Meets Clark Gable —
Saturday, August 23, 2014
The Scottish Play…
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Unique Figure
In the landscape of minimalism, John McCracken cuts a unique figure. He is often grouped with the “light and space” artists who formed the West Coast branch of the movement. Indeed, he shares interests in vivid color, new materials, and polished surfaces with fellow Californians enamored of the Kustom Kar culture. On the other hand, his signature works, the “planks” that he invented in 1966 and still makes today, have the tough simplicity and aggressive presence of New York minimalism….
“They kind of screw up a space because they lean,” McCracken has said of the planks. Their tilting, reflective surfaces activate the room, leaving the viewer uncertain of traditional boundaries. He notes that the planks bridge sculpture (identified with the floor) and painting (identified with the wall)….
His ultimate goal, as with all mystics, is unity— not just of painting and sculpture, but of substance and illusion, of matter and spirit, of art and life. Such ideas recall the utopian aspirations of early modernists like Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky.
Related Art —
Unity
—Roman numeral I
as well as capital I
For a related figure, see a film review by A. O. Scott at The New York Times (September 21, 2010)—
“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” begins with an unseen narrator— , sounding a lot like — paraphrasing . You may remember the quotation from high school English, about how life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The observation is attributed to the playwright himself (“Shakespeare once said”), rather than to Macbeth, whose grim experience led him to such nihilism, but never mind. In context, it amounts to a perfectly superfluous statement of the obvious.
If life signifies nothing, perhaps the tall dark figure above signifies something . Discuss.
Related Art Criticism —
For more on light and space, see this journal on the date of McCracken’s death—
Note planks.
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Saturday, August 15, 2009
Saturday August 15, 2009
For St. Willard
Van Orman Quine
" ... to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint" -- Four Quartets
The Timeless:
Time
(64 years,
and more):
| Today in History
Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2009. There are 138 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Aug. 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced to his subjects in a prerecorded radio address that Japan had accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II. On this date: In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain. |
Macbeth:
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Quine:
“I really have nothing to add.”
— Quine, quoted
on this date in 1998.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Tuesday July 21, 2009
Today's Readings:
-
The White Itself
Plato and the "concrete universal"-- Log24 on Thursday, July 16, 2009
-
Edged with Brown
Context for a Log24 entry of July 16: "So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, Along the empty alley, into the box circle, To look down into the drained pool. Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light...."
-
Signifying Nothing
An essay on Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
-
Professor Gates Arrested
A racial incident in Cambridge on Thursday, July 16, 2009
-
New England White
Race relations in Academia
-
Notes on Mathematics
and Narrative"... the glue that binds the brotherhood is ultimately made not of love and interracial harmony, but of something stronger and more enduring: shame, fear, and greed." -- Review of New England White
-
Don't Forget Hate
Cf. Eugene Burdick and The Word, 1966. More recently, Tom Wolfe and The Word and Pig and Rat Get Lost.
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Saturday, July 7, 2007
Saturday July 7, 2007
Nymphet Witches
A New York Times review
of the new Geoffrey Wright
film of “Macbeth”–
“… dreamscape of nymphet witches….
In this telling, the three witches
are first glimpsed in the
opening scene vandalizing
tombstones”
For a rather different dreamscape
of nymphets and tombstones, see
the five previous entries.
As the Times notes,
“‘Macbeth’ has been made as
a gangster picture before.”
A truly surreal production,
perhaps to be made in
the next world, might star the
young (again) George Melly
as Macbeth,
introduced by
the following
tombstone:
|
GEORGE MELLY
1926 – 2007 WHAT AFTERLIFE
|
For further details,
click on Melly’s picture.
“A tale told by an idiot…
signifying nothing….”
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Sunday, May 20, 2007
Sunday May 20, 2007
Plato and Shakespeare:
Solid and Central
Solid and Central
"I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One free morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before."
