Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I considered posting on Jirayr Zorthian who is a survivor of this atrocity that murdered one million helpless souls, but, decided against it. Jirayr was about life, not death, and perhaps he made of point of living life to the fullest while you have a chance because death stalked him?
In 1967, Robert Hamilton bought me art supplies managed by his friend, Tim Scully. Robert helped Tim and Stanley Augustus Owsley manufacture LSD. I knew members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Several years later I discovered the Nazarene and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who let their hair grow long after Samson the Nazarite. I did a large painting of Rena Easton as the High Priestess in the Tarot. This painting inspired my late sister to take up art, and she became world-famous as the artist ‘Rosamond’ a name that means ‘Rose of the World’. For this reason I rename the Hippies ‘Primaverians’ after the painting done by Botticelli that inspired the celebration invented and performed by Jirayr Zorthian who was titled ‘The Last Bohemian’. Bo-Ho fashion is right out of Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ that celebrates, beauty, life, and freedom. Because the name ‘Hippie’ was foisted on us long-hairs by a hostile press who ridiculed us, I hereby apply this name to a group of people that changed the world…….
PRIMAVERIANS
In 1965 I was witness to Zorthian’s lust for life, his commitment to breaking therough to the other side, and staying there. At the Zorthia ranch I heard Van Morrison’s album ‘Angry Young Them’ and the lost Celtic Heaven opened up with a barrage of Soul Sounds, Mowtown, and Wolfman Jack doing Dylan Thomas, while an army of white mem come marching to a new drum, painted blue.
Mystic Eyes could have lasted forever. This song was the lost jam that fit well with the jams Charlie Parker had at the Zorthian Ranch as an excellent sound system, with huge speakers blasted it out into the Altadena hillside where you could make out the silhouettes of grazing horses against a rainbow sky.
Then they came, it came, the song Gloria, and there was no longer a demarcation, a cultural barrier. Having grown up in Oakland my friends and I used to smoke cigarettes and list to KDIA late into the night, when this black station came out with their heavy hitters, played music very few had heard. This was grown up man-stuff, and not the Everly Brothers and Beach Boys. Morrison got that. He saw her mystic eyes down by the old graveyard. Primavera – lives!
There were about fifty young people there. All of them were very beautiful. We all took LSD. When Gloria ended, a young man sitting by the record player set the needle down at the beginning because we all wanted to see the beautiful goddess continue her high-flying ballet on the huge trampoline, one more time! After hearing Gloria another ten times, we were all in the Zone. It was the first time I felt like an immortal, a god. We were having a cosmic thrill knowing this was just getting started. I was eighteen.
* * *
I had Easter Dinner and Kenny and Marilyn Reed’s home that is being surrounded by a new beautiful fence, Nathan Calkins is making. Neil, who pays Jazz Guitar in Kenny’s band ‘Stone Cold Jazz’ was telling us he lived on the grounds and was there at the first of Eugene’s Country Fair.
“Detail of Flora’s skirt showing a hidden symbol.”
“Many, many years ago in a sad, faraway land, there was an enormous mountain made of rough, black stone. At sunset, on top of that mountain, a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone… forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time.”
It is not a coincidence that Jirayr Zorthian was influenced by my kindred, Thomas Hart Benton, the cousin of my late brother-in-law, the muralist Garth Benton. Christine, Keith, Barry and Seyburn, and I lived together in a SF commune with Nancy Hamren. Add to this the art collection of my late kindred, Elizabeth Rosemond Tayor, and you have what constitutes a liberal, and for the most part, a secular art dynasty.
For over twenty years I have given proof the religious-right is waging cultural warfare against artists and Bohemians. They have now been joined by Israel and ISIS. The Tunisian museum looks like the Getty Villa where Garth rendered murals.
