As absurd as it sounds, David Pagel, an LA Times, art critic, claims that the Rinascimento, was a "Recycling", not a Rebirth, on it's face is a ridiculous claim.

The claim is made all the more absurd in that he bases it solely on a mere 39 objects, mostly bowls, flasks, lamps, plates, tiles and textiles from the Mid East
and China.

Pagel in relying on glass blowing and porcelain, which is such a lesser important and narrow aspect of the Arts, ignoring completely the far more important Painting, Sculpting, Architecture, Music, Literature, etc.

Pagel further ignores that the "Renaissance," went far beyond the Arts and included  intellectual, economic, financial, social, scientific, and political thought being turned in new directions, from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, as Europe emerged from the stagnation of the Middle Ages, with a quest for knowledge.

Pagel's criticism of America's ignorance of Islamic culture may have a basis, but in his calling those who believe in the "creativity" of the Rinascimento of  "thuggish small-mindedness", he loudly proclaims his own ignorance.

This seems again, a petty, baseless attack on Italy. If you disagree with me, write!!
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ART REVIEW
RENAISSANCE: A RECYCLING, NOT A REBIRTH

A Getty Museum exhibition demonstrates the Eastern origins of the vaunted flowering of Western civilization.

Los Angeles Times
By David Pagel
Special to The Times
June 1, 2004

In a brilliant little essay from 1890, Oscar Wilde argues that the more a civilization knows about art, the less likely it will be to go to war. A similar argument is made — with the same stylish indirectness — in a terrific little exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

"The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on the Italian Renaissance" consists of 39 uniformly gorgeous objects logically arranged in a single, dimly lighted room. Brought together by curator Catherine Hess, the fragile and fabulous bowls, flasks, lamps, plates, tiles and textiles make a smart, scholarly point about history, which, given the tenor of our times, has profound political implications.

Put simply, the exhibition demonstrates that the Renaissance began in the Middle East.

Rather than tracing the roots of this high point of Western civilization straight back to their sources in the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, the show follows a more accurate — and meandering — path to what is now Iraq, Iran and Turkey, as well as Syria, Egypt and Islamic Spain. And that's not the end of the trip.

Concise wall labels and an informative catalog with three fact-filled essays take visitors to the far outposts of the Roman Empire (where blown glass was invented) and on to Imperial China (whose porcelain was unparalleled for almost 1,000 years). Both types of vessels made their mark on Islamic ceramics and glassmaking, which in turn influenced the finest Venetian glass before spreading to the rest of Western Europe.

By the time you leave the gallery, it's clear that the tendency to think of the Renaissance as the rebirth of a long-dormant indigenous culture grossly oversimplifies history. It's more truthful to see that golden age — when art, science and trade led to the development of modern consciousness in historically unprecedented numbers of people — as an exotic import customized by the locals to serve their own purposes and satisfy their increasingly refined desires.

The exoticism is palpable in the first of six vitrines, which contains three palm-size vessels made between the 6th and 11th centuries. Each is a marvel of materials and design, the charming asymmetry embodying the one-of-a-kind loveliness common to newly discovered techniques, unpolished skills and rudimentary, hands-on technologies. Nevertheless, a sense of user-friendly elegance suffuses these rare, free-blown containers, particularly the translucent, two-tone perfume bottle in the form of a stylized camel. Its demeanor combines aristocratic sophistication with cartoon-character playfulness.

The second vitrine holds the three most magnificent pieces: a goblet, a bottle and a lamp, all made of enameled and gilded glass in Egypt or Syria between the late-13th and mid-14th centuries. Measuring from 1 to 2 feet tall, they're among the largest works displayed.

More important, their bases, walls, stems, necks and lips are made of such thin membranes of translucent glass that they appear to be as delicate as soap bubbles. It's impossible to look at these slightly asymmetrical vessels without thinking of the many individuals who have handled them over the last 750 years. That care and devotion pales in comparison to the talent and virtuosity of the craftsmen who made them, skillfully adorning their warm, smoky surfaces with hand-painted patterns, pictorial flourishes and decorative script.

