See also the phrase “Beautiful Mathematics” in this journal.
Monday, January 4, 2021
Sunday, January 3, 2021
Joke
George Clooney to Matt Damon —
“There’s a Michelangelo joke to be made.”
A search in this journal for Michelangelo suggests . . .
How about “Bach meets Bochner“?
Friday, May 15, 2020
Review
Charles Taylor,
“Epiphanies of Modernism,”
Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
(Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477) —
“… the object sets up
a kind of frame or space or field
within which there can be epiphany.”
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
Related material for comedians —
Literature ad absurdum —
Comments Off on Review
Monday, December 2, 2019
Thursday, September 20, 2018
1971 Mystery Box
Vincent Canby in The New York Times ,
January 28, 1971, reviews the film "The Statue" —
There is not much point in going into the dialogue,
but you'll get the idea from the line spoken by
a little girl who is shown gazing in wonderment
at the copy of Michelangelo's work in the
Piazza della Signoria in Florence.
"Golly," she says, "if that's David, I'd like to see Goliath!"
"The Statue" may have the distinction of being the first
adolescent comedy about penis envy.
In keeping with filmmaker J.J. Abrams's philosophy of the "mystery box" —
Canby's phrase "you'll get the idea" suggests a Log24 review . . .
Comments Off on 1971 Mystery Box
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Celtic Cross
The above illustrations are
from posts tagged
"Universe of Discourse."
Happy birthday to Évariste Galois, who may
prefer a mathematical, not religious,
interpretation of the above Celtic cross.
Comments Off on Celtic Cross
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Sounds Like a Case for Damon
Comments Off on Sounds Like a Case for Damon
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Verhexung
"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment [Verhexung ]
of our intelligence by means of our language."
— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , Section 109
"The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words
in exactly the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life
when we say e.g. 'Here is a Chinese sentence,' or 'No, that only
looks like writing; it is actually just an ornament' and so on."
— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , Section 108
Monday, June 30, 2014
High Concept
|
Comments Off on Verhexung
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Latin Word:
Aqua
Version 1:
(See the June 30 posts Toward Evening,
Joke, and High Concept.)
Version 2:
Version 3:
Comments Off on Latin Word:
Monday, June 30, 2014
High Concept
For the title, see a post of Nov. 4, 2007.
Related material:
Hexagram 29, Water, and a pattern resembling
the symbol for Aquarius:
.
For some backstory about the former,
see the June 21 post Hallmark.
For some backstory about the latter,
see today’s post Toward Evening.
Tom Wolfe has supplied some scaffolding*
to support the concept.
Comments Off on High Concept
Joke
“There’s a Michelangelo joke to be made.”
— Remark in the recent film “The Monuments Men”
Vide Michelangelo in this journal.
Comments Off on Joke
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Smoke and Mirrors
Sistine Chapel Smoke
Tromso Kunsthall Mirrors
Background for the smoke image:
A remark by Michelangelo in a 2007 post, High Concept.
Background for the mirrors image:
Note the publication date— Mar. 10, 2013.
Comments Off on Smoke and Mirrors
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Ten Years After
Rock guitarist Alvin Lee, a founder of
the band Ten Years After , died
on March 6, 2013 (Michelangelo's
birthday). In his memory, a figure
from a post Ten Years Before —
Plato's reported motto for his Academy:
"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter."
For visual commentary by an artist ignorant
of geometry, see a work by Sol LeWitt.
For verbal commentary by an art critic ignorant
of geometry, see a review of LeWitt by
Robert Hughes—
"A Beauty Really Bare" (TIME, Feb. 6, 2001).
See also Ten Years Group and Four Gods.
Comments Off on Ten Years After
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Background
From Joyce's 1912 Trieste lecture on Blake:
"Michelangelo's influence is felt in all of Blake's work, and especially in some passages of prose collected in the fragments, in which he always insists on the importance of the pure, clean line that evokes and creates the figure on the background of the uncreated void."
For a related thought from Michelangelo, see Marmo Solo .
For pure, clean lines, see Galois Geometry.
As for "the uncreated void," see the Ernst Gombrich link in Marmo Solo for "an almost medieval allegory of how man confronts the void."
For some related religious remarks suited to the Harrowing of Hell on this Holy Saturday, see August 16, 2003.
Comments Off on Background
Monday, January 23, 2012
How Stuff Works
"Design is how it works." —Steve Jobs
Website logo—
Screenshot from How Stuff Works—
(Click image for details.)
From "A Device Worthy of a Gothic Novel,"
Chapter XVI of The Club Dumas,
by Arturo Perez-Reverte (1993),
Vintage International, April 1998….
the basis of the 1999 Roman Polanski film
The Ninth Gate —
Aren't you going to give me a document to sign?"