The Religion Flora Primavera Germania will reborn the Revolution of the Forty-Eighters who worshipped Germania, they putting a hemp branch in her hand that also carries the Sword of the Holy Roman Empire. ISIS has declared Jihad on Rome, but, they have forgotten Charlemagne. With the legalization of marijuana comes an opportunity to establish a Bohemian Think Tank, our own Lobby, that will take on the propaganda of eh Koch brothers who empower the Zionists and Evangelicals who wage a religious and cultural war against the Children of Primavera and Germania, they doing everything they can to render us powerless, with the help of ISIS. It’s time for the return of Flower Power, and a New Spring, that rejects the armed daemons of Koch, Hitler, and Abu Bakyr.
There can be peace in the world. The Primaverians do not reject Jesus, but see him as the Jubilee Jesus who came to restore the Vegetation and Calendar Goddess that Ruth ‘The Gleaner’ adopted that had everything to do with, when it was time to plant and harvest.
Before Keith, Nancy, and myself drove down to Pasadena, we stopped at the Harkins house to buy some weed. James Harkins was a successful doctor that practiced in Oakland. He had dropped LSD with his eldest son James Junior, played in a Jazz ban with other doctors on Pill Hill, and smoked dope. It was then that I met Michael Harkins who would become my best friend. He became a good friend of Jim Morrison and was asked to contribute to Stone’s movie. Michael was also a good friend of the Stackpole family. Ralph Stackpole rendered ‘Pacifica’ and was friends of the Bohemians at Lake Temescal, as well as the artists Diego and Freda Rivera. We both knew Juanita Miller the daughter of Joaquin Miller the poet and member of the Bohemian Club.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
“Don’t lay your Guilt Trip on me!”
We were the children of the Warriors Damned who left the world in ruins after two terrible world wars. And all we could do, were allowed to do, was be just like them. But, then, we passed thru the tail of a comet called ‘Mystic Eyes’ – and they were now everywhere – these beautiful creatures………….and we lay their weapons down!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yWJ_LCoIE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goR8Lf3YH2w
For Zorthian… the beautiful human body was … not merely an object but a potent means of communication for any and all ideas, as well as a source of inspiration and aesthetic delight. In a very real sense, his nudes are autobiographical, telling more about him than his subjects.
But Zorthian was perhaps better known in Southern California art circles for his free-form lifestyle than for his prodigious art. Each spring during the last decade of his life he threw a primavera birthday party, dubbing himself Zor-Bacchus, wearing a toga over long red underwear, and nibbling grapes from the hands of nude, garlanded nymphs (many of which were his artist models). Zorthian joined the nymphs in dancing to the pipes of a cavorting Pan garbed in furry goat leggings. Alcohol flowed freely and a roasted pig fed hundreds of guests who could include scientists, movie stars, internationally known artists, writers and musicians and ordinary people. July 15, 1952, Zorthian hosted a legendary party on his ranch, where Charlie Parker played and the riled-up guests tore their clothes off.[3]
The diminutive Armenian-American was friends with jazzman Charlie Parker, artist Andy Warhol and Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman.
The ranch served as a haven of bohemian life and a backdrop for items of Zorthian’s artistic expression—salvaged wood, bed springs, rusted vehicles, broken concrete, beer bottles, old shoes and other junk he could recycle into various sculptures and architecture. Zorthian called the ranch The Center for Research and Development with an Emphasis on Aesthetics, and fashioned rental houses out of discarded items including telephone poles and railroad ties. He also built rock walls, towers, inlaid bridges and walkways. He painted in a studio and bred horses for his horse ring.
Zorthian and his wife, Dabney (March 21, 1933 – May 10, 2006), lived in a small pseudo-brick house on the ranch, well loved by friends as welcoming although very cluttered. The couple often preferred to sleep outdoors. They slaughtered their own livestock and made their own sausage, milked their own goats and made cheese, raised their own vegetables and gathered eggs from their chickens. As a young immigrant, Zorthian had been startled by how wasteful Americans seemed and vowed to recycle everything he could and to create his own self-sufficient environment, a trait he share with rival/fellow castle-builder Michael Rubel.
http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/zorthian-ranch-altadena.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primavera_(painting)
Oh, there they go
It’s funny how they look so good together
Wonder what is wrong with me?