The next vitrine lays out the show's story line for glass in five carefully chosen works. The first is a four-color glazed tile from 15th century Syria. It depicts a curvaceous ewer silhouetted against a background of loosely painted curlicues that resemble leaves, stems, Arabic script and other decorative elements.

To its right stands a ewer shaped just like the one pictured on the tile. Made of deep blue glass in Italy at the beginning of the 16th century, its impeccably smooth surface has been covered with brightly colored patterns inspired by those in the tile's background. Translating two dimensions into three, the splendid ewer shows how the Italians refined the Syrians' techniques, which jump-started the rising middle class's desires for luxurious objects and cosmopolitan conviviality.

At the vitrine's other end stand two pilgrim flasks — handcrafted, teardrop-shaped versions of contemporary canteens or water bottles — which Renaissance travelers strapped over their shoulders or to their horses' saddles. Both are made of pristine, colorless glass around 1500 in Italy.

The first one mimics earlier, Middle Eastern designs in exquisite gold leaf. The second one has been painted. Its in-the-round image depicts two laborers standing in a fertile garden and holding up an unfinished coat of arms.

The detailed genre scene reveals how quickly the craftsmen at the Murano workshop adapted imported techniques to their own, local ends. But what's most surprising is how kitschy, even corny, the image looks. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see similarities between what's painted on the antique flask and contemporary knockoffs sold in museum gift shops and other design-conscious outlets.

Between these two pairs of objects is mounted a red piece of satin, woven with golden threads in a fine rosette pattern. Made in Turkey in the 1600s, its design matches that on the first pilgrim flask. This century-spanning continuity contrasts dramatically with the rapid shifts in style and subject (but not materials) that took place in Italy.

The story for ceramics is told via five 10-inch-tall, cylindrical jars that stand on a large, knee-high pedestal in the center of the gallery. A map of the lands around the Mediterranean Sea has been painted on the pedestal's top, along with dates and descriptions of the five luster-painted and tin-glazed earthenware vessels. As your eyes travel from Syria to Spain and Italy — and from the 12th to the 16th centuries — you see which elements change and which stay the same.

The patterns, pictures and palettes undergo major transformations: from decorative arabesques to a peasant feeding geese, and from rich organic tints to a brash rainbow of quasi-Pop colors. But the concave sides grow shallower more slowly. That's because the indentations make for easy handling. They also echo the shape of bamboo, on which the jars are modeled. Their pedigree can be traced all the way back to China.

Trade made the Renaissance possible. It's no accident that all the works in "The Arts of Fire" are easily transported.

For Wilde, art was nothing if not social. Although he regularly wrote about "art for art's sake," he never believed that art meant anything apart from the effects it had on flesh-and-blood folks. A pragmatist in designer clothing, Wilde also insisted that human identity is radically elastic, and that coming to know works from faraway places and times is part-and-parcel of coming to know oneself.

What happens when art really works is exactly the opposite of what takes place in the pictures trickling out of Abu Ghraib prison. In those gruesome images, Americans are shown to have learned just enough about Islamic culture to humiliate and degrade the men and women who embrace it.

A similar sort of shortsightedness lies behind the idea that the Renaissance is a rebirth — and not a recycling of a cosmopolitan mélange of influences and achievements. "The Arts of Fire" argues passionately and pointedly against such thuggish small-mindedness. Miss it at your own risk.

calendarlive.com: Renaissance: a recycling, not a rebirth
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/
cl-et-pagel1jun01,2,7441524.story?coll=cl-calendar

'The Arts of Fire'
Where: Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A.
When: Tuesdays-Thursdays and Sundays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Ends: Sept. 5
Price: Free; parking $5
Contact: (310) 440-7300