Log24

"Moon Knight" will conclude at 3 AM ET Wednesday.

Related art  —

Related cinematic art — ("Tomb Raider," 2018) —

An image that some — perhaps even Uncle Walt himself —
might prefer to the above depiction of Lara Croft —

"When times are mysterious
Serious numbers
Will always be heard."
— Paul Simon,
"When Numbers Get Serious"

"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment of
Pontius Pilate's unanswered question 'What is truth?'"

— H. S. M. Coxeter, introduction to Richard J. Trudeau's remarks
on the "story theory" of truth as opposed to the "diamond theory"
of truth in The Non-Euclidean Revolution  (1987)

The deaths of Roth and Grünbaum on September 14th,
The Feast of the Holy Cross, along with Douthat's column
today titled "Only the Truth Can Save Us Now," suggest a
review of …

 .

In memory of David Douglas Duncan

"Marissa, we picked up an unencrypted signal
below the Arctic Circle." — Hanna  (2011)

“Show me all  the blueprints.”
— Howard Hughes, according to Hollywood

From an old Dick Tracy strip —

This journal in April 2006 —

Cleaning out her studio, Oslo artist Josefine Lyche 
has found some frames from an old art-school audition video —

(Click to enlarge.)

      * Search for "st.+peter"+eve+adam+"first+words"

"J'adoube."

The title is a reference to the Chicago character named "Four"
in Veronica Roth's Divergent  series.

"In July 2014, Roth revealed that she initially wrote 
Divergent  from Four's point of view . . . ." — Wikipedia

Other Chicago-related stories — "Raiders of the Lost Code" 
(on the recent murder-suicide of two Chicago Jungians)
and the following —

See also Jungian narrative art in

https://redice.tv/news/
on-the-nature-of-four-jung-s-quarternity-mandalas-the-stone-and-the-self .

"Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

From this journal on Orthodox Good Friday, 2016,
an image from New Scientist  on St. Andrew's Day, 2015 —

From an old Dick Tracy strip —

See also meditations from this year's un -Orthodox Good Friday
in a Tennessee weblog and in this  journal —

" There is a pleasantly discursive treatment 
of Pontius Pilate’s unanswered question
‘What is truth?’ ”

— Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau’s
     The Non-Euclidean Revolution

Today in History —

"On December 21, 1937, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'
premiered to a record-breaking audience at the Carthay Circle
Theatre in Los Angeles."

Related material: Today's previous post and the Red Book.

In memory of art dealer Leslie Waddington, who
reportedly died at 81 on St. Andrew's Day, 2015, 
a search for "Terry Frost" in this journal.

Thanks to the Museum of Modern Art for pointing out
a new emphasis on design  in U.S. Army Field Manual 5-0.
MoMA supplies a link to an article from May 3, 2010:

Design Thinking Comes to the U.S. Army.

An excerpt from the manual:

An approach to this text by Harvard's legendary "unreliable reader"—

Aaron Diaz at Dresden Codak

"The risks multiply, especially when a problem involves 26 March 2010…."

(Continued from Tuesday morning)

“… Or what’s a heaven for?“

Frederick Hart’s 1982 sculpture “Ex Nihilo” for Washington’s National Cathedral—

Related material — Tom Wolfe on Frederick Hart, said to have been
published in The New York Times Magazine  of Sunday, Jan. 2, 2000—

Art worldings are one thing, Hollywood another.

Al Pacino’s moving wall sculpture in “The Devil’s Advocate” (1997)—

“After the film’s initial release, sculptor Frederick Hart sued Warner Bros.
claiming that a large sculpture prominently featured in the film
(on the wall of Al Pacino’s penthouse apartment) is an unauthorized copy
of his work ‘Ex Nihilo,’ displayed at the entrance of Washington’s Episcopal
National Cathedral.” — IMDb

See “But is it Art?,” linked to here and here —

Continued from Pensée  (Feb. 10, 2012).*

Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker  of Dec. 2, 2013—

" When one speaks of Zwirner the gallerist, one is speaking
as much of a handful of women in their forties who have been
with the gallery fifteen or more years. Zwirner has made them
partners, meaning, he says, that they 'will participate in profits
as the gallery does well.' They are Angela Choon, who runs the
London gallery; Hanna Schouwink, from Holland; Bellatrix Hubert,
from France; and Kristine Bell, from outside Buffalo. Seeing them
all together, at an opening or a dinner, brings to mind David
Carradine’s gang of glamorous assassins in 'Kill Bill.' " 

See also the previous post, on An Object of Beauty.