Why can’t I except the fact
She’s chosen him and simply let them be?
Let them be
Well, here it comes
Good God, here comes the night
Here comes the night
Lonely, lonely, lonely, night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yWJ_LCoIE
I don’t know if I studied the artist Sandro Botticelli. Even though I wrote my version of ‘The Birth of Venus’ and did a painting of my Angel coming out of the sea, I neglected this great Renaissance Artist, and his beloved Muse – until now! Since I beheld her, Belle, and compared her to Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia Vespucci, do I now behold all the clues of the petals and the thread that have brought me through the labyrinth of time, to adore her once again. And she knows me! I was buried at her feet in order to continue my long vigilance, for she was only asleep. One day she will awaken, and the City of Flowers will bask in her apparelled beauty. Belle! My Belle!
Following the Renaissance of the Miller Brothers to the top of the hill in the lost city of Fairmount, I came to the crossroads of time. When I saw the intersection of Flora and Fairmount, I knew it would be a matter of days before I was with my Sleeping Belle once again. She is the one I came here for – again!
After finding the lost tombstone of George Melvin Miller, the founder of Florence, I began to see the grand design. When she came across the piazza de Keasy while the minstrel was singing a song by the Grateful Dead ‘Saint Stephen’ I had my rose at ready.
Saint Stephen with a rose
In and out of the garden he goes
Country garland in the wind and the rain (note 1)
Wherever he goes the people all complain
Stephen prosper in his time
Well he may, and he may decline
Did it matter, does it now?
Stephen would answer if he only knew how
This is the Renaissance Rose that my ancestor employed to write his name, Rosemondt. When I told Belle what kind of work I do, I described my painting of a woman coming out of the sea. Many have asked me who she is. Now, I can say;
“She is Belle, the most beautiful woman in Florence.”
We will go there, and……behold the sea!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgtJZwjJmT0
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/04/09/la-bella-simonetta/
JIRAYR ZORTHIAN
BIOGRAPHICAL TIMELINE
Col. Jirayr Hamparzoom Zorthian was born April 14, 1911 in Kutahya, Turkey, of Armenian parents. At the age of three, he showed considerable talent in drawing and painting. His works are on record from that time on.
He went through two Turkish massacres before age eight. He left Turkey at age nine with his family and spent a year in Padua, Italy, waiting for his visa to open to the United States. This period was very important in his life because his father took him to many cities in Europe and exposed him to great works of art. He arrived in the United States at the age of eleven and settled with his family in New Haven, Connecticut. He obtained his formal education there. After graduating from Yale, the Winchester Fellowship granted him a year and a half at the American Academy in Rome with travel and study throughout Europe.
His art career branched into various directions on his return to the United States. As a mural painter his reputation was established. He has forty two (42) murals throughout the United States. Other aspects of his art career included forty seven years of constructing and designing buildings. He is an architecture and design consultant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Country_Fair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYkTniIxbTk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R74xwPyWpI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-DfmgOzQM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEua0fDiUKY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germania_(painting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-Eighters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Regalia
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/09/13/king-kesey-lost-merlin/
The Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Sacrum Romanum Imperium, German: Heiliges Römisches Reich) was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806.[6] The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories.[7][8][9]
On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe after more than three centuries. The title continued in the Carolingian family until 888, after which it was contested by the rulers of Italy in a series of civil wars until the death of the last Italian claimant, Berengar, in 924. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne[10] and beginning a continuous existence of the empire for over eight centuries.[11][12][13] Some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire,[14][15] while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning.[16][17] Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, describing a gradual assumption of the imperial title and role.[8][14]
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- There was talk of a real revolution. Not wanting it to be an armed one, we wondered if music could do the trick. The album is a narrative concept album that tells the story of a counter-culture revolution against the oppressions of “Uncle Samuel” and a plan to steal a starship from orbit and journey into space in search of a new home.
