River as a landscape – Nilotic landscapes

The “Palestrina Mosaic” or “Nile mosaic of Palestrina”, a town near Italy’s capital Rome, is a late Hellenistic floor mosaic depicting the Nile in its passage from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean.

Around 100 BCE, Nile landscapes were quite a fashion in Roman art. In fact, wikipedia has a whole article on “Nilotic landscapes” as an art subgenre of its own. The allure of the Nile and it’s natural and social surrounding must have been so great across the Mediterranean world, that from Ancient Egypt to the Minoans (2.000 BCE), the Greeks (500 BCE), the Romans (until the 7. Century CE) and into the Renaissance in the 16. Century, Nile landscapes were a popular motive in painting as well as mosaics and tapestry.

The Palestrina mosaic shows beautifully how water, land, vegetation and social life were interconnected in the Egyptian societies along the Nile. It’s a fluid, constantly changing and evolving concept of landscape and of society, I find very inspirational.

Alexandria II

This is the introduction to “Pharos and Pharillon” a book by British writer and literary critic E.M. Forster about Alexandria. The book was published in 1923. Forster was stationed in Alexandria during his service in the British military and wrote two books about the port city.

“Before there was civilization in Egypt, or the delta of the Nile had been formed, the whole country as far south as modern Cairo lay under the sea. The shores of this sea were a limestone desert. The coast line was smooth usually, but at the north-west corner a remarkable spur jutted out from the main mass. It was less than a mile wide, but thirty miles long. Its base is not far from Bahig, Alexandria is built half-way down it, its tip is the headland of Aboukir. On either side of it there was once deep salt water.

Centuries passed, and the Nile, issuing out of its crack above Cairo, kept carrying down the muds of Upper Egypt and dropping them as soon as its current slackened. In the north-west corner they were arrested by this spur and began to silt up against it. It was a shelter not only from the outer sea, but from the prevalent wind. Alluvial land appeared; the large shallow lake of Mariout was formed; and the current of the
Nile, unable to escape through the limestone barrier, rounded the headland of Aboukir and entered the outer sea by what was known in historical times as the “Canopic” mouth.

To the north of the spur and more or less parallel to it runs a second range of limestone. It is much shorter, also much lower, lying mainly below the surface of the sea in the form of reefs, but without it there would have been no harbours (and consequently no Alexandria), because it breaks the force of the waves. Starting at Agame, it continues as a series of rocks across the entrance of the modern harbour. Then it
re-emerges to form the promontory of Ras el Tin, disappears into a second series of rocks that close the entrance of the Eastern Harbour, and makes its final appearance as the promontory of Silsileh, after which it rejoins the big spur.

Such is the scene where the following actions and editations take place; that limestone ridge, with alluvial country on one side of it and harbours on the other, jutting from the desert, pointing towards the Nile; a scene unique in Egypt, nor have the Alexandrians ever been truly Egyptian. Here Africans, Greeks and Jews combined to make a city; here a thousand years later the Arabs set faintly but durably the impress of
the Orient; here after secular decay rose another city, still visible, where I worked or appeared to work during a recent war. Pharos, the vast and heroic lighthouse that dominated the first city—under Pharos I have grouped a few antique events; to modern events and to personal impressions I have given the name of Pharillon, the obscure successor of Pharos, which clung for a time to the low rock of Silsileh and then slid unobserved into the Mediterranean.”

full book here.

Political flood images

In Germany, the imagery of flood or flooding and of Noah’s Ark is frequently used in the political discourse to refer to undesired migration. Since the 1990s this dehumanizing topos was in high demand and was used by mainstream media and radical political parties alike. The following are covers of Germany’s biggest news magazine from 1991 and from 2006, fifteen years apart. The main headline is identical: “Ansturm der Armen” which translates as “storm (or onrush) of the poor”.

Political extremists picked the imagery up instantly, as illustrated by this add by a right-wing party from 1991 and another recent cover from a right-wing political magazine:

medieval flood in Europe

Date and title of this wood print are unfortunately unknown to me. This is the source.

The Wave in Architecture

It’s a rather popular architectural motif, particularly of course in coastal and riverside cities. I wonder if there ever has been a historical study of the wave in architecture. Here are a few random examples from Europe:

Dessauerstraße, Hemshof Ludwigshafen, Germany. I couldn’t find out about the architect nor he date of these buildings.

