Gypsy Art – Art and Gypsies Comenius Projet Lycée Henri Wallon - Aubervilliers Mars 2015
The gyspy art The gypsy art is an art that consists mainly in highliging nature and glory. However there is very little retrospective of the art because it's more a craft than an art in itself. Gypsy culture is rich in music, poetry, performance, freedom, painting, but these art form are too often misunderstood and rejected because of the preconceptions that people have about this people.
Painting of a gypsy scene of life In this picture we can see Gypsy people who are celebrating something . We can notice that everyone seems happy and the atmosphere is festive. The use of warm colors accentuates the generosity , the friendliness and the welcoming spirit of the people . There are many objects that are representative of this culture as the guitar, music, dance and cheerfulness that people emit .
Representation of a gypsy woman In these two pictures we can see that the dress style of a gypsy woman is rather a very colorful style , which is representative of their festive moods.
Chagall's painting
Les gens du voyage, 1968 Chagall isn't a gypsy but a Belarusian and Soviet naturalized and he is French however he has always been fascinated by these people and their culture. That's why he decided to make them the key theme of all his works .
Two CD covers containing a set of gypsy songs " The ball of the Gypsy " is a music compilation of gypsy inspiration which appeared in 2 volumes , the first one in 2006 and the second in 2007. Gypsy music is festive and noisy and contains a lot of stringed instruments .
Gypsy Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5StMOXoBgvo The gypsy dances are very festive and very fast. Most of the time people are dancing in couples or facing each other.
Gypsy dances
Upon their arrival in Europe, Gipsies have been notorious for their dances which have similarities with flamenco dances and Indian dances. We can find in these dances the same foot raps. It is remarkable that children learn to dance at the same time they learn to talk. Pictures below show the historical continuity of the Gypsy dance and its affiliation the Indian dance
But gypsy dance has also some particularities that makes it unique. Full of rhythm, emotions, it's a dance of parties and challenges which has its codes and its own technique.
But, unfortunately, today, Gypsy's dance tend to disappear.
It's a painting of a gypsy in her traditional dress painted thick which gives a relief effect which wants to imitate the movement of the dress. Behind her, a guitar painted of acrylic which reminds of the gypsy music. Dance and music play an important role in the gypsies's communities.
It’s an oil painting made with a knife. We can see a gypsy camp and gipsies are gathered around a campfire, playing music to accompany a dancer. Note that the dancer's dress has the exact same colors as the colors of the fight which gives the image of a warm, welcoming community.
Here again, we can find we find those warm colours.
Gypsy Divinatory Arts
Cristallomancie The cristallomancie comes from gipsy population because these are the first users of cristal balls. Before gipsies, witches used pieces of crystal to read the future. With this art, it’s possible to know the near future as well as the distant future. The origin of the word « cristallomancie » comes from the greek <<crystallus » (ice) and « manteia » (divination). Crystal ball is also named << Hindu mirror » and it remains the traditional emblem of the clairvoyance. Cristallomancie was outlawed by Church on the 1st of march 1994 because they thought it was a joke.
The Tarot
The tarot reading is the application of the fortunetelling cards of the Tarot de Marseille . It is a divination that uses all or part of the 78 cards of the ÂŤ Tarot de Marseille Âť
Astrology
Astrology is a set of traditions and beliefs that argue that the position of the planets in the solar system provides information to analyze or predict human events, collective or individual . Its popular versions are the horoscopes magazines or affinities of the zodiac signs . In most countries, reading horoscope magazines is extremely popular.
Palmistry 1: Life line
2: Head line
3: Heart line
Palmistry is a divining practice of interpreting the lines and other signs of the palm of the hand. Each element studied (the shape of the hands, the
4: Venus ring
5 : Line Sun
6: Mercury line
7: Chance line
mountains and ridges , nails and finger positions ) is attached to an aspect of personality .
Movies
EMIR KUSTURICA Emir Kusturica, born 24 November 1954 in Sarajevo in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is a filmmaker, actor and Serbian musician, twice winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Gypsies are the focus of two films of Kusturica: Time of the Gypsies and Black
Cat, White Cat, although Gypsy music players appear in almost all his other films. Emir Kusturica has no gypsy family roots but has frequented gypsies since his childhood, and for him, these people symbolize the concept of freedom.
Kusturica also created a punk opera Time of the Gypsies, the first representation was given on 26 June 2007 at the OpĂŠra Bastille in Paris. The opera is based on his 1989 film Time of the Gypsies, the book was written by Nenad Jankovic and music composed by the No Smoking Orchestra. The work, very different from the usual programming of the Bastille Opera (songs amplified microphone, live tracks, incredible scenery, etc.) was a great critical and public success.
Time of the Gypsies is a Yugoslav film directed by Emir Kusturica, released in 1989. This film was one of the very first films shot almost entirely in Romani, the language of the gypsies.
It tells the dramatic life of Perhan, the natural son of a soldier and a gypsy, who dreams of a rich and happy future. Raised by his grandmother, who loves him, he's almost torn from her and went to Italy to work for a child trafficker. He will return to the country but will fail to achieve his dream.