"A document?"
"Yes. It used to be called a pact. Now it would be a contract
with lots of small print, wouldn't it? 'In the event of litigation,
the parties are to submit to the jurisdiction of the courts of…'
That's a funny thing. I wonder which court covers this."
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Thursday, July 14, 2011
ART WARS continued:
Comments Off on ART WARS continued:
Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday July 3, 2009
Damnation Morning
continued
“The tigers of wrath are wiser
than the horses of instruction.”
continued
“The tigers of wrath are wiser
than the horses of instruction.”
— Blake
“… the moment is not
properly an atom of time
but an atom of eternity.
It is the first reflection
of eternity in time, its first
attempt, as it were, at
stopping time….”
— Kierkegaard
|
Symmetry Axes
of the Square: 
From the cover of the
|
A Monolith
for Kierkegaard:  |
Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.
— Rubén Darío
Related material:
The deaths of
Ernest Hemingway
on the morning of
Sunday, July 2, 1961,
and of Alexis Arguello
on the morning of
Wednesday, July 1, 2009.
See also philosophy professor
Clancy Martin in the
London Review of Books
(issue dated July 9, 2009)
on AA members as losers—
“the ‘last men,’ the nihilists,
the hopeless ones.”
Comments Off on Friday July 3, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday June 11, 2009
Geometry for Jews
(continued from Michelangelo’s birthday, 2003)
“Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture.”
Abstraction and the Holocaust (Mark Godfrey, Yale University Press, 2007) describes one approach to such a discussion: Bochner “took a photograph of a new arrangement of blocks, cut it up, reprinted it as a negative, and arranged the four corners in every possible configuration using the serial principles of rotation and reversal to make Sixteen Isomorphs (Negative) of 1967, which he later illustrated alongside works by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse in his Artforum article ‘The Serial Attitude.’ [December 1967, pp. 28-33]” Bochner’s picture of “every possible configuration”–
Compare with the 24 figures in Frame Tales
(Log24, Nov. 10, 2008) and in Theme and Variations.
Comments Off on Thursday June 11, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Friday May 22, 2009
Steiner System
New York Times
banner this morning:
Related material from
July 11, 2008:
|
The HSBC Logo Designer — Henry Steiner
Born in Austria and raised in New York, Steiner was educated at Yale under Paul Rand and attended the Sorbonne as a Fulbright Fellow. He is a past President of Alliance Graphique Internationale. Other professional affiliations include the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Chartered Society of Designers, Design Austria, and the New York Art Directors' Club. His Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace was published by Thames and Hudson (1995). |
He is an internationally recognized corporate identity consultant. Based in Hong Kong, his work for clients such as HongkongBank, IBM and Unilever is a major influence in Pacific Rim design.
|
Charles Taylor,
"Epiphanies of Modernism," Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477):
"… the object sets up
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
|
Related material suggested by
an ad last night on
ABC's Ugly Betty season finale:
Diamond from last night's
Log24 entry, with
four colored pencils from
Diane Robertson Design:
See also
A Four-Color Theorem.
Comments Off on Friday May 22, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday March 28, 2009
In memory of
film producer
Steven Bach:
film producer
Steven Bach:
“Time: the moving
image of eternity.”
— Plato
Happy birthday,
Reba McEntire
Comments Off on Saturday March 28, 2009
Friday, July 11, 2008
Friday July 11, 2008
|
The HSBC Logo Designer — Henry Steiner
Born in Austria and raised in New York, Steiner was educated at Yale under Paul Rand and attended the Sorbonne as a Fulbright Fellow. He is a past President of Alliance Graphique Internationale. Other professional affiliations include the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Chartered Society of Designers, Design Austria, and the New York Art Directors’ Club. His Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace was published by Thames and Hudson (1995). |
Related material
from the past —
from the past —
Charles Taylor, “… the object sets up
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
|
Related material
from today —
Escape from a
cartoon graveyard:
Comments Off on Friday July 11, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Saturday June 21, 2008
for lifetime achievement
in arts and philosophy
this year goes to
Charles Taylor,
Montreal philosophy professor.
“The Kyoto Prize has been given in three domains since 1984:
advanced technology, basic sciences, and the arts and philosophy.
It is administered by the Inamori Foundation, whose president,
Kazuo Inamori, is founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera and
KDDI Corporation, two Japanese telecommunications giants.”
 |
|
“The Kyocera brand symbol is composed of a corporate mark |
Related material —
Charles Taylor,
“Epiphanies of Modernism,”
Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
(Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477) —
“… the object sets up
a kind of frame or space or field
within which there can be epiphany.”
