GOLD We live in a miraculous colourful world. However, the colours are more than mere decoration; colours carry deep and significant meanings for us all. Three colours which in the stories of the colours. The three colours, which in the hands of artist have stirred our emotions, changed the way we behave and even altered the course of history. Blue, the arrival of Lapis Lazuli from the East made blue the colour of our dreams. A colour that is transported us to world beyond our horizons. White, once the colour of ancient marbles, comes to embody our darkest instincts. There is a story of colour we have worshipped since the very beginning – one that at first may not seem like a colour at all. Therefore, this is the gold vault beneath the Banks. Bars of solid gold and each one of them is worth almost half a million pounds. The first thing you notice is the weight. It is extra ordinarily heavy pure gold. However, gold has another quality too, its colour glorious, radiant yellowness. In addition, I think this colour is one of the most alluring and beguiling colours of them all. This is a tail of our timeless obsession with all things golden. Across the millennia, we have used gold to revere the things we have held most sacred. In addition, reflected in our works of art, we see the story of ourselves and our changing beliefs and perceptions. Artists aware and they are playing with colour. Not just with words, but they are playing with colours. From honouring our ancient Gods to the worldly Kings and Queens of the Renaissance, we will reveal the techniques, which artisans have used from the fine arts of icon painting to the dark arts of alchemy. Therefore, this was a desperate time for artist. He had to think about how to escape with his life. We will see how in the consumer age, gold came to represent little more than wealth itself and we will see how one painter attempted to restore the colour of gold to divine status. Nobody knows when human first took gold from the earth. We can only imagine their wonder at what they saw. This is perhaps what gold looked like when humans first set eyes on it and you can see why they fell in love with it almost immediately. Not because of its rarity, because they did not know it was rare, and not became of its versatility, because they did not knows what it could do. They fell in love with it because of the way it looked – Its wonderful, radiant, warm yellowness. In addition, there was only one thing in the universe that looked anything like this substance and that was the sun. Ancient people came to believe that gold and the sun were one and same thing. Therefore, when they honoured the sun, only the colour of gold would suffice. A golden sun disc 2000 BC a ceremonial necklace, 800 BC and the most remarkable of all, a sun chariot from 1500 BC – now the star exhibit at the National Museum of Denmark. This is one of the most remarkable things have ever seen in the museum. It is utterly breathtaking. Because in here is essentially a 3,500 year old miniature model chariot in virtually mint condition. It seems there is this utterly delightful bronze horse with its ears picked up attentively, and it is standing on these four wheels and dragging this great disc behind it and that disc is the sun. For the people who made this, the sun was a great, golden goddess that this divine horse every day across the sky from east to west and back again at night. It is, believed that elders of the community, the priests, would pull it around back and forth to teach people the importance of the sun. It has decorated with all exquisite patterns that represent the radiating rays of the sun, the pulsating light, and its movement through the years. It is an explicit connection between the colour of gold and the colour of the sun – both of them have this warm, radiant yellowness, both have this terrific sparkle, and both of them have this eternal shine, because 3, 500 years later everything else has deteriorated but the gold on this disc like the sun outside is still shining. The desire to honour the sun with gold is as old as civilization itself. However, one civilization would come to identify with gold treasures like no other. The ancient Egyptians were unique. While many cultures, had to hunt down gold in far off lands, trade or barter for it. Here in North East Africa, the Egyptians found gold everywhere. Now the ancient Egyptians were very, very lucky. Their territory was, blessed with seemingly unlimited reserves of gold. There were hundreds of deposits dotted all over the place. The richness of these deposits were here in these mountains of the Eastern Desert and here, farther south into Sudan and Nubia, and what is more, the Egyptians were very good at extracting that gold.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 21:21:22 +0000
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