakov’s staging is relatively mild. His work has often been more controversial. But this did not stop La Scala’s notorious “loggionisti,” inhabitants of the upper galleries, from voicing their displeasure at the final curtain.

Read this entertaining blog post for a review of the night, and lots of good stills of the performance.
Then listen to this excerpt and judge for yourself!

Museo del Novecento

Umberto Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913" -- striding into Futurism (source)

The Museo del Novecento in Milan provides a stunning counterpoint for the more venerable works of art in the city - the religious art in the Brera, Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" - it's rather brash to expect twentieth century art to compete for attention. But the Movecento has been doing this since December 2011. Housed in a Mussolini-era building, Palazzo dell’Arengario, on Piazza Duomo, opposite the famous Galleria (which it's architecture mimics) and with the recently-cleaned facade of the glorious Duomo right next door, you'd wonder how this museum of twentieth-century Italian art could compete. It does, by being completely true to its mission. In here, all is modern and all (just about) is Italian. Here's their mission statement:

Museo del Novecento (Museum of the Twentieth Century), located in the Palazzo dell'Arengario, is a public venue dedicated to Milan's collection of Twentieth-Century Art....
To encourage the development of multiple perspectives and critical capabilities through the dissemination of knowledge about twentieth-century art. To conserve, study and promote public heritage and the artistic culture of the twentieth century through research and educational activities. To encourage, through work on various levels, an intercultural approach and involve a public that ranges from specialists to children and passing visitors. (source)

This passing visitor was duly impressed. After a small vestibule with a few non-Italian treasures (Picasso, Modigliani) to introduce the twentieth century, we're then led through several layers of gallery by the rather good audio guide, with explanations about the artists (often from Milan) and their significance. Various phases and fads in modern art are exemplified (and explained) as you make your way up the building - and into the building behind, the Palazzo Reale, where the gallery continues. Futurism, the Novecento, Spatialism, Arte Povera...learn all about it. Meet some artists you know and some you may not have heard of before -- Boccioni, Carrà, Soffici, de Chirico, Sironi, Martini, Morandi, Fontana, Manzoni, Kounellis -- who played their part in these Italian movements.

Lucio Fontana's installation at the top of the spiral ramp.

Speaking of the building, it has been rather spectacularly altered to house this museum: although the exterior remains untouched, inside a large spiral ramp has been installed, in blue and white, visible from the Piazza through the windows of the building, and itself giving wide views of the Duomo and Galleria below. On the top floor, the windows are floor-to-ceiling, and the space is used to display neon-light installations by Lucio Fontana. Here's the website description of the building:

Palazzo dell’Arengario (source)

The transformation of the Palazzo dell’Arengario into the Museo del Novecento, directed by Italo Rota and Fabio Fornasari, had the fundamental objective of creating a simple and linear museum system within a historical building. Another aim was to optimise the use of available space and evoke a powerful and appealing image of the building and the new museum, thereby transforming it into one of Milan’s leading cultural centres. Within the vertical space of the tower, there is a system for ascending the structure by means of a spiral ramp leading from the underground level to the panoramic terrace facing Piazza Duomo. The monumental staircase, the terrace and the splendid covered balcony is now part of an itinerary that offers both Milanese and tourists a unique view of Piazza Duomo. The Arengario is connected directly to the second floor of the Palazzo Reale by means of a suspended walkway. This discrete and minimalistic structure is not simply a bridge between two buildings, but also a means of discovering the fascinating historical stratification of the buildings in the area between Via Rastrelli and Piazza Diaz.

Come on up...

...and take a stroll through some of the works on display (images from the Museo's website):

Milan's Canals

Milan - far from the sea. (source)

Milan is situated more or less in the middle of northern Italy - or if not quite in the middle, then a long way from the seas, both the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. What a surprise, then, to find that it had once been an "inland port", connected to both, by a series of canals which linked it to the big rivers.