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
Comments Off on Saturday June 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday May 27, 2008
For Sydney Pollack
(See last night’s entry.)
“Now, gentlemen,
I give you
our latest acquisition
from the enemy.”
….’What happened?’
(See last night’s entry.)
“Now, gentlemen,
I give you
our latest acquisition
from the enemy.”
Note the number, 701,
on the colonel’s collar.
Adapted from Log24,
February 19-22, 2008:
“‘This is the last call for Jaunt-701,’
the pleasant female voice echoed
through the Blue Concourse
of New York’s
Port Authority Terminal….
the pleasant female voice echoed
through the Blue Concourse
of New York’s
Port Authority Terminal….
See 2/22/08,
4/19/08,
and 5/22/08.
….’What happened?’
one of the scientists shouted….
‘It’s eternity in there,’ he said,
and dropped dead….”
— Stephen King, “The Jaunt“
‘It’s eternity in there,’ he said,
and dropped dead….”
— Stephen King, “The Jaunt“
Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr.
Comments Off on Tuesday May 27, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thursday May 22, 2008
The Undertaking:
An Exercise in
Conceptual Art
An Exercise in
Conceptual Art
Hexagram 54:
THE JUDGMENT
THE JUDGMENT
Undertakings bring misfortune.
Nothing that would further.
“Brian O’Doherty, an Irish-born artist,
before the [Tuesday, May 20] wake
of his alter ego* ‘Patrick Ireland’
on the grounds of the
Irish Museum of Modern Art.”
— New York Times, May 22, 2008
THE IMAGE
Thus the superior man
understands the transitory
in the light of
the eternity of the end.
Another version of
the image:
See 2/22/08
and 4/19/08.
Related material:
Michael Kimmelman in today’s New York Times—
“An essay from the ’70s by Mr. O’Doherty, ‘Inside the White Cube,’ became famous in art circles for describing how modern art interacted with the gallery spaces in which it was shown.”
Brian O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube,” 1976 Artforum essays on the gallery space and 20th-century art:
“The history of modernism is intimately framed by that space. Or rather the history of modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and in the way we see it. We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first…. An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single picture, may be the archetypal image of 20th-century art.”
See also Epiphany 2008:
“Nothing that would further.”
— Hexagram 54
|
…. Now thou art an 0 |
“…. in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done. Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known. It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead.”
— The Greater Trumps,
by Charles Williams, Ch. 14
* For a different, Jungian, alter ego, see Irish Fourplay (Jan. 31, 2003) and “Outside the Box,” a New York Times review of O’Doherty’s art (featuring a St. Bridget’s Cross) by Bridget L. Goodbody dated April 25, 2007. See also Log24 on that date.
Comments Off on Thursday May 22, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Saturday April 19, 2008
From “Today in History,”
by the Associated Press–
by the Associated Press–
April 19, 2008–
“On this date….
Ten years ago….
Mexican poet-philosopher
Octavio Paz died at age 84.”
“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, as quoted
by Homero Aridjis
“And the light shineth in
darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not.”
— John 1:5
darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not.”
— John 1:5
Comments Off on Saturday April 19, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Friday April 11, 2008
.- El Arzobispo Emérito de México, Cardenal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, falleció esta mañana a las 05:30 a.m., en su domicilio….
of literary “signature passages” —
Comments Off on Friday April 11, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Friday February 22, 2008
Philosophers Ponder
“Philosophers ponder
the idea of identity:
what it is to give
something a name
on Monday
and have it respond
to that name
on Friday….”
the idea of identity:
what it is to give
something a name
on Monday
and have it respond
to that name
on Friday….”
— Bernard Holland in
The New York Times
Monday, May 20, 1996
In 1564,
artist Michelangelo
died in Rome.
Non ha l’ottimo artista in se alcun concetto,
Ch’un marmo solo in se non circoscriva
Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
La man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.
(The best artist has in himself no concept
in a single block of marble not contained;
only the hand obeying mind will find it.)
— Michelangelo, as quoted
by Erwin Panofsky in
Idea: A Concept
in Art Theory
Idea: A Concept
in Art Theory
… Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte
— Rubén Darío
Related material:
Yesterday’s entry
and Anthony Lane
in this week’s
New Yorker:
“… the whole of ‘Jumper’ comes across as vastly incurious about the cultures at its command. When David takes Millie (Rachel Bilson), a school friend from Michigan, for a dirty day out in Rome, she stands in awe before the Colosseum. ‘This place is amazing,’ she declares. ‘It’s so cool.’ I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich….”
