Log24

  Midnight in Paris

   See also Mariani  in this journal.

"What possessed a generation of young European artists,
and a few Americans, to suddenly suppress recognizable imagery
in pictures and sculptures? Unthinkable at one moment, the strategy
became practically compulsory in the next." 

— Peter Schjeldahl in the current New Yorker

The following remarks may or may not be relevant.

Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci,"
La Nouvelle Revue , Paris, Vol. 95 (1895)—

"Regarded thus, the ornamental conception is to the individual arts
what mathematics is to the other sciences. …the objects chosen
and arranged with a view to a particular effect seem as if disengaged
from most of their properties and only reassume them in the effect,
in, that is to say, the mind of the detached spectator. It is thus
by means of an abstraction that the work of art can be constructed,
and is more or less easy to define according as the elements borrowed
from reality for it are more or less complex. Inversely it is by a sort of
induction, by the production of mental images, that all works of art are
appreciated, and this production must equally be more or less active,
more or less tiring, according as it is set in motion by a simple
interlacing on a vase or a broken phrase by Pascal."

— Translated by Thomas McGreevy (Valéry's Selected Writings,
     New Directions, 1950)

Paul Valéry, "Introduction a la Méthode de Léonard de Vinci,"
La Nouvelle Revue , Paris, Tome 95 (1895), p. 762—

"De ce point de vue, la conception ornementale est aux arts
particuliers ce que la mathématique est aux autres sciences. De
même que les notions physiques de temps, longueur, densité,
masse, etc., ne sont dans les calculs que des quantités homo-
gènes et ne retrouvent leur individualité que dans l'interprétation
des résultats, de même les objets choisis et ordonnés en vue d'un
effet sont comme détachés de la plupart de leurs propriétés et
ne les reprennent que dans cet effet, dans l'esprit non prévenu
du spectateur. C'est donc par une abstraction que l'œuvre d'art
peut se construire, et cette abstraction est plus ou moins éner-
gique, plus ou moins facile à y découvrir, que les éléments em-
pruntés à la réalité en sont des portions plus ou moins com-
plexes. Inversement, c'est par une sorte d'induction, par la
production d'images mentales que toute œuvre d'art s'apprécie;
et cette production doit être également plus ou moins énergique,
plus ou moins fatigante  selon qu'un simple entrelacs sur un
vase ou une phrase brisée de Pascal la sollicite." 

"I never had any hesitation or regrets…."

— Rita Levi-Montalcini, who died today at 103

See also today's previous post and…

Turning the Page:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in Looper :

Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys :

See also Big Time  in this journal.

A meditation on the performance of the late Charles Durning
in the film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas .

• This journal on December 7th, 2012
• This journal on December 22, 2012
• Kristofferson and Huppert in Heaven's Gate
• Walken in Heaven's Gate
• Punchline at Heaven's gate: "Spell chrysanthemum."

Where Kirkland meets Quincy—

Click image for some context.

The Kernel of the Concept of the Object…

according to the New York Lottery yesterday—

From 4/27

From 11/24

A page numbered 176

A page numbered 187

… In gratitude for his book Real Presences—

Will and Idea:

A related shell game:

Ad for a talk at Harvard by Nick Bostrom in April 2010—

Click ad for background on the April 10 , 2010, symposium.

See also Bostrom on the The Simulation Argument
and the Log24 April 12, 2010, Shell Game post above.

Note the black diamond logo of Bostrom's Oxford institute.

* See Google Doodle for today, the
   200th anniversary of the Grimms'
   Kinder- und Hausmärchen .

   See also Ay Que Bonito Es Volar
    and The Broom Factory.

Today's New York Times  on a collector of Japanese art who died on December 8th—

In 1954, she made her first trip to Japan. The visit had been suggested by the architect Walter Gropius, whose disciple Benjamin Thompson was designing a modernist house for her in Oyster Bay, on Long Island.

Gropius, a titan of the Bauhaus school, was deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic and wanted her to experience its clean, spare lines firsthand.

See Dec. 8th in this  journal for the following clean, spare lines:

Japanese character
        for "field"

Related material: Looking Deeply and Field.

Image adapted from a 1960 Grove Press
(Evergreen paperback E-219) cover
illustration, apparently by Roy Kuhlman,
for The Spirit of Zen , by Alan Watts

Or: Being There

(A sequel to last night's Lyric Intelligence )

William Deresiewicz reviews Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 novel Player Piano :

The novel’s prescience is chilling. Six years before the left-wing English
sociologist Michael Young published The Rise of the Meritocracy ,
a dystopian satire that coined that now-ubiquitous final word,
Vonnegut was already there.

Related material:

Intelligence Test , Gombrich,  and, more generally, Stupidity.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however
measured or far away." — Thoreau

"I got a line on you." — Spirit

See also today's previous post and Eve's Menorah.

The following passage is suggested by last night's "Eve's Menorah"
and by today's "Review of Leonardo  Article" —

Click image to enlarge.

In today's New York Times :

The late film executive Steven Bach on
the late literary agent Robert Lescher —

Mr. Bach’s 1985 book about film, “Final Cut:
Dreams and Disaster in the Making of ‘Heaven’s Gate’ ”—
a crow’s-nest view of the cultural and personal tensions
on the set— became a best seller and a Hollywood-insider
classic. In his acknowledgments, Mr. Bach said Mr. Lescher
“was the spiritual father to the book and to its author as well.”

See also "The rest is the madness of art" and Eight Gate.

The last name of the author Camelia Elias matches
the first name of the father of Robert "Slowly" Lescher.

Related material: December Days and  All Saints.

Ado.

"Fail better." — Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho"

"West. And slowly." — Stage direction for a Christmas carol

This post was suggested by the December 4th death
of modernist composer Jonathan Harvey, 73,
and by Harvey's reflections on his 2007 opera
Wagner Dream .

For related reflections, see the Oct. 10 post on
the Dürer magic square in Mann's Doctor Faustus .

See also a December 2nd post on the Nov. 18 death of
chess grandmaster Elena Akhmilovskaya Donaldson.

Related material: The Revisiting (December 3rd, 2012)

Part I

Embedding the Stone (March 23, 2012) —

The Meno Embedding

Part II

ReverbNation.com — Lawrence Class —

A review of a post from December 6, 2002,
suggests a review of more recent remarks.

See June 26, 2012: Looking Deeply.

A later post supplies some mathematical
background. See Counterexample (Nov. 27, 2012).

Happy Feast of Saint Nicholas.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer died today at 104.

His "Crown of Thorns" cathedral
appeared here in
some posts of August 2003.

(Continued)

Living Legend Takes Five.

(Midnight in the Garden, continued)

E is for Ending …

Cullinane = Cullinan + E

And for Everlast.

(The Cullinan link above is to a woman
who apparently is the wife of writer
Alan Cowell. See The Revisiting, Dec. 3rd.)

(Continued from Grim Joke )

Happy Birthday to The Master.

Image from this journal on November 11th,
darkened in honor of a Harvard professor
who died on that date—

Related material: Lincoln and Darwin at Harvard.

Evening numbers for the New York lottery
yesterday were 182 and 8691.

One interpretation of the latter number is
8/6/91, birth date of the WWW—

For one interpretation of the former number,
see Random Reference.