Horror vacui update: the latest Hamalli United design brainwave
There’s a blank bit of wall there, so of course we simply have to stick something against it ghax inkella ikun wisq bare hux u nahseb ftit gost u lavur imur sew.
Just look at what they’re planning to stick against that majestic wall near the stairway at Valletta gate. It’s going through the planning approvals process now, against the will and advice of the Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee at the Planning Authority.
It’s not just the fact that they feel they really have to fill that gap, which they regard as blank space. It’s also the subject matter – knights again. And they’re always in full armour, when the last time any knight probably wore any armour at all in Malta was before Valletta was built. What do they imagine – that the streets of Valletta were full of knights running around in full armour? That it was the armour which made a knight?
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Hamalagni means that some people without any cultural and aesthetic values have an abhorrent dislike of a vacuum.
it’s the same way they decorate (?) every square inch of their salott.
I thought we went through the 31st March 1979 charade precisely because we’d had enough of Fortress Malta.
Clearly, we can’t get enough of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RprRRcbc_lw
We’re all Orlandos.
Executive summary for Kenneth’s Museum of Maltese Costume:
1. Loincloths and headbands.
2. Steel armour.
3. Sjuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BDO3pyavOY
If it’s a bas relief, why does it sit on a base?
Oh, how pathetic they all are ! Is there a Freudian explanation behind this too?
Don’t think the ‘monti’ affair is the end of the matter. There’s plenty more hdura where that came from. So they have now decided to deposit another dollop of green phlegm on Piano’s wall.
There must surely be a layer of slime in the pipeline for the bridge, as well. And, unlike Antonio Belvedere, I offer no apology for this observation.
Xi dwejjaq. It is that Great Siege mentality again.
Malta’s cosplay.
Thankfully the Mona Lisa did not end up in our hands, because we would have added earrings to it. Taf int, naqra plain Jane, dik Mona.
Moħħom fis-suldati tal-azzar
Somebody should explain Mies’ concept of “less is more” to them.
What’s Miss Vindaloo?
Mies is Mies van der Rohe. But what’s Miss Vindaloo?
The problem is not just the subject matter, or the aesthetic of this ‘sculpture’.
The real problem is the violation of moral rights and the rights of integrity of Mr. Piano.
This is basic work ethic and basic decency, nobody has the right to go and put a sculpture in the middle of another artist’s oeuvre.
Piano should take legal action immediately. It is very evident that whoever proposed that sculpture is not an expert of artistic matters and is completely out of his mind – Renzo Piano would never accept this kind of mediocrity to be directly associated to his work.
They still think the suit makes a man, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they think the armour makes a knight.
If you notice there’s a little arrow/spear and the bottom of the second from the right. This means an exact reforestation is planned for the other side of the entrance. The spear is coming from the monument of the other side.
A city built by gentlemen and run by peasants.
[Daphne – Valletta was not built by gentlemen. It was built largely by slaves, indentured labourers and desperate peasants working for bread. And it was conceived, planned, designed, built, intended and used as a fortress, not a city. So in reality, it was built by slaves for the military.]
Prosit Daphne!!
You still need skilled workmen to build a city or anything else of quality that has planning.
Master stone masons and skilled stone carvers and even skilled carpenters were not usually slaves, even in the 16th and 17th centuries.
[Daphne – You know very well that’s not what I meant.]
I was referring to De Vallette, Laparelli and Cassar and not to the labourers who physically built Sciberras peninsula.
[Daphne – Mount Sceberras, without an i. The individuals you name did not build Valletta. Two of them planned, engineered and designed it, and the first commissioned it. De Valette did not build Valletta. He had it built. English words/verbs/tenses have very specific meanings, unlike Maltese in which one word often has to serve multiple purposes. The people who built it were the builders. Sorry to be a bore about this, but I kind of get irritated at the number of people who tell me things like ‘I built a wall in the garden’ and I think wow, that’s clever, only to realise that what they mean is that they had one built.]
Knights in full armour are all the rage now. It’s images like that which Maltese men pass around on social media and glorify while claiming or wishing that we embark on a new “Crusade”.
Isn’t there a branch of history which explains how Maltese were non-citizens compared to the Knights and we were treated as if they were an occupying force?
But people would rather forget that and think it was all lovey dovey under the Knights of St John.
Well, at least it’s not a statue of Dom Mintoff.
So Renzo Piano “de-militarised” Valetta by opening the bastions to symbolise the times of peace we are now living in and these idiots want four knights in armour to welcome you to the capital. They should place them in one of the market stalls.
”Monti hawkers have praised the controversial new stalls and said their move close to Valletta’s new parliament building would hide Renzo Piano’s “blasphemous ugliness”.”
Perhaps the next ‘great’ thing would be to remove all the pieces of wood and stone exhibited inside the Archaeological Museum, a short walk further down, and replace them bil-gwarnici tal-perit u tal-mexxej tal-moviment bix-xema tixghel quddiemhom.
Just when one thinks that he has seen the extent of this government’s incompetence at decision making, Muscat manages to sink even lower.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150203/local/Hawkers-We-will-hide-a-blasphemous-ugliness-.554539
Which national institution is behind this nonsense, may I ask?
The knights with their backs to the wall. It is wrong on so many levels.