THE LITTLE PRINCE

Summary
A golden-haired boy—a little prince—unexpectedly appears in the vast Sahara, where a pilot has landed his plane because of
engine problems. The pilot is anxiously trying to fix the engine, for he has no food or water to survive for long. The boy politely
asks the pilot to draw him a picture of a sheep. The pilot instead draws a picture from his own childhood: a boa constrictor with
an elephant in its stomach. The boy, exasperated, concludes that adults cannot understand anything without numerous
explanations. Only after the pilot draws a box with air holes in it is the boy happy. Both the pilot and the little prince understand
that a sheep is inside the box.

Gradually, the man and the boy “tame” each other. The home from which the little prince has come is an asteroid, hardly larger
than a house; it holds one rose, one baobab tree, and three volcanoes. The boy hopes to widen his knowledge by visiting much
larger places, such as the planet Earth, and meeting the people, animals, and plants that live in those places. He is inwardly
preoccupied, however, with the safety of his dearly loved rose.

The little prince tells the pilot about his visits to other tiny asteroids, where he met one single inhabitant on each: a king claiming
to rule the universe, although he has no subjects; a conceited man who sees everyone as his admirer; a drunkard living in a stupor,
drinking to forget his shame of being an alcoholic; a businessman greedily counting the stars as his own treasure; and a
geographer who does not know the geography of his place and never leaves his office. The smallest planet he has visited, which
turns very rapidly (with 1,440 sunsets per day), has no homes or people, yet the planet’s lamplighter has no moment of rest as
he constantly lights and puts out the only lamp, following old orders that make no sense. The little prince, who sees grown-ups
as odd, respects the lamplighter for his dedicated, selfless work.

In the Sahara, the prince meets the fox, who reveals to him the major secrets of life. These secrets cannot be seen by the eyes,
unless the heart is involved. When the prince wants to play, the fox explains that “connecting” takes time and patience; through
such connecting, one rose among thousands becomes special. The fox explains also that one is forever responsible where love is
involved, that words cause misunderstandings; that rites and rituals are significant but often forgotten, and that crucial matters
are often ignored and not appreciated. These lessons help the little prince understand his own mistakes, and he decides to return
home to protect his rose.

The boy meets the snake, who talks in riddles, and he understands the creature’s power to send him back where he came from
quickly. The little prince and the pilot are now both dying from thirst. In search of water, they walk through the starry night. On
the verge of collapse, the pilot carries his little friend, not knowing whether they are even headed in the right direction. At dawn,
when it is almost too late to save their lives, they find a deep, old well. The stars shimmer on the surface of the water. They drink,
and the water tastes unusually sweet to them. Both the man and the boy sense the value of that moment. The pilot is sad; the
prince feels fear mixed with joy, because of his decision to go home. The water feels like an earned gift. The prince comments
that the beauty of the desert is in the knowledge that it hides such a well.

The prince tells his friend that he will be leaving the next day. Neither mentions the snake. When the little prince laughs to cheer
his friend up, the laughter sounds like the jingle of a million little bells. He offers the pilot a farewell gift: From now on, when the
pilot looks up on starry nights, he and only he will hear the little prince’s laughter. It will be comforting for both of them to know
that they have each other.

The next day, on the one-year anniversary of the little prince’s arrival on Earth, the pilot comes to the same spot where he met
the boy. There he glimpses the yellow flash of the snake as it bites the ankle of his little friend, and the boy falls quietly and gently
onto the sand. Later, the little prince’s body is nowhere to be found. The pilot finally fixes his engine and leaves for home, hoping
that his friend is safely back at his home, too. In the years afterward, on starry nights the pilot hears the little prince’s laugh and
feels warm in his heart: Love is a powerful, invisible thread connecting people no matter how far apart in space and time they
may be.
 PAINTINGS
The Birth of Venus by Botticelli by Sandro Botticelli

The Birth of Venus is undoubtedly one of the world’s most famous and appreciated works of art. Painted
by Sandro Botticelli between 1482 and 1485, it has become a landmark of XV century Italian painting, so
rich in meaning and allegorical references to antiquity.

The theme comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a very important oeuvre of the Latin literature. Venus is
portrayed naked on a shell on the seashore; on her left the winds blow gently caressing her hair with a
shower of roses, on her right a handmaid (Ora) waits for the goddess to go closer to dress her shy body.
The meadow is sprinkled with violets, symbol of modesty but often used for love potions.

