Tag Archives: art

Lazy Sunday: 28 April

Well, friends, I got you these. Enjoy a quiet day.

  • I don’t know that I would call them the “first couple of American letters,” but I really like this profile.
  • Leading men age, but leading ladies don’t. Unless they win an Oscar. Then they age a little.
  • Did you see Waitress? I loved it. I love this blog, too!
  • As I embark on this new job, I plan to escape the cult of busy, as they say. Newsflash: I’m not important.
  • Oh, my god, do I ever love Stevie. Never change, you doll.
  • My internet friend, Snowden, wrote this about Barry Hannah, a Mississippian and great writer that I think of often and hope is resting well.
  • For when you get your windfall inheritance and need to establish an offshore tax haven.
  • They changed the pimento cheese at the Masters’ and people were really bad, but no worries: Wright Thompson is ON IT.
  • E. L. Konigsburg was one of my favorite writers as a little girl, and she passed this week. I loved this piece about the Met, imagination, and her.
  • Soy Bomb strikes again.
  • To quote Mara Wilson, this is like the Social Network for NPR.
  • Where can you pick an apple for free and eat it? This map tells you.

The Only Good Vine I’ve Seen.

Vine seems to be mostly drunk people taking 6-second videos of falling down, but this, THIS!

Fun Fact: I have lain the the bed from which these notes were written, and yes, it was as humbling as you’re imagining.

The Curator by Miller Williams

In honor of National Poetry Month, I wanted to bring you one of my favorite poems of all time. I have a special fondness for poems about the blind.

The Curator

by Miller Williams

We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come,
were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two,
the youngest assistant curator in the country.
I had some good ideas in those days.
Well, what we did was this. We had boxes
precisely built to every size of canvas.
We put the boxes in the basement and waited.
When word came that the Germans were coming in,
we got each painting put in the proper box
and out of Leningrad in less than a week.
They were stored somewhere in southern Russia.
But what we did, you see, besides the boxes
waiting in the basement, which was fine,
a grand idea, you’ll agree, and it saved the art—
but what we did was leave the frames hanging,
so after the war it would be a simple thing
to put the paintings back where they belonged.
Nothing will seem surprised or sad again
compared to those imperious, vacant frames.
Well, the staff stayed on to clean the rubble
after the daily bombardments. We didn’t dream—
You know it lasted nine hundred days.
Much of the roof was lost and snow would lie
sometimes a foot deep on this very floor,
but the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell.
Here is the story, now, that I want to tell you.
Early one day, a dark December morning,
we came on three young soldiers waiting outside,
pacing and swinging their arms against the cold.
They told us this: in three homes far from here
all dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad
to see the Hermitage, as they supposed
every Soviet citizen dreamed of doing.
Now they had been sent to defend the city,
a turn of fortune the three could hardly believe.
I had to tell them there was nothing to see
but hundreds and hundreds of frames where the paintings had hung.
“Please, sir,” one of them said, “let us see them.”
And so we did. It didn’t seem any stranger
than all of us being here in the first place,
inside such a building, strolling in snow.
We led them around most of the major rooms,
what they could take the time for, wall by wall.
Now and then we stopped and tried to tell them
part of what they would see if they saw the paintings.
I told them how those colors would come together,
described a brushstroke here, a dollop there,
mentioned a model and why she seemed to pout
and why this painter got the roses wrong.
The next day a dozen waited for us,
then thirty or more, gathered in twos and threes.
Each of us took a group in a different direction:
Castagno, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Cézanne, Matisse,
Orozco, Manet, da Vinci, Goya, Vermeer,
Picasso, Uccello, your Whistler, Wood, and Gropper.
We pointed to more details about the paintings,
I venture to say, than if we had had them there,
some unexpected use of line or light,
balance or movement, facing the cluster of faces
the same way we’d done it every morning
before the war, but then we didn’t pay
so much attention to what we talked about.
People could see for themselves. As a matter of fact
we’d sometimes said our lines as if they were learned
out of a book, with hardly a look at the paintings.
But now the guide and the listeners paid attention
to everything—the simple differences
between the first and post-impressionists,
romantic and heroic, shade and shadow.
Maybe this was a way to forget the war
a little while. Maybe more than that.
Whatever it was, the people continued to come.
It came to be called The Unseen Collection.
Here. Here is the story I want to tell you.
Slowly, blind people began to come.
A few at first then more of them every morning,
some led and some alone, some swaying a little.
They leaned and listened hard, they screwed their faces,
they seemed to shift their eyes, those that had them,
to see better what was being said.
And a cock of the head. My God, they paid attention.
After the siege was lifted and the Germans left
and the roof was fixed and the paintings were in their places,
the blind never came again. Not like before.
This seems strange, but what I think it was,
they couldn’t see the paintings anymore.
They could still have listened, but the lectures became
a little matter-of-fact. What can I say?
Confluences come when they will and they go away.
So what do you think? What are you favorite poems?

Everything I Like

And all in one place. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola did this sexy, cute, fun, compelling commercial for Prada in three parts.

I.

II.

III.

Tres…something, non?

Nostalgia: A Hell of a Drug

Image

I think the guy on the right may be my real dad. Mom, please advise. (via Slate.com)

Check out these amazing photographs of tourists from the 80s and early 90s. I definitely spotted some stuff that I owned circa then. I’m not sure why I find this whole thing so touching, but it’s definitely worth a quick look midday.

Lazy Sunday: 17 March

Weekly things of interest for ya! I’m about to hop on a plane, so post the things I should read in the comments!

  • I’m not sure if this means I should or should not try roller derby.
  • What will the replacement to the car be? Who knows, but it’s probably already staring us in the face.
  • How do you explain to a five-year-old where particulate matter comes from?
  • Food is actually too inexpensive and this is a problem.
  • This is a heartening development to me. Evolution is real, everyone. That’s science.
  • Feminist parenting, hacking, and video games meet and it is awesome.
  • The greatest thing since sliced bread.
  • This makes me uncomfortable but I also want to know what they know about me. And what they know about everyone I know, of course.
  • Let’s all learn to read tarot cards. Or, wait, no, I’ll learn how to read tarot cards and then do your reading.
  • An oldie but a goodie from the Believer.
  • Women, be kinder to other women. Men, be kinder to women. This holds a mirror up to that in a way that should make you uncomfortable.
  • Book burning and a better life.

More Charm than Good

My friend, the fabulous fashion designer Jasmine Chong, has started a little blog to post sketches of the work she’s doing now (the above photo is from her new site). Right now, she’s a full-time designer at Tory Burch as well as being a full-time truly outstanding lady. I bet she’ll even sell you her fancy drawings if you asked nicely. Go look at them!