* For some related art, see Square Round.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Click for story.

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize how deep the darkness is around us."

— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy , Random House, 1973, page 118

On author Paul Fussell, who died today—

"Vincent B. Sherry, writing* in The Cambridge Companion
to the Literature of the First World War , called Mr. Fussell’s
book 'the fork in the road for Great War criticism.'" 
— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times

"When you come to a fork in the road…"

* Actually, the writing was by James Campbell. Sherry was the book's editor.
   See Campbell's "Interpreting the War," pp. 261-279 of the 2005 (first) printing.
   The fork is on page 267.

   Update of 9:26 PM— In the latest  version of Lehmann-Haupt's article, the fork
   has disappeared. But Campbell's writing is still misidentified as Sherry's.

The reference in yesterday morning's post "The Speed of Thought"
to an art critic's webpage on what she calls "psychic art"
suggests an illustration of another sort of psychic art, from
the oeuvre  of the late film director Don Sharp—

See also a Log24 post, "Go Ask Alice," from the above video's uploading date.

Part I— A Naples, Florida obituary for artist Robert Vickrey, who died Sunday.
            (See also this evening's earlier post Soul Art.)

Part II— "Stairway to Heaven," by Vickrey

Part III— Definition of "cornette"

Part IV— Recent photo of artist Josefine Lyche

Escape from Kitsch Mountain

"Why you gotta be so mean?" — Taylor Swift (see last night)

This song includes, as part of the hook, the recurring phrase

"Someday I'll be livin' in a big ol' city."

From a big ol' city—

A Return to Kitsch Mountain

By AUSTIN CONSIDINE

Published in The New York Times  on January 16, 2009

As my girlfriend, Larissa, and I approached Gatlinburg, Tenn., this fall, I did my best to prepare her. She hadn’t been to Gatlinburg before, but I had. I understood the town’s complicated reputation both as a gateway to some of the most beautiful country in the United States— the Great Smoky Mountains National Park— and as a flamboyant capital of kitsch….

… It turned out that by 8 or 9 p.m., it was way too late to find a dinner show. The next morning, we had the opposite problem. By the time we woke up and wandered into Gatlinburg, it was noon. All the pancake houses were closed, and I was desolate. I had been thinking about those pancakes since the night before. So we did a little more sightseeing on foot.

Looking at Gatlinburg’s strip with adult eyes, I wondered how much self-awareness was at work there. It would be easy for a city slicker to assume this place misses its own punch lines. In truth, I decided, it merely embraces that special brand of conscious kitsch that forms its own American kind of authenticity. With all its absurdities, Gatlinburg knows what it is and proclaims it loudly, from one flashing signboard to the next….

From Gatlinburg—

(Click to enlarge.)

Stella Octangula

In memory of Irvin Kershner,
director of A FIne Madness  and
The Empire Strikes Back

Kershner reportedly died at 87 on Saturday.

Keanu vs. the Devil, continued

Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate

For Keanu —

(Click for some background.)

For Keanu's mentor —

                                  …    There is a Cave
Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heav'n
Grateful vicissitude, like Day and Night….

— Paradise Lost , by John Milton

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

(continued)

Art review by Holland Cotter in The New York Times this morning–

"Although Confucius initially escaped severe censure by Mao, in the early 1970s he became 'No. 1 hooligan,' the embodiment of the hated 'four olds' (old culture, old ideology, old customs and old habits), a symbol of ruling-class oppression."

For another hooligan fond of old customs, see yesterday's post and Sterling Hayden in "The Asphalt Jungle"–

Related material:

Yesterday's post on Sabbath's Theater, the 1995 novel by Philip Roth, posed the problem of why Roth would make his friend, painter R. B. Kitaj, the model for the novel's obnoxious protagonist. (See Wikipedia's claim, below, that this happened.)

Here is a possible explanation for the Wikipedia claim–

Sunday's Theater

The Difference

There is a small but important difference
between "No One" and "No. One."

Images from a website in this journal
on June 10, 2009:
 

That website's author died this afternoon.

For related symbols, see the five Log24 entries
ending on June 10, 2009.

Note the resemblance of the following work
pictured here on that date

to the 1958 painting "No. One,"
by the late Kenneth Noland–

Only the Dead Know…

A Sermon from Christchurch
in The New York Times

Related material:

Zen and the Art
and
For the Burning Man

See as well "Art Wars for Trotsky's Birthday"
and some historical background.

Columbia University physics writer Peter Woit dubbed
yesterday Snowpocalypse 2015 in New York City.

