Home Is A Beauty Spot On The Face Of An Ugly Void

The Sunday Six: Edward Hopper

Fig. 1. Lighthouse Hill, 1927

Fig. 2. Corn Hill (Truro, Cape Cod), 1930

Fig. 3. Ryder's House, 1933

Fig. 4. Cape Cod Afternoon, 1936

Fig. 5. High Noon, 1949

Fig. 6. Second Story Sunlight, 1960

'In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.'

Gertrude Stein

Your Ears Will Orgasm #53: Antonin Dvorák - Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 ('From the New World') (MixPod Player)

The Future We Ordered Never Arrived, Said Grandma

Fig. 1. Grand Entrance - Paris International Exposition, 1900


'The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.'

Robert Oppenheimer

Five Ecstatic Skins: Or, To Our Bodies Turn We Then*

Fig. 1. Tanatos Banionis Creative Group - Divine Wind, 2008

'[By] an aesthetic idea I mean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible. It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.'

Immanuel Kant

* John Donne (The Ecstasy)

That Night, Goldilocks Dreamt She Met Proust In Hell

Fig. 1. Claude Lévêque - Le Grand Sommeil, 2006


'True paradises are the paradises we have lost.'

Marcel Proust

Two Portraits Of An English Spring (For Dive & Katie)

Fig. 1. John Everett Millais - Spring (Apple Blossoms), 1856-59

To Spring

Thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Through the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell one another, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn'd
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth
And let thy holy feet visit our clime!

Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumèd garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our lovesick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languish'd head,
Whose modest tresses are bound up for thee.

William Blake

You Too May Think The Amen Of Nature Is A Flower*

Fig. 1. Henri Matisse - Fruit, Flowers, and The Dance, 1909


'First, the colours of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they must not be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort; light greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds; and violets. Thirdly, if the colours be strong and vivid, they are always diversified, and the object is never one of strong colour; there are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated flowers) that the strength and glare of each is considerably abated.'

Edmund Burke

* 'The Amen of nature is always a flower.' (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Addendum: Not long ago, Katie (politely, as always) took umbrage at a joke I'd made at the expense of sport and, by implication, lovers of all things sporty:

Lucio, all sports can be made to sound completely ridiculous when broken down like that. But like art, I think there’s a place for it in the world.

She is right, of course - which is why I replied:

Never fear, Katie, I can make art (and most other things cultural) sounds just as absurd!

And I can. Only there are times when no such effort is required from me, as is amply demonstrated by the following extract from Edmund Burke's self-parodying musings on beauty (imagine it being read by a member of the Monty Python team and you'll see what I mean):

The next property constantly observable in such objects is Smoothness. A quality so essential to beauty, that I do not recollect any thing beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very considerable part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality; indeed the most considerable. For take any beautiful object, and give it a broken and rugged surface, and however well formed it may be in other respects, it pleases no longer. Whereas let it want ever so many of the other constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleasing than almost all the others without it. This seems to me so evident, that I am a good deal surprised, that none who have handled the subject have made any mention of the quality of smoothness in the enumeration of those that go to the forming of beauty. For indeed any ruggedness, any sudden projection, and sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to that idea.

In other words, the smelliest baby bum is preferable to the finest bouquet of natural crystals!

(By the way, the remaining conditions Burke insists must be met in order for something to qualify as beautiful include smallness, variation, and delicacy.)

Thanks for the prod, Katie! {:-})

A Difficult Thing Put Simply Is Not Made Any Easier

Fig. 1. Large Tortoiseshell Octagonal Box and Cover Inlaid with Mother-of-Pearl (Tang Dynasty)

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

James Joyce