(In memory of art critic Hilton Kramer,
who died this morning)
See also “crucial” in this journal.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Wednesday December 6, 2006
Mathematical Imagery
From the current
American Mathematical Society
“Mathematical Imagery” page:
“Rosie Lee Tompkins, a renowned African-American quiltmaker whose use of dazzling color and vivid geometric forms made her work internationally acclaimed despite her vehement efforts to remain completely unknown, was found dead on Friday at her home in Richmond, Calif. She was 70.” —Margalit Fox, NY Times 12/6/06
Tompkins was found dead
on December 1, 2006.
on December 1, 2006.
From Log24 on that date:
That entry contained an excerpt from
Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word—
“What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, ‘to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.’ I read it again. It didn’t say ‘something helpful’ or ‘enriching’ or even ‘extremely valuable.’ No, the word was crucial….”
Related material:
Diamond Theory
and a politically correct
1995 feminist detective novel
about quilts,
From a summary of the novel:
The story deals with “one Gideon Summerfield, deceased.” Summerfield, a former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University, “is about to become the recipient of the Waymark prize. This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same prestige as the Nobel. Summerfield had a rather lackluster career at St. Agatha’s, with the exception of one remarkable result that he obtained. It is for this result that he is being awarded the prize, albeit posthumously.” Someone is apparently trying to prevent a biography of Summerfield from being published.
The following page contains
a critical part of the solution
to the mystery:
a critical part of the solution
to the mystery:
Meanwhile, back in real life…
It is said that the late Ms. Tompkins
liked to work while listening to the
soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever.”
“It’s just your jive talkin’
you’re telling me lies, yeah
Jive talkin’
you wear a disguise
Jive talkin’
so misunderstood, yeah
Jive talkin’
You really no good”
These lyrics may also serve
to summarize reviews
of Diamond Theory written
in the summer of 2005.
For further details, see
Mathematics and Narrative.
Comments Off on Wednesday December 6, 2006
Friday, December 1, 2006
Friday December 1, 2006
From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
crucial – 1706, from Fr. crucial… from L. crux (gen. crucis) “cross.” The meaning “decisive, critical” is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts* at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose.
“… given the nature of our intellectual commerce with works of art, to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial— the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify.”
— Hilton Kramer in The New York Times, April 28, 1974
“I realized that without making the slightest effort I had come upon one of those utterances in search of which psychoanalysts and State Department monitors of the Moscow or Belgrade press are willing to endure a lifetime of tedium: namely, the seemingly innocuous obiter dicta, the words in passing, that give the game away.
What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, ‘to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.’ I read it again. It didn’t say ‘something helpful’ or ‘enriching’ or even ‘extremely valuable.’ No, the word was crucial….
The more industrious scholars will derive considerable pleasure from describing how the art-history professors and journalists of the period 1945-75, along with so many students, intellectuals, and art tourists of every sort, actually struggled to see the paintings directly, in the old pre-World War II way, like Plato’s cave dwellers watching the shadows, without knowing what had projected them, which was the Word.”
— Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word
For some related material from the next 30 years, 1976-2006, see Art Wars.
* “Note that in the original Latin, the term is not by any means ‘fingerpost’ but simply ‘cross’ (Latin Crux, crucis) – a root term giving deeper meaning to the ‘crucial’ decision as to which if any of the narratives are ‘true,’ and echoing the decisive ‘crucifixion’ revealed in the story.”
Comments Off on Friday December 1, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Tuesday February 21, 2006
"Contemporary literary theory did not emerge in an intellectual and cultural vacuum. The subordination of art to argument and ideas has been a long time in the works. In The Painted Word, a rumination on the state of American painting in the 1970s, Tom Wolfe described an epiphany he had one Sunday morning while reading an article in the New York Times on an exhibit at Yale University. To appreciate contemporary art– the paintings of Jackson Pollock and still more so his followers– which to the naked eye appeared indistinguishable from kindergarten splatterings and which provided little immediate pleasure or illumination, it was 'crucial,' Wolfe realized, to have a 'persuasive theory,' a prefabricated conceptual lens to make sense of the work and bring into focus the artist's point. From there it was just a short step to the belief that the critic who supplies the theories is the equal, if not the superior, of the artist who creates the painting."
— Peter Berkowitz, "Literature in Theory"
Cover art by Rea Irvin
On this date in 1925,
The New Yorker
first appeared.
Related material:
Aldous Huxley on
The Perennial Philosophy
(ART WARS, March 13, 2003)
and William James on religion:
"James points out that… a mystical experience displays the world through a different lens than is present in ordinary experience. The experience, in his words, is 'ineffable'…."
For an experience that is
perhaps more effable,
see the oeuvre of
Jill St. John.
Related material:
A drama for Mardi Gras,
The Crimson Passion,
and (postscript of 2:56 PM)
today's Harvard Crimson
(pdf, 843k)
Comments Off on Tuesday February 21, 2006
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Wednesday February 8, 2006
Iconography
(continued)
“… iconography,
the concept and image
of the bride of Christ–
the sponsa Christi—
assumed particular relevance in
the definition of women’s identity.”
(continued)
“… iconography,
the concept and image
of the bride of Christ–
the sponsa Christi—
assumed particular relevance in
the definition of women’s identity.”
— Silvia Evangelisti in
Historiographical Reviews
Related material:
|
Arts & Letters Daily
(Feb. 8, 2006) annotated: Dan Brown is not the first to have suggested that Jesus had a sex life– even Martin Luther said it. So what about the lady, Mary Magdalene?… more
For literature profs of today, Theory is what the Dialectic was to Marxist intellectuals of the past: the key to almost everything… more
The idea that anyone, regardless of learning or class, could “come to Christ” went along with the idea of equal rights in America. William Jennings Bryan… more
|
And from non-Protestantism, for the birthday of
Sanctus from Missa “Veni Sponsa Christi” (pdf), by Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650).
Related material: Catholic Tastes and
A Mass for Lucero.
Comments Off on Wednesday February 8, 2006