http://www.crystalinks.com/merlin.html
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/03/14/forty-seveners-vs-forty-eighters/
Two months before Obama was elected I founded the Bohemian Bank that was based upon the innate and almost religious cooperation one finds amongst CREATIVE and NON-DESTRUCTIVE people. I saw this Unity of Porpous as a Secular Church formed to counter the political madness of the Christian-right who employs our Secular Democratic Laws in a deceptive manner claiming Satan is doing the same, thus, God-Jesus bid evangelicals to be vicious political animals employing every dirty trick in the book in order to make sure God comes out the winner. Disguising themselves as Tea Party Patriots,https://rosamondpress.com/2014/07/04/the-church-of-art/ the evangelicals have taken up arms, and resemble Taliban Terrorists.
With the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, that sells art supplies, I am now going to form a Church of Art that will draw a Ring of Protection around a variety of Creative People who do not have to own a religious bone in their body to be a member of this church. Indeed, the less religiosity, the better. As long as one is creative, and opposed to using a gun and violence to render and promote your vision, you are in the door. I include groups who operate community gardens, an activity that resembles a form of natural worship practiced by monks in a monastery.
The regalia is composed of two different parts. The greater group are the so-called Nürnberger Kleinodien (roughly translated Nuremberg jewels), named after the town of Nuremberg where the regalia were kept from 1424 to 1796. This part comprised the Imperial Crown, parts of the coronation vestments, the Imperial Orb (a globus cruciger), the Imperial Sceptre, the Imperial Sword, the Ceremonial Sword, the Imperial Cross, the Holy Lance, and all other reliquaries except St. Stephen’s Purse.
St. Stephen’s Purse, the Imperial Bible, and the so-called Sabre of Charlemagne were kept in Aachen until 1794, which gave them the name Aachener Kleinodien (Aachen jewels). It is not known how long they have been considered among the Imperial Regalia, nor how long they had been in Aachen.
Germania is a painting by Philipp Veit created in March 1848 during the Revolutions of 1848. This allegorical figure is represented with the imperial Eagle, oak leaves (symbols of German strength), a hemp branch (as a sign of peace), and a banner.
It was hung in the National Assembly in Frankfurt‘s Paulskirche, where it concealed the organ. It was meant as a symbol of a united democratic Germany and remained a national personification until the end of World War I.
- Unfettered Shackle
- While shackles are a symbol of restriction or internment, unfettered shackles are a symbol of freedom, independence, or a new beginning. In national personification, this would indicate past control by another power or nation; either Rome historically, or more specifically, the Holy Roman Empire. See Germany: History
- Colors
- Note the prominent black, red and gold flag, which is still in use as the flag of Germany.
- Brandished Sword
- In this figure, the sword is brandished and held upright, in a gesture of leadership and defense, rather than offense or attack. Nobility, justice and truth are represented.
The Imperial Sword has an overall length of 110 cm (43.3 in), with the length of the blade being 95.3 cm (37.5 in).[1][3] The sword originated during the high medieval period, but was refitted and decorated several times during the late medieval and early modern periods—e.g., the addition of the silver wire wrapping the hilt. The crossguard on one side bears the Middle Latin inscription CHRISTVS : VINCIT : CHRISTVS : REIGNAT : CHRISTVS : INPERAT (Christ triumphs, Christ reigns, Christ rules).[3] On the reverse side, the shorter variant CHRISTVS : VINCIT : CHRISTVS : REINAT. Schulze-Dörrlamm (1995:27) interprets the theological intention of this inscription as referring to Christ the Victor, Christ the King, and Christ the Emperor—an invocation of Christ as legitimation for secular power, and the translatio imperii to the Holy Roman Empire.