YUGOSLAVIA - 1989 - 2:22 Director: Emir Kusturica Screenplay: Emir Kusturica & Gordan Mihic Image: Vilko Filac Music: Goran Bregovic Actor: Davor Dujmovic (Perhan) Bora Todorovic (Ahmed) Ljubica Adžović (Grandmother) Husnija Hasimovic (Merdzan) Sinolicka Trpkova (Azra) Emir Kusturica (bar patron in Milan) The scene of the St. George's feast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pdaSZHBIAU People influenced by the music of this scene: Sofi Marinova & Neli Petkova – Gergiovden Kayah & Bregovič - Nie Ma, Nie Ma Ciebie
Tony Gatlif
Tony Gatlif, born September 10th 1948 at Alger, of his real name Michel Dahmani, is a French film director, also actor, scenarist, composer and producer of movies. He was born of a Kabyle father and a Gitano mother. He spent his childhood in Alger, and then came to France in 1960 during the War of Algeria. He performed in different plays then made his first movie in 1975, La Tête en ruine. From 1981, he developed his thematic that will deepen from film to film: the Gypsies throughout the world. He was seduced by a "community in motion" and a "world of sound and music "of “great wealth and great diversity”. However, obviously foreign to the idea of an exclusive attachment to a community, Gatlif defined himself as a "Mediterranean". Tony Gatlif is the scenarist of the film that he has done.
1973 : Max l'indien (court métrage) 1975 : La Tête en ruine 1978 : La Terre au ventre 1981 : Canta gitano (court-métrage) 1983 : Les Princes 1985 :Rue du départ 1989 : Pleure pas my love 1990 : Gaspard et Robinson 1993 Latcho Drom 1995 : Mondo
LibertĂŠ (Korkoro)
The message The "official representative of the gypsy cinema" in France gives with
LibertĂŠ a very nice surprise. It deals with the deportation and extermination of gypsies during World War II, an episode almost absent from history books and from most of the movie screens. Then, with its form, it summoned all the cultural folklore but it avoids clichĂŠ representation, or even plays with it. Barbed wire fence in winter, an alignment of gray and dirty shacks, mud. Behind the barbed wire, an armada of women, men, children with closed faces with an unspeakable sadness. Imaging - alas! - familiar to Holocaust. Except here, it is the Gypsies who stand behind the barbed wire. Between 250 000 and 500 000 of them perished under the Nazi regime: a revealing imprecision of the lack of historical research on this tragic period. His film is a great success because it breathes freedom in wholes points. After a lot of research and many meetings, the director has woven his script by aggregating several stories, several fates. The path taken abandons the meticulous historical reconstruction for the benefit of the uptake of gypsy soul struggling with human tyranny.
The scenario We are in France in 1943. A gypsy family -with beautiful costumes and vintage trailers - prepares to return to a small village where they used to do the harvest. Except now, Vichy is installed. Gypsies are now prohibited of vagrancy. It is thanks to the mayor, Theodore, played by Marc Lavoine, and resistant teacher Mademoiselle Lundi (Marie-Josée Croze), inspired by the fate of a "Just", that the family escapes, for a time, before being arrested and deported.
Scenes From the evocation of a watch with Hebrew numbers found along the rails of a train to the parallel scenes of torture of Theodore and Miss Monday, everything is made with intelligence and delicate suggestion, not heavy but with great accuracy. He exhibited here by his camera the freedom of Gypsy people and the monstrosity of intolerance. Filming the Gypsies- Tony Gatlif has done this for almost thirty years with more or less happiness- is fatally to bring along a bit of the folklore cliché. The director plays with its codes: Gypsies are often portrayed as born-musicians who spend their lives clapping hands with guitars around a campfire - but not only… If this culture is filmed outside any cliché, it's because the scenes where it is reflected are carried by a wonderful madman, Taloche, played by James Thiérrée. His character of a sensitive naive, poet a little bit seer, translates alone all the feelings summoned by such a story: the fear, the rage, the madness who looming, the misunderstanding, the resistance at the stagnation ... This Taloche is an amazing gypsy-Charlot, who rushes into the ground to smell the substance, who is escalating trees and falling into the creek, and who runs breathlessly through the forest and the nears, his cry following him as an expected delivery. To sum up, someone who is free.
In fact, all the gypsy culture filmed in LibertĂŠ is based on a very present music, which brings a joyful lightness unexpected with such a subject. About the music precisely, one of the most beautiful scenes of the film is "MarĂŠchal nous voila" taken up
by
the
gypsy
sauce.
Located in the middle of the film, this is like the climax of the film and it represents the specific musical talent of the Gypsy people. This recovery enables this typically French music of the Gypsy culture, creating a cultural mix, especially as the scene is presented as a fusion between Gypsies and the high society. This mix gives us a very beautiful music to hear, with a certain emotion. The proof is that high society is satisfied with the service provided by the Gypsies, who played for them all
evenings.
It
is
representative
of
the
message
of
the
http://www.allocine.fr/video/player_gen_cmedia=18952046&cfilm=137350.html
film,
extolled
by
Tony
Gatlif.