Woit used the day to ponder a new book by mathematician
Michael Harris, Mathematics without Apologies .

Related material: a search for Michael Harris in this journal.

That search includes…   

The above art includes an image of William Rubin,
former director of painting and sculpture at the
Museum of Modern Art. Rubin reportedly died on
January 22, 2006. See Log24 posts from that date.

From a New York Times  obituary by Bruce Weber tonight—

Charles Marowitz, Director and Playwright, Dies at 82

“There are two kinds of bafflement in the theater: the kind that fascinates as it perplexes, and the kind that just perplexes,” he wrote in The Times in 1969 in an essay about Mr. Shepard’s play “La Turista,” which had recently opened in London. “If a play doesn’t make quick sense, but enters into some kind of dialogue with our subconscious, we tend to admit it to that lounge where we entertain interesting-albeit-unfamiliar strangers.

“If it only baffles, there are several courses open to us: we can assume it is ‘above our heads’ or directed ‘to some other kind of person,’ or regretfully conclude that it confuses us because it is itself confused. However, the fear of being proved wrong is so great today that almost every new work which isn’t patently drivel gets the benefit of the doubt.”

 Another play by Sam Shepard mentioned in the obituary suggests a review of…

• “From the Witch Ball,” a post from May 2,
  the reported date of Marowitz’s death
• “Two Satanic Majesties Request All-Devouring Fame,”
  a NY Times  review from October 9, 2006
• This  journal on that date— October 9, 2006—
  “Art Wars: To Apollo.”

Art Wars  view —
image from a post at noon on Saturday, April 12:

Kansas City view:

Review of Seeing Gray , a book by pastor Adam Hamilton
of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
in Leawood, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City—

“Adam Hamilton invites us to soulful gray space
between polarities, glorious gray space that is holy,
mysterious, complex, and true. Let us find within
our spirits the courage and humility to live and learn
in this faithful space, to see gray, to discern a more
excellent way.”

—Review by United Methodist Bishop Hope Morgan Ward

The above quotation was suggested by the following from today’s
online Kansas City Star :

“Two of the victims were 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood
and his grandfather, William Lewis Corporon, who attended the
United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, the church’s senior pastor, shared
the news with church members at the beginning of the evening
Palm Sunday service.”

Update of 10:48 PM — A related photo:

Odin's Day continues. 

The title is a reference to the recent film
"Olympus Has Fallen," directed by Antoine Fuqua
(which I watched last night).

Related material:

Ascent to Valhalla,   Times Blackout,
and the post-blackout Times Obituaries.

Update of 6:45-7:59 PM Aug. 14:

See also (in keeping with the ART WARS
theme of today's previous post) 
Juneteenth (Wednesday, June 19) 2013.
This last link may be regarded as posted in
memory of author Vince Flynn, who reportedly
died at about 2 AM on that date. Background:
Tuesday, June 18.

(Continued)

"When an irresistible force such as you
meets an old immovable object like me…"

— From one whose name was writ in water*

* Scholia:  Art Wars, Conceptual Coffee, and Day of the Tetraktys

(An episode of Art Wars )

"Visual forms, he thought, were solutions to
specific problems that come from specific needs."

— Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times
    obituary of E. H. Gombrich (November 7th, 2001)

"… deep cultural fears within the art world— 
fears that art is elitist,
or some kind of confidence game,
or not a serious endeavor (a fear that has
dogged art since at least the time of Plato)."

— Philip Kennicott, quoted here on July 22, 2012

See also today's date in 2003.

ART WARS continues…

(Click to enlarge.)

See also today's previous post and Foreground in this journal.

This evening's New York Lottery number was 776.
From this journal's post number 776—

ART WARS:

Lindsay Lohan was back in court today.

"The judge… ordered Lindsay may have no more than one friend
over at a time for the remainder of her house arrest" —Star Magazine

"Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call"

— Eustace Tilley

"A certain vertiginous occlusion of the imagined and the real" —The White Album

ver·tig·i·nous

adjective 1. whirling; spinning; rotary: vertiginous currents of air .

oc·clu·sion

noun 2. the front formed by a cold front overtaking a warm front and lifting the warm air above the earth's surface

   Excerpt from Joan Didion's The White Album  (click to enlarge)—

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest…." —Joan Didion

"Then came From Here to Eternity ." —Art Wars

"Someday I'll wish upon a star…." —The Definitive Collection

“Next to the bookcase stands a wooden cabinet with 24 drawers that looks like something you might have seen in a library decades ago, or perhaps in an old apothecary. The drawers are marked with the names of her novels or characters in the novels and crammed with indexed notes.