The pommel is of the “mushroom” or “tea-cosy” shape typical of the high medieval period.[4] The pommel is engraved with the arms of Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, who reigned from 1209 to 1215. The lower edge of the pommel is inscribed with BENEDICTVS · DO[minv]S DE[v]S QVI DOCET MANV[s]+ viz (Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches the hand [to wield]).[1] This is an abbreviated form of Psalm 144:1, Benedictus Dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad prælium, et digitos meos ad bellum (Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight).
Scabbard[edit]
The scabbard of the sword is adorned with 14 gold plates engraved with depictions of monarchs. These pictures date to the eleventh century, and are thus about a century older than the sword itself. The figures have been identified as depicting the consecutive German monarchs from Charlemagne to Henry III, who was crowned in 1046.
The Imperial Sword was made for Emperor Otto IV in the twelfth century, possibly for his coronation as King of the Romans in 1198.[2] Its predecessor, the sword of Otto III, is also preserved, in the Essen Abbey treasury.
The first known explicit mention of the sword dates to 1315, in a letter of a lady-in-waiting of Elisabeth of Aragon, wife to Frederick III. It may also be referenced in an inventory of 1246, which mentions merely zwey swert mit zweyn scheiden, gezieret mit edelem gesteyne (two swords, with two scabbards ornamented with gems). The first pictorial representations of the sword date to the fifteenth century, but the first detailed depiction only to the seventeenth century.
Among the causes for the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 is the famine and hunger crisis which occurred in 1847. Failed harvests in 1846 and 1847 led to immense food shortages and ultimately led to a sharp raise in food prices. This had a “profound social impact”24 which led to massive emigration from Europe, specifically to North America, and to the hunger revolts of 1847. To obtain a better understanding of the crisis, in 1835 a German worker worked a full day for two five-pound loaves of bread, but by 1847, a full day‘s work only earned the worker a single five-pound loaf of bread.25 The hunger crisis peaked in 1847, but by then it had already done its job throughout Europe. In February 1848, a second revolution called the February Revolution broke out in Paris, France.
Philipp Veit (13 February 1793 – 18 December 1877) was a German Romantic painter. To Veit is due the credit of having been the first to revive the almost forgotten technique of fresco painting. Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia. He was the son of a banker Simon Veit and his wife Dorothea, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, who subsequently left him to marry Friedrich Schlegel. Veit received his first art education in Dresden, where he was taught by Caspar David Friedrich,[1] and Vienna. Although a prodigious talent when it came to drawing, Veit was not comfortable with oil painting. Therefore, in Vienna he took to working with watercolor. In Vienna, he made the acquaintance of Schlegel, and through him came to know several Viennese Romantics, one of whom was the poet and novelist Joseph von Eichendorff.[1] He was strongly influenced by, and joined, the Nazarene movement in Rome, where he worked for some years before moving to Frankfurt.
Veit participated in the struggle against Napoleon in 1813-14, returning to Berlin for a short period. In 1815, he finished the Virgin with Christ and St John, a votive painting for the church of St James in Heiligenstadt, Vienna. The painting was inspired by the style of Pietro Perugino and Raphael.[1]
In Frankfurt, where his most important works are preserved at the Städel, he was active from 1830 to 1843 as director of the art collections and as professor of painting. From 1853 till his death in 1877 he held the post of director of the municipal gallery in Mainz. Like his fellow Nazarenes he was more draughtsman than painter, and though his sense of colour was stronger than that of Overbeck or Cornelius, his works are generally more of the nature of coloured cartoons than of paintings in the modern sense.
Veit’s principal work is the large fresco of The Introduction of Christianity into Germany by St Boniface, at the Städel. In the Frankfurt Cathedral is his Assumption, while the Alte Nationalgalerie of Berlin has his painting of The Two Marys at the Sepulchre. An example of his romantic work is Germania, a national personification of Germany, located in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum of Nuremberg.
