Didactic

Monday, February 8, 2010

I was alive today

"The day isn't complete unless I've created something."
- Patti Smith [born 1946]

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Albert Einstein spoke of a grotesque contradiction between what people considered to be his achievements and abilities and the reality of who he was and what he was capable of.
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, pg. 84

sieve

"It is consoling to think that reading a lot, forgetting most of it and being slow-witted might add up to a good way of living."
- Andrew Sullivan explores here.

bad ad

father of landscape painting

Claude Lorrain [1600-1682], The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."
- André Gide [1869-1951]

Saturday, February 6, 2010

ugly furniture

Friday, February 5, 2010

palermo market

Renato Guttuso's [1911-1987] La Vucciria depicts a 3000 year old way of life on the island of Sicily.

alright is alright

"It's ok to head out to wonderful, but on your way to wonderful you have to pass through alright."
- Bill Withers [born 1938]

unaffordable art

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

theorem

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom."
- Albert Einstein

shush

Rodney Smith photography here.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

definitive styles

"Ernest Hemingway was hard-boiled and J.D. Salinger was soft-boiled."
- Adam Gopnik on two transformative American writers

grasshopper bouquet

Chinese street foods, like this “bouquet” of skewered grasshoppers, often raise Western eyebrows. But insect eating isn’t as unusual as you might imagine. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than 1,400 protein-rich insect species are regularly enjoyed by humans around the world.

National Geographic source here.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

human paradox

"Let us have the hero of Lincoln at least as an aspiration for others who want to be leaders of America—to think that he was perfect helps us to strive for perfection."
- Mario Cuomo on the fallible Abraham Lincoln

Ranking of U.S. Presidents here.

geotic

"90% of life is how you respond to what's happened; not what's happened."
- Bill Clinton

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Intimacy & Competence

London, 1938

According to Sigmund Freud, the things at which we must be good are love and work.

old mathematician adage

"We must know. We will know."
- David Hilbert [1862-1943]

old political adage

"Show me where my people are going so I can lead them there."

Friday, January 29, 2010

depending upon how you define art

"60% of the world's most important works of art are located in Italy. Half of those are in Florence."
- Graham McPherson "Suggs" [born 1961]

country bumpkin*

Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1885-1895

"He was my one and only master ... he was the father of us all."
- Pablo Picasso [1881-1973] on Paul Cézanne [1839-1906] who painted the land that gave birth to him.

* because he laid paint by the trowel load