YES BOSS!…CHEF-D’OEUVRE

Yes boss! we are back again. This time to talk about something we all strive for…CHEF-D’OEUVRE. What’s it you might ask. Please go and brush up on your French. I mean seriously the world is turning into a global village and the languages will be essential if you hope to live out your life. Please go and take  up a French course or something. JeeZ!!!

Anyway, I am going to help you out, but only for today. It translates loosely into Masterpiece…hahahaha. I can see you smacking yourself now. Yeah! Its been on my mind for quite some time now but school and stuff have been getting in my way. I gotta study hard y’know. Incase you don’t know, I am a medical student, in my final year of preclinical studies as at the time of typing this. I am seriously hoping to get through with this preclinical stuff pretty soon.

First of all, what is a Masterpiece? Simply put, the most outstanding work of a creative artist or craftsman. It could also be termed as “an outstanding achievement”. When I looked it up in the dictionary, I was like Whoa! especially to the first definition. It doesn’t just  say “outstanding work of a creative artist or craftsman” But “THE most outstanding work of a creative artist or craftsman” It implies that several works of a creative artist may be outstanding in an exhibition but one of it is The most outstanding one of all…THE MASTERPIECE.............

When I look at life itself down the ages, I realize that several Masterpieces have been produced. Take a look at Handel’s messiah. That is a piece of music that still baffles me till today. I keep wondering “How the hell did he do that?” The hallelujah chorus is beyond me. The way the instruments harmonize and the voices just come together in one accord. If you haven’t heard the hallelujah chorus permit me to ask…Are you from planet earth?

Michelangelo…this guy painted the roof of the Sistine chapel…If you don’t know where that is, I wonder how you are able to read a word of what I have been typing. He was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. Now How does one become all the above and manage to keep his sanity intact. I mean, I am studying medicine and running graphics designing while aiming to get a shot at photography and I am barely able to keep it together! Sometimes, I can literarily feel pressure building up in my head as if its going to explode.

The Sistine Chapel had great symbolic meaning for the papacy (now if you don’t know where this Chapel is by now, please log out!) as the chief consecrated space in the Vatican, used for great ceremonies such as electing and inaugurating new popes. It already contained distinguished wall paintings, and Michelangelo was asked to add works for the relatively unimportant ceiling. The Twelve Apostles was planned as the theme—ceilings normally showed only individual figures, not dramatic scenes. Traces of this project are seen in the 12 large figures that Michelangelo produced: seven prophets and five sibyls, or female prophets found in Classical myths. The inclusion of female figures was very unusual though not totally unprecedented. Michelangelo placed these figures around the edges of the ceiling and filled the central spine of the long curved surface with nine scenes from Genesis: three of them depicting the Creation of the World, three the stories of Adam and Eve, and three the stories of Noah. These are naturally followed, below the prophets and sibyls, by small figures of the 40 generations of Christ's ancestors, starting with Abraham. The vast project was completed in less than four years; there was an interruption perhaps of a year in 1510–11 when no payment was made.
Michelangelo began by painting the Noah scenes over the entrance door and moved toward the altar in the direction opposite to that of the sequence of the stories. The first figures and scenes naturally show the artist reusing devices from his earlier works, such as the Pietà, since he was starting on such an ambitious work in an unfamiliar medium. These first figures are relatively stable, and the scenes are on a relatively small scale. As he proceeded, he quickly grew in confidence. Indeed, recent investigations of the technical processes used show that he worked more and more rapidly, reducing and finally eliminating such preparatory helps as complete drawings and incisions on the plaster surface. The same growing boldness appears in the free, complex movements of the figures and in their complex expressiveness. While remaining always imposing and monumental, they are more and more imbued with suggestions of stress and grief. This may be perceived in a figure such as the prophet Ezekiel halfway along. This figure combines colossal strength and weight with movement and facial expression that suggest determination to reach a goal that is uncertain of success. Such an image of the inadequacy of even great power is a presentation of heroic and tragic humanity and is central to what Michelangelo means to posterity. Nearby the scene of the creation of Eve shows her with God and Adam, compressed within too small a space for their grandeur. This tension has been interpreted as a token of a movement away from the Renaissance concern with harmony, pointing the way for a younger generation of artists, such as Jacopo da Pontormo, often labeled Mannerists. Michelangelo's work on the ceiling was interrupted, perhaps just after these figures were completed. When he painted the second half, he seemed to repeat the same evolution from quiet stability to intricacy and stress. Thus, he worked his way from the quietly monumental and harmonious scene of the creation of Adam to the acute, twisted pressures of the prophet Jonah. Yet, in this second phase he shows greater inward expressiveness, giving a more meditative restraint to the earlier pure physical mass. The complex and unusual iconography of the Sistine ceiling has been explained by some scholars as a Neoplatonic interpretation of the Bible, representing the essential phases of the spiritual development of humankind seen through a very dramatic relationship between man and God.("Michelangelo." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Student and Home Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010.)

 
From Left to Right…
-The Creation of Adam, detail of the ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, by Michelangelo, 1508—12.
-Pietà, marble sculpture by Michelangelo, 1499; in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. 
-David, marble sculpture by Michelangelo, 1501–04; in the Accademia, Florence.
-The Last Judgment, fresco by Michelangelo; 1533–41, in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome.
This guy Had Masterpieces…how does one Create things as such…I keep asking myself. Oh, I could go on and on about people and their masterpieces There’s the man of mystery, Leonardo Da Vinci. There’s Rafael Santi, Bernini, Mozart…even Michael Jackson. How does God bless one man with so much talent. How is it that they are able to take control of it all? How is it that they yield so much result that we can look back and say Whoa!
These people are those who said Yes Boss! to their talents. They are the ones who actually realized that they have been blessed with so much and took control. They didn’t care what people said about them. They never for once said no to their dreams. Take a look at the Wright Brothers ( they invented the airplane by the way) Someone once said to them that nothing heavier than air could fly. I am sure that person would be lying red-face in his grave right now! If those guys gave up then, I wonder what the world would be right now.
This is to the people who are out there striving to be the best. Its for those striving for recognition. This is just to tell you that if only you don’t give up on your dream. If you never back down from a challenge, if you never say no when you fail, you can make it there. No matter what you are going through right now, No matter what your storm is, just aim for the stars and then you can achieve it…you can be it....CHEF-D’OEUVRE….Masterpiece!