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Ch. IX
From Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star (11/11/99):
|
"Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor…. I have dwelt at length on the inconvenience of putting up with it. It is time to think about taking steps." "The Consul could feel his glance at Hugh becoming a cold look of hatred. Keeping his eyes fixed gimlet-like upon him he saw him as he had appeared that morning, smiling, the razor edge keen in sunlight. But now he was advancing as if to decapitate him." |
"O God, I could be
bounded in a nutshell
and count myself
a king of infinite space,
were it not that
I have bad dreams."
— Hamlet
From today's newspaper:
Notes:
For an illustration of
the phrase "solid and central,"
see the previous entry.
For further context, see the
five Log24 entries ending
on September 6, 2006.
For background on the word
"hollow," see the etymology of
"hole in the wall" as well as
"The God-Shaped Hole" and
"Is Nothing Sacred?"
For further ado, see
Macbeth, V.v
("signifying nothing")
and The New Yorker,
issue dated tomorrow.
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Friday, March 5, 2004
Friday March 5, 2004
Signifying Nothing
Fred Benninger, the former chairman of MGM Grand and the MGM studio, died at 86 at his home in Las Vegas on Sunday, Feb. 29, 2004.
"Mr. Benninger was well known in the business world for decades, but he made his biggest mark in the gambling industry."
For Benninger, who died on Oscar Day, a two-part story.
Part One
From an entry for
Oscar Day:
|
Types of Ambiguity
1. Oscar: military phonetic ….
6. Macbeth "…. a tale 7. Enter a Messenger. |
Part Two
From an entry for
Columbus Day, 2003:
|
|
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Sunday, February 29, 2004
Sunday February 29, 2004
Types of Ambiguity
1. Oscar: military phonetic for the letter 'O'
2. "… this symbol among the Greeks was more circle than dot, but among those in India, more dot than circle."
— Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero
3. A bindi is an auspicious mark worn by young girls and women. Bindi is derived from bindu, the Sanskrit word for dot. It is usually a red dot made with vermilion powder which is worn by women between their eyebrows on their forehead. Considered a symbol of Goddess Parvati, a bindi signifies female energy….
— Indian Customs & Traditions
4. Sometimes I feel so reckless and wild
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
I gave nobody life, I am nobody's wife
And I seem to be nobody's daughter
So red is the color that I like the best
It's your Indian skin and the badge
On my chest
The heat of my pride
The lips of a bride
The sad heart of the truth
And the flag of youth
And blood that is thicker than water
— Shawn Colvin of Vermillion, SD,
"The Story" lyrics
5. Hamlet Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet That's a fair thought to lie between maid's legs.
Ophelia What is, my lord?
Hamlet Nothing.
6. Macbeth "…. a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
7. Enter a Messenger.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Wednesday February 25, 2004
Modernism as a Religion
In light of the controversy over Mel Gibson's bloody passion play that opens today, some more restrained theological remarks seem in order. Fortunately, Yale University Press has provided a
From a review by Adam White Scoville of Iain Pears's novel titled An Instance of the Fingerpost:
"Perhaps we are meant to see the story as a cubist retelling of the crucifixion, as Pilate, Barabbas, Caiaphas, and Mary Magdalene might have told it. If so, it is sublimely done so that the realization gradually and unexpectedly dawns upon the reader. The title, taken from Sir Francis Bacon, suggests that at certain times, 'understanding stands suspended' and in that moment of clarity (somewhat like Wordsworth's 'spots of time,' I think), the answer will become apparent as if a fingerpost were pointing at the way."
Recommended related
By others:
Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative, Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook, Yale University Press, 1999
Signifying Nothing: The Fourth Dimension in Modernist Art and Literature
Corpus Hypercubus,
by Dali. Not cubist,
perhaps "hypercubist."
By myself:
The Crucifixion of John O'Hara
The Da Vinci Code and Symbology at Harvard
Material that is related, though not