Milan's canal system dates right back to the time of Leonardo da Vinci, who designed some of its lock systems. In the early twentieth century most of the inner canals were covered over and replaced by tram lines and roads, but a remnant remains, in the 'Navigli' district. 

A 'Leonardo lock'

The canals form an evocative link with the past. Here's what the information sign at the confluence of two of the larger remaining canals tells us:

The Pavia Canal, which as its name suggests connects Milan with the city of Pavia, was not completed until the Napoleonic period. It begins at the canal basin known as the Darsena, under the so-called Trofeo bridge. Locks enable it to negotiate differences in level at various points along its 33-km route, culminating in the visually striking sequences at the point where the canal flows into the Ticino river. 

When the canal opened to navigation in 1819, Milan was finally connected via the Ticino and Po rivers to the Adriatic Sea. This project, which began in the 15th century with the construction of the Bereguardo Canal (connecting the Naviglio Grande to the Ticino near Pavia) and the Martesana Canal (for which Leonardo da Vinci devised a system of locks to allow the waters of the Adda river to flow into Milan’s canal ring), made the city a crossroads between continental Europe and the Mediterranean. 

Today, the banks of the two canals in the “navigli” district are lined with a whole host of trading concerns, art and craft workshops, bars and night clubs, making it one of the most vibrant parts of the city. The hub of “navigli” life is the Darsena basin, created in 1603 as an inner city dock. It is fed by the waters of the Naviglio grande and the Olona river (now underground) and in turn feeds the Naviglio Pavese. The city’s inner canal ring, which was covered over in 1929-30, also flowed into the basin through the Viarenna lock (present-day Via Conca del Naviglio).

Artisan workshops in the Navigli district.

Canal-side life.

You can take a canal-boat ride for a leisurely cruise along a couple of the canals, get a close-up look at the locks, and travel via the Darsena basin. Just for an hour though - not all the way to Pavia!

The Darsena basin.

The Rough Guide gives more history, including a Shakespearean reference:

Improbable though it may seem, less than fifty years ago Milan was still a viable port – and less than a hundred years ago several of its main arteries – including Via Senato and Via San Marco – were busy waterways. 

In the twelfth century, the first canals linked irrigation channels and the various defensive moats of the city. Later, in 1386, the Naviglio Grande was opened, linking the city to the River Ticino and thus Lake Maggiore. It was Gian Galeazzo Visconti, however, who was really responsible for the development of the system, in the fourteenth century to transport the building materials for the Duomo, especially marble from Lake Maggiore. 

Travellers were also seen on the canals: the ruling families of the North used them to visit one another, Prospero and Miranda escaped along the Navigli in The Tempest, and they were still plied by the Grand Tourists in the eighteenth century; Goethe, for example, describes the hazards of journeying by canal.

In the 1950s, desperately needed materials were floated in for reconstructing the badly bombed city but by the mid-1970s, only a handful of canals were left uncovered; the last working boat plied the waters in 1977.

Have a look at the Navigli Lombardi site, which includes news and cruise details, plus some lovely pics of the canals on a less foggy day (!) and their further reaches.

Napoleon's Pictures

Giovanni Bellini's 'Pieta' (c. 1460)

The Brera Gallery in Milan is a treasure trove of Italian religious art, leavened with some very good eighteenth century Romantic pieces. Wiki gives the history of the Gallery and its associated schools, and the page shows a great selection of the works. There's no doubt this is one of the principal art galleries in Milan -- but why is there an enormously over-sized statue of Napoleon in the courtyard, and why such an emphasis on religious art?

The Wiki entry for the gallery says, rather coyly: "the Academy acquired the first paintings of its pinacoteca during the reassignment of works of Italian art that characterized the Napoleonic era." In fact the Gallery is founded on over 400 works removed from churches and convents that were suppressed in the Napoleonic period. They include works by G da Fabriano, P. della Francesca, Bramante, Crivelli, Raphael, Bellini, Caravaggio, Veronese, Tintoretto, Tiziano, Rubens and Van Dyck. The Euromuse site expands on this fascinating quirk in Italy's history:

One of the leading public galleries in Italy, the Brera differs from those in Florence, Rome, Naples, Turin, Modena, and Parma in that its origins lie not in the collections of the nobility, princes or courts, but in the cultural politics of the state in the Napoleonic era, reflecting the democratic concepts of the French Revolution. 

