{"id":1699,"date":"2006-10-22T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2006-10-22T10:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2006-10-22T10:37:11","modified_gmt":"2006-10-22T10:37:11","slug":"2006-10-22-religious-art-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/?p=1699","title":{"rendered":"religious art"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Virgin-Mary-Ams.jpg\"<\/p>\n

So here we are in Antwerp, where it seems that the friendly face of the diamond trade is now a Russian with watermelon forearms and eyes like a three-day-dead fish. Passed on the diamond-rimed .357 pendant and hit the Koninklijk Museum for a bit of high-culture in low-land light.<\/p>\n

An hour of perusing paintings of martyrdom and judgment and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had my fill of the burning, hacking, drowning, beating and skewering (the kind of stuff New York Times pieces on Iraq report generically as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153signs of torture\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd) that were, until relatively recently, the centerpiece of public diplomacy here.<\/p>\n

Back on the street, there was a heavily made-up lady busking in the shadow of the Gothic cathedral. She was pretending\u00e2\u20ac\u201dquite credibly\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto be a statue of the Virgin Mary (she even had a little Baby Jesus on her lap), except, when you tossed a coin in her plate, she came alive and blew you a kiss.<\/p>\n

This in the heartland of a vicious, protracted, sectarian conflict that took as a centerpiece Rome\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s idolatry and venality. That smashed statues and people with equal abandon.<\/p>\n

Nice to see they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned to crack a smile, toss a coin, and move on. And it only took five-hundred years, a few dozen major wars and a mountain range of corpses.<\/p>\n

There are a few more pics of my current European tour here<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Virgin-Mary-Ams.jpg\"
\nSo here we are in Antwerp, where it seems that the friendly face of the diamond trade is now a Russian with watermelon forearms and eyes like a three-day-dead fish. Passed on the diamond-rimed .357 pendant and hit the Koninklijk Museum for a bit of high-culture in low-land light.
\nAn hour of perusing paintings of martyrdom and judgment and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had my fill of the burning, hacking, drowning, beating and skewering (the kind of stuff New York Times pieces on Iraq report generically as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153signs of torture\u00e2\u20ac\ufffd) that were, until relatively recently, the centerpiece of public diplomacy here.
\nBack on the street, there was a heavily made-up lady busking in the shadow of the Gothic cathedral. She was pretending\u00e2\u20ac\u201dquite credibly\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto be a statue of the Virgin Mary (she even had a little Baby Jesus on her lap), except, when you tossed a coin in her plate, she came alive and blew you a kiss.
\nThis in the heartland of a vicious, protracted, sectarian conflict that took as a centerpiece Rome\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s idolatry and venality. That smashed statues and people with equal abandon.
\nNice to see they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned to crack a smile, toss a coin, and move on. And it only took five-hundred years, a few dozen major wars and a mountain range of corpses.
\nThere are a few more pics of my current European tour here<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[194],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amrani.cc\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}