We can find clear references to the “Stanzas”, a famous poetic work by Agnolo Poliziano, a contemporary
of Botticelli and the greatest Neoplatonic poet of the Medici court. Neoplatonism was a current of thought
that tried to connect the Greek and Roman cultural heritage with Christianity.

The Neoplatonic philosophical meaning is then clear: the work would mean the birth of love and the
spiritual beauty as a driving force of life.

The iconography of Venus is certainly derived from the classic theme of Venus Pudica, covering her private
parts shyly. In Florence, another important work of art is the translation in sculpture of the same theme:
the famous Medici Venus at the Uffizi Gallery.

The Medici commissioned the Birth of Venus, including the works Pallas and the Centaur and the Allegory
of Spring at the Uffizi, and these belonged to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the
Magnificent.

As Poliziano was a great poet of written verses, so Botticelli was one of the greatest poets of the line and
the drawing. It is worth to mention the exceptional technique and the fine materials used to accomplish
the work. The Birth of Venus is the first example in Tuscany of a painting on canvas. Moreover the special
use of expensive alabaster powder, making the colors even brighter and timeless, is another characteristic
that makes this work unique.

Behind the interpretation of the painting as a tribute to classic literature, we can certainly read an ode to
the wealthy Florentine family who commissioned the work: the beginning of the reign of love finally comes
to Florence thanks to the Medici, their diplomatic skills and their vast culture.

This way Sandro Botticelli gives the art history one of its most sublime masterpieces.
Spoliarium by Juan Luna

The Spoliarium is a painting created by Filipino painter Juan Luna. Along with Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo,
he won the gold medal for this particular painting during the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884,
with Hidalgo winning a silver medal for his painting "The Assasination of Governor Bustamante and his
Son."

Spoliarium is Latin that refers to the basement of the Roman Coliseum where the fallen and dying
gladiators are dumped and devoid of their worldly possessions. According to the Philippine National
Museum, this painting is the most valuable oil on canvas painting by Jaun Luna. This painting has an
incredible contrast between the left side and the right side. The left side shows charged emotions and the
right side of the painting shows a more somber mood.

The first thing you'll notice about the painting is its size. Standing at 4 meters in height and 7 meters in
width, the painting no doubt commands attention and gives off a majestic aura. Any viewer of the painting
will feel dwarfed by the large painting and may feel overwhelmed by the magnanimity of it. It is the largest
painting in the Philippines.The next thing you'll notice about the Spoliarium is the rich colors used.
Predominantly, the painter made use of warm colors for his work of art, with reds being a central color
that attracts the most attention. In person, the colors are striking and quite unique.

The Spoliarium depicts an event during the Roman Empire, where gladiators die for entertainment. The
painting shows how gladiators are being dragged mercilessly by men towards an unknown darkness,
where other tragically killed gladiators are brought. To the left is a cheering crowd, screaming for blood
while to the right, a woman is crouched and seemingly in sorrow.

The painting shows a tragic event, definitely. But it also shows a deeper meaning, especially for the
Filipinos during the time of the Spanish colonization (which lasted over 400 years!). According to art
experts, the fallen gladiators who are being dragged are the Filipino people, while the men dragging them
into the darkness are representative of the Spanish rule. The woman crouched on the right side of the
painting is believed to be the Mother Country or the Inang Bayan who weeps for her Philippines. The
blood thirsty crowd to the left is a representation of the social cancer of that time. Truly, there is more
than meets the eye when it comes to Luna's painting.
The 3 Musicians by Picasso

Three Musicians is a large painting measuring more

than 2 meters wide and high. It is painted in the style
of Synthetic Cubism and gives the appearance of cut
paper.