Comments Off on Friday February 22, 2008
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Sunday November 4, 2007
Talking of Michelangelo:
On this date in 1948, T. S. Eliot
won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Non ha l’ottimo artista in se alcun concetto,
Ch’un marmo solo in se non circoscriva
Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
La man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.
(The best artist has in himself no concept
in a single block of marble not contained;
only the hand obeying mind will find it.)
— Michelangelo, as quoted
by Erwin Panofsky in
Idea: A Concept in Art Theory
Comments Off on Sunday November 4, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Thursday October 25, 2007
Something Anonymous
"A work of art has an author
and yet, when it is perfect,
it has something which is
essentially anonymous about it."
and yet, when it is perfect,
it has something which is
essentially anonymous about it."
— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Nineteenth-century quilt design:
Related material:
Comments Off on Thursday October 25, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Wednesday August 1, 2007
Diagon Alley
This symbol from the
box-style I Ching is
echoed by a French ad for
the 2006 film "Scoop"–
This film may be taken as
foreshadowing the afterlife
of the late Fleet Street
figure Richard Stott.
Stott, along with film
directors Ingmar Berman
and Michelangelo Antonioni,
died on Monday (July 30).
He is, we may suppose,
the mysterious third man
in Tuesday's remark by
the mayor of Rome:
"With Antonioni dies not only
one of the greatest directors
but also
a master of modernity."
Dogs and Lampposts,
by Richard Stott
The title of Stott's book
is from H. L. Mencken,
who is said to have felt
that the proper relationship
of a journalist to a politician
is that of a dog to a lamppost.
Comments Off on Wednesday August 1, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday July 31, 2007
Italian Director Antonioni
Dies at 94
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 31, 2007
Filed with The New York Times at 5:14 a.m. ET
“ROME (AP) — Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, best known for his movies ‘Blow-Up’ and ‘L’Avventura,’ has died, officials and news reports said Tuesday. He was 94.
The ANSA news agency said that Antonioni died at his home on Monday evening.
‘With Antonioni dies not only one of the greatest directors but also a master of modernity,’ Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a statement.
In 1995, Hollywood honored Antonioni’s career work– 25 films and several screenplays– with a special Oscar for lifetime achievement.”
Related material:
- “Zabriskie Point” (1970), a film by Antonioni.
“The name refers to Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, the location of the film’s famous desert love scene, in which members of the Open Theatre simulate an orgy.” —Wikipedia
- Play It As It Lays (1970), a novel by Joan Didion
- Log24: The Word in the Desert
Comments Off on Tuesday July 31, 2007
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Saturday June 11, 2005
Evil
Some academics may feel that a denunciation of an essay by one of their fellow academics as "evil" (see this morning's entry The Last Word) goes too far.
Here is a followup to that entry.
From the Riviera Presbyterian Church, a sermon quoting Madeleine L’Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time:
|
For a moment there was the darkness of space, then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear. It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books. "Is it because of our atmosphere that we can't see properly?" she asked anxiously. "No, Meg, yyou know thattt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere," Mrs. Which said. "Yyou mmusstt bee brrave." "It's the Thing!" Charles Wallace cried. "It's the Dark Thing we saw… when we were riding on Mrs. Whatsit's back!" "Did it just come?" Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth. Mrs. Whatsit sighed. "No, Meg. It hasn't just come. It has been there for a great many years. That is why your planet is such a troubled one." "I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate the Dark Thing!" Mrs. Whatsit nodded. "Yes, Charles dear. We all do." "But what is it?" Calvin demanded. "We know that it's evil, but what is it?" "Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!" Mrs. Which's voice rang out. "Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknessss!" "But what's going to happen?" Meg's voice trembled. "Oh, please, Mrs. Which, tell us what's going to happen!" "We will continue tto ffight!" Something in Mrs. Which's voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs. Which with pride and confidence. "And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe it's being fought, all through the cosmos… and some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy." "Who have some of our fighters been?" Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them dear," Mrs. Whatsit said. Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, "And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." "Jesus!" Charles Wallace said. "Why, of course, Jesus!" "Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They've been lights for us to see by." "Leonardo da Vinci?" Calvin suggested tentatively. "And Michelangelo?" "And Shakespeare," Charles Wallace called out, "and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!" Now Calvin's voice rang with confidence. "And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!" "Watch!" the Medium told them. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again. Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. "You see!" the Medium cried, smiling happily. "It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!" And it is. Lift up your hearts, lift up your heads, catch the ball, practice Advent, see in the dark. You are a city set on a hill, whose light cannot be hid. said Jesus, and he believed it. |
Amen.