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/romanticism/Franz-Pforr-and-the-Nazarenes.html
In 1809, the young German painters Franz Pforr (1788-1812) and Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) founded the Brotherhood of St Luke in Vienna. They settled in Rome a year later, where they lived and worked with new recruits in the convent of Sant’Isidoro del Pincio. Because of their flowing hair and monk-like appearance, they were called the Nazarenes. Within the confines of the Brotherhood, their daily life was based on fraternity and ascetic poverty. As artists, the members set out to revive the art of painting by following an ideal of simplicity and sincerity, in conflict with the academic principles of their time. Their reworking of ancient sacred an was based on a sobriety of colour and line that had many sources of inspiration, including Fra Angelico, the early works of Raphael, and older northern masters from van Eyck to Durer. For the Nazarenes, art was a divine mission, elevated to the level of true faith. The celestial origin of sacred art was celebrated by Philipp Veit (1793-1877) in his frescos in the Villa Massimo of Rome (1819), where he represented the three great Italian poets – Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso -alongside the saints and fathers of the church. Between 1826 and 1839, Peter von Cornelius (1783-1867) gave artists sacred status in the loggias of the Munich Pinakothek (1826-30) and the Stadel Institute of Frankfurt with his Triumph of Religion in the Arts(1829). In portraits, there was a mood of contemplation. In the intimate portrayal of friends, pictures reveal subtle nuances of character, in a style far removed from the canons of official portraiture. The original spirit, derived from the masters of the 15th century that had brought the Nazarenes together, lasted only for a short time.  The fresco cycles that decorated the home of the German consul Bartholdy (1816-17) and the Villa Massimo already showed affinities with the style of the Renaissance of the early 16th century. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_movement
In 1809, six students at the Vienna Academy formed an artistic cooperative in Vienna called the Brotherhood of St. Luke or Lukasbund, following a common name for medieval guilds of painters. In 1810 four of them, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, Ludwig Vogel and Johann Konrad Hottinger moved to Rome, where they occupied the abandoned monastery of San Isidoro. They were joined by Philipp Veit, Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and a loose grouping of other German artists. They met up with Austrian romantic landscape artist Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) who became an unofficial tutor to the group. In 1827 they were joined by Joseph von Führich (1800–1876) (illustration above right).
The programme of the Nazarenes—the adoption of honest expression in art and the inspiration of artists before Raphael—was to exert considerable influence in Germany, and in England upon the Pre-Raphaelite movement. In their abandonment of the academy and their rejection of much official and salon art, the Nazarenes can be seen as partaking in the same anti-scholastic impulse that would lead to the avant-garde in the later nineteenth century.
Joseph Anton Koch, Detail of the Dante-Cycle in the Casino Massimo
The principal motivation of the Nazarenes was a reaction against Neoclassicism and the routine art education of the academy system. They hoped to return to art which embodied spiritual values, and sought inspiration in artists of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, rejecting what they saw as the superficial virtuosity of later art.
In Rome the group lived a semi-monastic existence, as a way of re-creating the nature of the medieval artist’s workshop. Religious subjects dominated their output, and two major commissions allowed them to attempt a revival of the medieval art of fresco painting. Two fresco series were completed in Rome for the Casa Bartholdy (1816–17) (moved to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin) and the Casino Massimo (1817–29), and gained international attention for the work of the ‘Nazarener’. However, by 1830 all except Overbeck had returned to Germany and the group had disbanded. Many Nazareners became influential teachers in German art academies.
Philipp Otto Runge (23 July 1777 – 2 December 1810) was a Romantic German painter and draughtsman. He made a late start to his career and died young, nonetheless he is considered among the best German Romantic painters. Runge was of a mystical, deeply Christian turn of mind, and in his artistic work he tried to express notions of the harmony of the universe through symbolism of colour, form, and numbers. He considered blue, yellow, and red to be symbolic of the Christian trinity and equated blue with God and the night, red with morning, evening, and Jesus, and yellow with the Holy Spirit
Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god. Pantheism is derived from the Greek roots pan (meaning “all”) and theos (meaning “God”). There are a variety of definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God. As a religious position, some describe pantheism as the polar opposite of atheism. From this standpoint, pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it.