Picasso paints three musicians made of flat, brightly

colored, abstract shapes in a shallow, boxlike room.
On the left is a clarinet player, in the middle a guitar
player, and on the right a singer holding sheets of
music. They are dressed as familiar figures: Pierrot,
wearing a blue and white suit; Harlequinn, in an
orange and yellow diamond-pattered custome; and,
at right, a friar in a black robe. In front of Pierrot
stands a table with a pipe and other objects, while
beneath him is a dog, whose belly, legs, and tail peep
out behind the musician's legs. Like the boxy brown
stage on which the three musicians perform, everything in this painting is made up of flat shapes. Behind
each musician, the light brown floor is in a different place, extending much farther toward the left than
the right. Framing the picture, the floor and the flat walls make the room lopsided, but the musicians seem
steady. Music Makers in Harmony; It is hard to tell where one musician starts and another stops, because
the shapes that create them intersect and overlap, as if they were paper cutouts. Pierrot, the figure in
blue and white, holds a clarinet in his hands; one hand is connected to a long, thin, black arm, while the
other hand lacks an arm. Three Musicians emphasizes lively colors, angular shapes, and flat patterns.
Picasso said he was delighted when "Gertrude Stein joyfully announced... that she had at last understood
what... the three musicians was meant to be. It was a still life!"

To many art historian, Three Musicians may be seen as Picasso's belatd reply to The Piano Lesson, the
huge music-making scene Henri Matisse painted in the summer of 1916. Picasso's desire to win back the
initiative from Matisse in the exploitation of the decorative potential of the synthetic Cubist style emerges
in this painting in the boldest possible manner.

Three Musicians is a perfect example of Picasso's Cubist style. In Cubism, the subject of the artwork is
transformed into a sequence of planes, lines, and arcs. Cubism has been described as an intellectual style
because the artists analyzed the shapes of their subjects and reinvented them on the canvas. The viewer
must reconstruct the subject and space of the work by comparing the different shapes and forms to
determine what each one represents. Through this process, the viewer participates with the artist in
making the artwork make sense.
Self Portrait of a Straw Hat by Van Gogh

"Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thoughts, the soul of the model in it,"
Vincent van Gogh exclaimed to his art-dealer brother, Theo. Van Gogh's
compassionate heart and interest in individual character - plus the wish of
this lonely man to know himself and others - find expression in his portraits.

Van Gogh was probably more interested in the human face than other
Impressionists, whom he encountered for the first time in 1886. The artist
painted twenty-two self-portraits while living with his brother in Paris from
1886-1888. Later ones, like this Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, reveal the
artist's crumbling health. The three-quarter profile, deep shadows, and
tight mouth suggest a man suffering physical and emotional stress. A
haunted gaze from one blue and one green eye both pleads for our help
and pushes us away. Van Gogh is dressed in the yellow straw hat and work
coat of the peasant laborer, an often-worn costume befitting his self-image
as a working man's artist.

Landscape with Cypresses (Wheat Field with Cypresses by Van Gogh)

Although restless beyond measure, with few

straight lines, this landscape is one of the most
classic in conception among Van Gogh's works. It is
build up in great bands that traverse the entire
space. The tall dark cypress tress at one side offer a
powerful contrast to the prevailing horizontals,
which they resemble in form. The oppositions of
warm and cool, the proportioning of parts, the
relative height of sky and earth on the two sides, the
horizontal intervals which we can measure on the
silhouette of the distant mountain, twice broken by
trees - all these are perfectly legible and well
balanced.

It is a landscape in which the painter's perceptions

of nature and his intensity of feeling are equally
pronounced. The glowing wheat field, the olive trees of subtle gray in which all the colors of the picture
seem to be mingled, the shaggy wavering cypresses, and the turbulent mountains have been wonderfully
observed, and the light that fills this space has a vivid actuality for our eyes. The brightness emanating
from the cold sky and the warm earth is realized as much through the local colors as through the play of
light and shadow - Van Gogh is free with latter, and hardly aims at consistency on this point.

the duality of sky and earth remains - the first light, soft, rounded, filled with fantasy and suggestions of
animal forms, the earth firmer, harder, more intense in color, with stronger contrasts, of more distinct
parts, perhaps masculine. Or one might interpret the duality as the real and of the vaguely desired and
imagined. Connecting them is the single vertical, the cypress trees, as in The Starry Night, of which this
painting is in other ways the diurnal counterpart.

-This was painted in September 1889, when Van Gogh was in the St-Rémy mental asylum, near Arles,
where he was a patient from May 1889 until May 1890. It is one of three almost identical versions of the
composition. Another painting of the cypresses (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) was painted
earlier in July 1889, and was probably painted directly in front of the subject.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso

This painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, was painted in 1907 and is the most famous example of cubism painting.
In this painting, Picasso abandoned all known form and representation of traditional art. He used distortion of
female's body and geometric forms in an innovative way, which
challenge the expectation that paintings will offer idealized
representations of female beauty. It also shows the influence of African
art on Picasso.