She pulls open a drawer marked ‘Lozen,’ the name of a main female character in another historical western novel, ‘The Ghost Warrior,’ and reads a few of the index tabs: ‘social relationships, puberty, death, quotes….'”

— From an article on Lucia St. Clair Robson in The Baltimore Sun  by Arthur Hirsch, dated 1:31 p.m. EDT April 30, 2011*

From this  journal later that same day —

Robson’s most recent novel is Last Train from Cuernavaca .

“A corpse will be transported by express!”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

* Update of 5:48 AM EDT May 3—
The same article was also published with a different  dateline— April 28.
Enthusiasts of synchronicity may lament the confusion, or they may
turn to April 28 in this journal for a different  24-part invention.
See also Art Wars, April 7, 2003 and White Horse .

The title phrase is from Art Wars and various posts in this journal.

"Go ahead," he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins
 with holes in the center. "I generally use these."

— The Man in the High Castle , quoted here on Nov. 14, 2003

See also Tangled Tale, Yonda Lies the Castle, and a gathering in Dublin today.

William Lubtchansky, a cinematographer, was born on October 26, 1937, and died on May 4, 2010.

Yesterday's post included an illustration from this journal on the date of his death.

Here is a Log24 entry from last year on the date of his birth—

Clicking on the Shift Lock key leads to the following page—

—The Philosopher's Gaze,
by David Michael Levin,
University of California Press, 1999

Related images—

Detail from May 4 image:

Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC:

(http://www.scrapbookpages.com/USHMM/Exterior.html)

See also Lubtchansky's Duelle and
Art Wars for Trotsky's Birthday, 2003.

Identity

Click for context.

Related material:

Pictures of Nothing

Art Wars: Epiphany

Tilting at Whirligigs

Down the Up Staircase

The “greatest generation” theme from Art Wars– April 7, 2003 continues in two obituaries from this morning’s New York Times:

The first obituary says that Goldberg

“saw abstract painting… as ‘still the primary visual challenge of our time. It might get harder and harder to make an abstract image that’s believable, but I think that just makes the challenge greater.'”  The Times says that Goldberg was a veteran of Merrill’s Marauders in World War II (as well as of the last century’s art wars).

The second obituary notes that Astor’s books include A Blood-Dimmed Tide (a phrase from Yeats)– an account of the Battle of the Bulge– and a biography of Dr. Josef Mengele.

Both men died on Sunday, December 30, 2007. From Log24 on that date, an abstract image and a cinematic portrait of Dr. Mengele:

On Kirk Varnedoe

"At 42– a professor with no museum experience– he was named curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. It was, and is, the most influential job in the fluid, insular, fiercely contentious world of modern art. Just two decades past his last Amherst game, the lineman from Savannah was sitting in the chair where the most critical decisions in his profession are made– 'the conscientious, continuous, resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity,' according to his Olympian predecessor Alfred Barr. The Modern and its chief curator serve the American art establishment as a kind of aesthetic Supreme Court, and most of their rulings are beyond appeal."

— Hal Crowther

On Quality

 Best Wishes for a
C. S. Lewis
Christmas

 

Image of Lewis from Into the Wardrobe

“What on earth   is a concrete   universal?” — Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance For one approach to an answer, click on the picture at left.

Update of 4:23 PM:

The Lewis link above deals with the separation of Heaven from Hell.  The emphasis is on Heaven.  A mysterious visitor to this website, “United States,” seems to be seeking equal time for Hell.  And so…

ART WARS
continued:

Sontag’s Sermon

Sources:
This morning’s Log24 entry,
today’s New York Times Magazine,
and today’s Doonesbury.

Related material:

My Life among the Deathworks:
Illustrations of the
Aesthetics of Authority,
by Philip Rieff,
Sontag’s ex-husband.

See also Nicole Kidman in
the 2004 remake of
The Stepford Wives.

ART WARS continued

Adapted from Rick McKee,
Augusta Chronicle, Aug. 2, 2006

Click on picture for details.

Script:

“David Stuart, a University of Texas master of Maya writing, stopped by and tried to be helpful….

‘There’s a playfulness to the script,’ Dr. Stuart said. ‘It was not a writing system that was necessarily there to be as clear as it could be. It was communicating language, but it was doing it as art.'”

— My Maya Crash Course
in The New York Times
of May 16, 2006

“… apocalypto means to open up
and to show the truth….”

— UCLA’s Anthropoetics

Log24, May 16, 2006