Log24

Monday, August 7, 2017

Pathbreaking

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:20 pm

From Blockbuster, a post of Friday, August 4, 2017 —

The article suggests a look at  a July 3 Times  review of the life
of Jan Fontein, a former Boston Museum of Fine Arts director —

"Mr. Fontein’s time as director coincided with
the nationwide rise of the blockbuster exhibition,
and he embraced the concept. 'There was such a thing
as a contemplative museum, but I don’t think that can
survive anymore,' he told Newsweek  in 1978."

From The New York Times  this evening —

"Mr. Roth made his mark at the Victoria and Albert
with record-breaking exhibitions focused on
David Bowie in 2013, Alexander McQueen in 2015
and The Beatles and the youth revolution of the 1960s
in 2016."

Related material —

Record-breaking in this journal and Sunday in the Park with Death.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Tuesday June 24, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:13 am
Damnation Morning
 Revisited:

See Notes on
Kosinski’s Birthday

and
Sunday in the Park with Death.

See also 4:13 and 4/13.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Wednesday December 12, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Found in Translation:
Words and Images

NY Times obituaries, Dec. 12, 2007: Whitney and Mailer

From today’s New York Times:

“Thomas P. Whitney, a former diplomat and writer on Russian affairs who was best known for translating the work of the dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn into English, died on [Sunday] Dec. 2 in Manhattan. He was 90….

During World War II, he was an analyst in Washington with the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency….

In the late 1960s and afterward, he bred thoroughbred horses….

On one occasion, Mr. Whitney took Mr. Solzhenitsyn to Saratoga Racetrack….”

— Margalit Fox

Related material:

Words

Adam Gopnik on C. S. Lewis
in The New Yorker, issue
dated Nov. 21, 2005:

Prisoner of Narnia

“Lewis began with
a number of haunted images….”

“The best of the books are the ones…
where the allegory is at a minimum
and the images just flow.”

“‘Everything began with images,’
Lewis wrote….”


Images

Yesterday’s entry on
Solzhenitsyn and The Golden Compass
and the following illustrations…

from Sunday in the Park with Death,
a Log24 entry commemorating
Trotsky’s birthday–

By Diego Rivera: Frida Kahlo holding yin-yang symbol

–and from Log24 on the date
of Whitney’s death,
Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007—

Dark and light horses, personal emblem of Harry Stack Sullivan

Personal Emblem
of psychiatrist
Harry Stack Sullivan

The horses may refer to
 the Phaedrus of Plato.

See also Art Wars.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Thursday June 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 am
Unscholarly Notes

The time of the previous entry, 1:06:18, suggests both the date of Epiphany, 1:06, and Hexagram 18 of the I Ching: Ku, Work on what has been spoiled (Decay).

Epiphany: A link in the Log24 entries for Epiphany 2007 leads to Damnation Morning, which in turn leads to Why Me?, a discussion of the mythology of Spiders vs. Snakes devised by Fritz Leiber.  Spiders represent the conscious mind, snakes the unconscious.

On Hexagram 18: "The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding. This means decay." —Wilhelm's commentary

This brings us back to the previous entry with its mention of the date of Rudolf Arnheim's death: Saturday, June 9.  In Log24 on that date there was a link, in honor of Aaron Sorkin's birthday, to a short story by Leonard Michaels.  That link was suggested, in part,  by a review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review (available online earlier, on Friday). Here is a quote from that review related to the Hexagram 18 worm bowl:

"… what grabbed attention for his early collections was Michaels's gruesome, swaggering depiction of the sexual rampage that was the swinging '60s in New York– 'the worm bucket,' as Michaels described an orgy."

Related material for meditation on this, the anniversary (according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) of the birth of author Jerzy Kosinski— his novel The Hermit of 69th Street.

Kosinski was not unfamiliar with Michaels's worm bucket.  For related information, see Hermit (or at least a review).

In Leiber's stories the symbol of the Snakes is similar to the famed Yin-Yang symbol, also known as the T'ai-chi tu.  For an analysis of this symbol by Arnheim, see the previous entry.  See also "Sunday in the Park with Death" (Log24, Oct. 26, 2003):

"Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana…."
— "La Bruja"

Friday, January 9, 2004

Friday January 9, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 am

HURRY UP PLEASE
IT’S TIME

— T. S. Eliot,
The Waste Land, II
“A Game of Chess”

“Make the white Queen run so fast 
 she hasn’t got time to make you wise, 
 ’cause it’s time, it’s time
    in time with your time
                              and its news
 is captured
                  for the Queen to use.”

—   from “Your Move,” or
    “I’ve Seen All Good People,”
     by Yes (Jon Anderson and
     Chris Squire), played in the
     soundtrack of a “Big Fish”
     movie trailer tonight in the
     obituary of Brian Gibson at
     the New York Times site.

     For related material, see
     The Black Queen and 
     History of a Symbol.

Jan. 9 obituary of Brian Gibson —

“In 2002 he was executive producer of the film ‘Frida,’ about the artist Frida Kahlo….”

Captured for the Queen

Joan Aiken


Photo by Alex Gotfryd,
circa 1972 

Jan. 9 obituary of Joan Aiken —

“Joan Aiken was born in Rye, England, a daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken….”

Dust jacket of a novel — 

“Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano must be, for anyone who loves the English language, a sheer joy.”

— Conrad Aiken

“He was never inclined to small talk.”

— Jan. 9 obituary of Steven Edward Dorfman, writer of questions (i.e., answers) for the game show “Jeopardy!”

“What’s the Hellfire Club?”

— Joan Aiken, beginning of the final chapter of The Shadow Guests

Note that Dorfman, Gibson, and Aiken
all died on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2004.
For some related material, see

Sunday in the Park with Death.

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Sunday October 26, 2003

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:17 am

ART WARS for

Trotsky’s Birthday

Part I:
Symbols

From my entry of July 26, 2003, in memory
of Marathon Man director John Schlesinger:

Bright Star and Dark Lady

“Mexico is a solar country — but it is also a black country, a dark country. This duality of Mexico has preoccupied me since I was a child.”

— Octavio Paz,
quoted by Homero Aridjis

Bright Star

Amen.

Dark Lady

For the meaning of the above symbols, see
Kubrick’s 1x4x9 monolith in 2001,
the Halmos tombstone in Measure Theory,
and the Fritz Leiber Changewar stories.

No se puede vivir sin amar.

Part II:
Sunday in the Park with Death

  To Leon from Diego —
Details of a mural,
A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon
in Alameda Park,
Fresco, 1947-48,
Alameda Hotel, Mexico City:

Three’s a Crowd:

Symbol:


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