Built over the course of more than a decade and finished in 2018: The Wave in Vejle, Denemark, designed by Henning Larsen.

Elbphilarmonie in Hamburg, Germany. Opened in 2016, by architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.

Inside of Multihalle, in Mannheim, Germany, built by Frei Otto in 1975.

Tides (2021)

Tides” (alternative title “The Colony”) is a sci-fi movie from 2021 about a post-apocalyptic world at the moment the first human communities are about to re-settle again. The only territory suitable is a coastal strip that is covered by tides twice a day. The area is a tidal zone, not quite land and not quite sea, with little to no vegetation and natural shelter for the people to build a more permanent habitat.

The landscape and weather in the story are the same as on the location, the movie was filmed. “Tides” was largely filmed outdoors on the small island Neuwerk in the German Tidelands, situated between the estuaries of the rivers Weser and Elbe.

Neuwerk during low tide

Director Tim Fehlbaum explained in an interview how this landscape inspired the movie plot in the first place:

“For the outdoor scenes we went to the German Tidelands, which was where the idea for the film started. I’m a very visual director and my ideas often have a visual trigger. I had never been to the Tidelands and having grown up in the Swiss mountains being at the low point of Germany was eye-opening. Looking out at this expanse of water was so interesting because in an hour or so, everything you just saw becomes covered in water. The floods in the film are real, and they come in twice a day. Shooting there was exceedingly difficult because we could never shoot much longer than two or three hours, and I always wanted to keep shooting, but it becomes a question of minutes before the water is at your knees and suddenly up to your chest.”

You could say, the movie is really an exploration of this landscape and the living conditions and the atmosphere in tidal zones. That human renewal after the partial retreat and ecological meltdown takes place in such a tidal zone is interesting as it references this landscape as a realm of opportunity, transition and change – a liminal space full of potential rather than decay.

I find this inspirational in regard to our current situation of ecological and social transformation. Author Kim Stanley Robbinson made a similar reference to the “intertidal” as a space of opportunity and renewal when sketching his “Super Venice” in the post-apocalyptic novel “New York 2140” four years earlier. It is striking how both works are set in tidal zones, how both interpret them as spaces of renewal, and yet how radically different they paint this landscape. You can read my post on Robbinson’s book here.

Flood Memorabilia

In Germany as well as in many other countries, images of extreme floods often found their way on postcards. Here is a selection of postcards. (click on the image to find the online source)

1909

1910

1914

1920

1920

1929

2002

undated postcard from Tokyo, Japan

undated postcard from Panama, probably 1924

Street Scene on the Rhine

A street in the city of Bonn with the Rhine river in the background, January 2024.

Breach of St. Anthony Dike in 1651

Jan Asselijn (1610–1652): “Breach of St. Anthonis-Dike near Amsterdam”, 1651.

“During the night of 4-5 March 1651 the Saint Anthony’s Dike was breached near Amsterdam. Jan Asselijn portrayed the fiercely flowing water with a strong sense of drama. The billowing cloak of the man at the left shows that the storm is not yet over, however the squalls are already moving on at the right. The vivid red contrasts sharply with the bright blue of the parting clouds.”

(from the website of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL)

Vesuvius – the most beautiful disaster

The erupting mount Vesuvius in Italy is one of the most popular motives in modern art history, particularly throughout the 18. and 19. Century – at least as far as disasters go. Between 1766 and 1779 the volcano erupted several times, giving artists occasions to witness the event personally. The topic and it’s visual representation have played a major role in Europe’s public imagination of natural disasters.

Here are a couple of examples, mostly taken from the 2018 exhibition “Entfesselte Natur” (Nature Unleashed) at Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany.

above: Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819): “Eruption of Vesuvius with the death of Plinius”, 1813

above: Michael Wutky (1739–1822): “Vesuvius Eruption”, around 1796

Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797): “Eruption of Vesuvius”, between 1776 and 1780.

Pierre Jacques Volaire: “The Eruption of Vesuvius”, 1771

Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737 – 1807): “Vesuvius Eruption in the year 1774”, 1774

For more information and the philosophical ideas behind the eruption of mount Vesuvius in art history see my post here.