Like the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice and the Pinacoteca in Bologna, the Brera was originally founded as an appendage, for didactic ends, to an academy of fine arts. However, the Milanese gallery soon took a different direction and, to meet the political requirements of the capital city of Kingdom of Italy, was transformed into a large modern national museum in which works of all the schools of paintings of the conquered territories could be safely preserved to be studied and compared, and to be seen by the public at large.... 

In 1805, when Napoleon was crowned king of Italy, it was decreed that works of art requisitioned in the departments of the kingdom should be brought to the Academy in Milan, where those by the most famous artists would be displayed in the gallery. Additions to the collections in 1850 included the 'Brera Alterpiece' by Piero della Francesca, the 'Pietà' by Giovanni Bellini and a number of paintings acquired from the famous Galleria Sampieri of Bologna. In the same period numerous detached frescoes were brought to the gallery from various churches; today the gallery has what is possibly the largest collection of this kind.

Although the Gallery moved on from this period and continued to expand its collection (including a bequest of 20th century art), Napoleon's plundering of the churches forms the core of the works on display, and explains that curious religious bent -- and the scraps of frescoes shorn from their original walls.

Lamentation of Christ (Mantegna) by Andrea Mantegna. c. 1480

One of the most famous attractions in the Gallery is Mantegna's Cristo Morto (mentioned by this blog earlier). (Full name: Lamentation of Christ (Mantegna) by Andrea Mantegna. c. 1480). The painting is known for its odd perspective on the dead Christ, emphasised in the Gallery by its being hung at about knee-level in a darkened room. It's displayed near Giovanni Bellini's 'Pieta' (c. 1460), another very moving portrait of the grief of Christ's mother.

Piero della Francesca, 'Holy Conversation' c. 1472–1474

Amongst several other highlights, there's a Piero della Francesca, 'Holy Conversation' c. 1472–1474 -- strange and haunting figures; and 'The Marriage of the Virgin' by Raphael c. 1504 (with a building in the background looking remarkably like the the Bramante chapel in Todi.).

'The Marriage of the Virgin' by Raphael. c. 1504

But perhaps you find room after room of religious themes can drag a bit after a while? Yet another allegorical story? Yet another Madonna? But every now and then, one of the huge canvases (originally adorning massive cathedrals), the work of a genius will leap out at you. Even if you've never concerned yourself with art history, there are some painters or paintings that just clearly go that one level more. One such in the Brera is Ruben's 'Last Supper' (1630-31). The vigorous flowing lines, the look on the face of Judas as he stares out of the frame directly at you, the dog lying under the table (more faithful than the man?) Genius.

Ruben's 'Last Supper' (1630-31)

As your visit to the Brera winds to its conclusion, you reach the nineteenth century works, and possibly the most reproduced of all the pictures in the Gallery - 'The Kiss' by Francesco Hayez (1859), a ridiculously Romantic effort, but no less well-loved for that.

The Gallery's history has not been without its drama. Euromuse tells us of another struggle in the 20th century: "When Franco Russoli became director in 1973, the Gallery had suffered from twenty years of inadequate funding, poor maintenance and lack of space. He brought this situation dramatically to public attention in 1974 by closing the Gallery; the positive outcome was the launching of the 'Grande Brera' project, which aimed to enlarge the Gallery by making use of the 18th-century Palazzo Citterio, together with some rebuilding of the Brera itself."

And so, having contemplated it all from Napoleon to 'Il Bacio', your visit is done.

'The Kiss' by Francesco Hayez (1859) 

Francesco Hayez, palette in hand, outside the Brera.

Pictures of the paintings are from the Wiki site.