Posted: 3 years ago

What surprised me most about Andrea Marcia Correa Kenyon-Muir's program on the Fruili School of Mosaic Art is not that it exists and is florishing but how the comments about the program shows little knowledge about the history of mosaic art. This is not the first school of mosaic art. Anyone who has studied ancient arts in Egypt, the Middle East, China, Mongolia, Greece, the Roman Empire, Celtic and Byzantine arts, etc, knows that the use of mosaic is as old as written history can record. It was a permanent way to decorate (and extend into a timeless cycle) the images and ideas of an age. It is not unique to Italy, although under the Roman conquests it was researched in many lands that were conquered by Alexander's (and other Roman generals) legions of soldiers. It was brought back to Rome but it was also already a part of their vocabulary of expression (coming from the Greeks). It was not even lost in what we call the "dark ages" of Medieval life (although much of Greek culture WAS lost or ignored). Special glazes from China and the Orient found their way to Rome over the "silk road" through Tbilisi and Istanbul. It flowered there too in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, Barogue, Rococo and the 19th century.

What is marvelous about what Andrea was able to show is that the school is part of a continuous use of this media through the ages. It is what Salinger once wrote, "As much as death is inevitable, life is inevitable." Man has always used art to cheat death and live a kind of eternity of existence. Anyways, thank you, Andrea, for extending our knowledge about this important art technique in present day Italy.

Joe Kagle

Artist, writer, art historian and management 

Posted: 3 years ago

It is exciting to see the growing interest and develpment of an ancient art in our "modern" culture. 

Carol Anderson