Education:
Yale School of Fine Arts, BFA, 1936
Winchester Fellowship
American Academy in Rome 1936-1938
Murals: (some of the significant ones)
A large rock mural in the Laura Scudder home in La Habra, California, 1957.
“Phantasmagoria of Military Intelligence Training” A large serial mural 157′ long and 4′ high. Commissioned by the U.S. Army and later lost, 1945.
“The Development of Power” and “The Development of Light”
Two large murals in the reception area of The United Illuminating Company, New Haven, Connecticut, Temporarily removed for reinstallation in new building, 1937.
“Restoration After the Hurricane,” Mural in United Illuminating Plant, New Haven, Connecticut.
Twelve (12) murals in the Governors Reception Room in Nashville, Tennessee.
Post Office, St. Johnsville, New York,1938 .
Other murals are in churches, hotels, post offices and residences.
Developer and director of The Zorthian Ranch for Children, 1957-1982. A summer day camp to develop creative and athletic potential in children.
Architecture Consultant for the publication, “Engineering Science”, 1960-1972.
Coordinator, Mural Competition, Glendale Water Reclamation Plant, 1970.
Design Consultant for the F.C. Nash & Company, department stores, Pasadena, California, 1967.
Combat Artist for the United StatesNavy. Sent to Formosa and Viet Nam to observe, draw and paint his impressions. The government owns the resulting painting and drawings, including a portrait of John F. Kennedy.
Chairman, “Art in Architecture,” Los Angeles, California, 1956
Chairman, Pasadena Art Fair, 1954, 1955.
Center for Research and Development of Industrial Discards with the Emphasis on Aesthetics. Since 1945 at his 45 acre ranch in Altadena, California, he has been recycling materials to construct buildings, corrals, walls, stables, large wall and tower sculptures.
Teaching:
Chouinard Art Institute
Otis Art Institute
California Institute of Technology
Chandler School
Pasadena City College
Shows:
L.A. Slide participant with “Water Wall” sculpture.
“The Four Aces,” One of the Four Aces (Ace of Hearts) at the Jan Arte
Gallery in Pasadena, 1996.
“Artists Influenced by Architecture,” Novaspace, Los Angeles Theater Center.
Baghdad Bi-Annual International Festival of Art, In Iraq. Represented the
United States with three large compositions in 1988.
Los Angeles County Fair, 1974, Guest artist with a one man show.
The Men’s Committee of the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art sponsored a large etching in the 1970’s. It was unveiled at the museum banquet in his honor in preparation for an exhibit of his large 1960’s drawings.
Pacific Ocean Park, 1964
Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1954
“The Divorcement,” A collage which hung in a show entitled “Twenty four most promising United States Artists.”1953
Awards and Honors:
Grand Marshall of the 1997 Pasadena Doo Dah Parade, Pasadena, California.
Tennessee Colonel bestowed by Governor George Mc Wherther, 1987.
“Best Artist of Pasadena,” and “Most Eccentric” voted by the people in a survey of the, Pasadena Weekly, 1989
Gold Crown Award, for art, by the Pasadena Arts Council, 1983
First Prize, drawing, Pasadena Society of Artists, 1959
Purchase Prize, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art , 1949, for
“The Mob,” a large oil painting.
Featured:
“The Last Bohemian,” feature story and cover of the L A Weekly ,
June 13, 1997.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art at the Huntington Library
“The Wizard’s Eye, Visions of American Resourcefulness,” by Jim Higgs, Chronical Books. Featuring the works of Jirayr H. Zorthian of walls, buildings, outdoor sculptures, gates, sculpture compositions and land sculpture composed of mostly recycled materials.
“No Ordinary Genius,” Life and Times, PBS TV production about
Richard Feynman.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on rosamondpress and commented:
The Choir Ladies should stay out of the Arts, and mind their own business. They are not good singers, and Kenny Reed is not found in any Jazz books.