This painting is a large work and took nine months to complete. It

demonstrates the true genius and novelty of Picasso's passion. He
created hundreds of sketches and studies to prepare for the final work.
Some critics argue that the painting was a reaction to Henri Matisse's Le
bonheur de vivre and Blue Nude.

Its resemblance to The Large Bathers of Paul Cezanne, Statue Oviri of

Gauguin and Opening of the Fifth Seal of El Greco has been broadly
talked about by later critics. When it first exhibited in 1916, the painting
was regarded as immoral. After nine years of the painting being created,
Picasso had always referred to it as Le Bordel d'Avignon, but art critic
Andre Salmon, who managed its first exhibition, renamed it Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon to reduce its outrageous effect on general
society. . Picasso never liked Salmon's title, and as an compromise would
have preferred las chicas de Avignon instead.

In 1972, art critic commentator Leo Steinberg in his article The Philosophical Brothel set an entirely distinctive
clarification for the extensive variety of expressive characteristics. Utilizing the prior portrayals - which had been
overlooked by most pundits - he contended that a long way from proof of a craftsman experiencing a quick
expressive transformation, the assortment of styles can be perused as an intentional endeavor, a cautious
arrangement, to catch the look of the viewer. He takes note of that the five ladies all appear to be frightfully
detached, to be sure entirely unconscious of one another. Rather, they concentrate singularly on the viewer, their
dissimilar styles just advancing the power of their glare.

According to Steinberg, the reversed gaze, that is, the fact that the figures look directly at the viewer, as well as the
idea of the self-possessed woman, no longer there solely for the pleasure of the male gaze, may be traced back to
Olympia, 1863 of Manet.
A great part of the critical debate that has occurred throughout the years focuses on endeavoring to record for this
multitude of styles inside the work. The predominant understanding for more than five decades, embraced most
eminently by Alfred Barr, the first chief of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and coordinator of significant
profession reviews for the craftsman, has been that it can be translated as proof of a transitional period in Picasso's
specialty, a push to associate his prior work to Cubism, the style he would help design and grow throughout the
following five or six years.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted an important Picasso exhibition on November 15, 1939 that
remained on view until January 7, 1940. The exhibition entitled: Picasso:40 Years of His Art, was organized by Alfred
H. Barr (1902 - 1981), in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition contained 344 works, including
the major and then newly painted Guernica and its studies, as well as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler by Picasso

The subject of this portrait is Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884 - 1979), a

German-born art dealer, writer, and publisher. Kahnweiler opened an
art gallery in Paris in 1907and in 1908 began representing Pablo Picasso,
whom he introduced to Georges Braque. Kahnweiler was a great
champion of the artists' revolutionary experiment with Cubism and
purchased the majority of their paintings between 1908 and 1915. He
also wrote an important book, The Rise of Cubism, in 1920, which
offered a theoretical framework for the movement.

Shortly after completing his Portrait of Vollard, Picasso turned his

attention to another influential dealer, Doniel-Henrg Kahnweiler,
Hailing originally from Germang, Kahnweiler had begun to make
inroads into the Parisian art market, and at this time he was beginning
to buy works by Picasso. Not long after this portrait was painted,
Kahnweiler offered Picasso an exclusive contract that secured the
artist's financial security until the outbreak of the First World War.

Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler represents a further incursion into the break-up of form to the point
at which the sitter seems barely discernible, Kahnweiler's face can just about be picked out in the upper-
right of the image, identifiable mainly by the inclusion of a wave of hair and a simple line to suggest a
moustache. Two similar lines in the lower centre of the image register his watch chain, whilst his clasped
hands can be seen at bottom-centre. Interestingly, Picasso included on African mask in the top-left,
though this is barely discernible. From this point onwards, Cubism would rapidly develop into on even
more experimental and challenging art form.

Miniaturismo

Miniature painting is a traditional style of art that is very detailed, often referred to as painting or working
“in miniature”.

Miniaturismo- art style that pays attention to the embroidery and texture of the costume.

Miniaturismo is an art showing a person in a serious motive and outlook while holding an object that tells
about his or her power and status of living.