Comments Off on Saturday June 11, 2005
Saturday, April 5, 2003
Saturday April 5, 2003
Art Wars:
Mathematics and the
Emperor’s New Art
From Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column of June 9, 2002:
“The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art.”
|
NY Times, April 5, 2003: |
|
Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, another example of great determination and strength of character:
Donald Coxeter Dies: Leader in Geometry
By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 5, 2003
“Donald Coxeter, 96, a mathematician who was one of the 20th century’s foremost specialists in geometry and a man of great determination and strength of character as well, died March 31 at his home in Toronto.”
From another Coxeter obituary:
In the Second World War, Coxeter was asked by the American government to work in Washington as a code-breaker. He accepted, but then backed out, partly because of his pacifist views and partly for aesthetic reasons: “The work didn’t really appeal to me,” he explained; “it was a different sort of mathematics.”
For a differing account of how geometry is related to code-breaking, see the “Singer 7-cycle” link in yesterday’s entry, “The Eight,” of 3:33 PM. This leads to a site titled
An Introduction to the
Applications of Geometry in Cryptography.
“Now I have precisely the right instrument, at precisely the right moment of history, in exactly the right place.”
— “Patton,”
the film
Added Sunday, April 6, 2003, 3:17 PM:
The New York Times Magazine of April 6
continues this Art Wars theme.
(Cover typography revised)
The military nature of our Art Wars theme appears in the Times’s choice of words for its cover headline: “The Greatest Generation.” (This headline appears in the paper, but not the Internet, version.)
Some remarks in today’s Times Magazine article seem especially relevant to my journal entry for Michelangelo’s birthday, March 6.
“…Conceptualism — suddenly art could be nothing more than an idea….
LeWitt moved between his syntax of geometric sculptures and mental propositions for images: concepts he wrote on paper that could be realized by him or someone else or not at all. Physical things are perishable. Ideas need not be.”
— Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, April 6, 2003
Compare this with a mathematician’s aesthetics:
“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.”
— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (1940), reprinted 1969, Cambridge U. Press, p. 84
It seems clear from these two quotations that the real conceptual art is mathematics and that Kimmelman is peddling the emperor’s new clothes.
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Thursday March 13, 2003
Death Knell
In memory of Howard Fast, novelist and Jewish former Communist,
who died yesterday, a quotation:
|
"For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell — "Shape and Space in Geometry"
© 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. |
See also
Geometry for Jews.
|
Added March 16, 2003: See, too, the life of |
Thursday, March 6, 2003
Thursday March 6, 2003
ART WARS:
Geometry for Jews
Today is Michelangelo's birthday.
Those who prefer the Sistine Chapel to the Rothko Chapel may invite their Jewish friends to answer the following essay question:
Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture. How is this geometry related to the work of Jewish artist Sol LeWitt? How is it related to the work of Aryan artist Ernst Witt? How is it related to the Griess "Monster" sporadic simple group whose elements number
808 017 424 794 512 875 886 459 904 961 710 757 005 754 368 000 000 000?
Some background:
-
From Nobel Prize Women in Science, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Second Edition (2001), Joseph Henry Press:
"Storm trooper Ernst Witt, resplendent in the Brownshirt uniform of Hitler's paramilitary, knocked on a Jew's apartment door in 1934. A short, rotund woman opened the door. Emmy Noether smiled, welcomed the young Nazi into her home, and started her underground math class. The Brownshirt was one of her favorite pupils."
-
On this date in 1962, Frank Sinatra recorded "I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues" for Capitol Records. This was his last recording for Capitol. He had already started recording for Reprise Records.
-
Related reading:
- A Beauty Really Bare, by Robert Hughes, and
- The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe
Monday, November 25, 2002
Monday November 25, 2002
Swashbucklers and Misfits
There are two theories of truth, according to a a book on the history of geometry —
The “Story Theory” and the “Diamond Theory.”
For those who prefer the story theory…
From a review by Brian Hayes of A Beautiful Mind:
“Mathematical genius is rare enough. Cloaked in madness, or wrapped in serious eccentricity, it’s the stuff legends are made of.
There are brilliant and productive mathematicians who go to the office from nine to five, play tennis on the weekend, and worry about fixing the gearbox in the Volvo. Not many of them become the subjects of popular biographies. Instead we read about the great swashbucklers and misfits of mathematics, whose stories combine genius with high romance or eccentricity.”
|
Russell Crowe, |
Marilyn |
Hollywood has recently given us a mathematical Russell Crowe. For a somewhat tougher sell, Marilyn Monroe as a mathematician, see “Insignificance,” 1985: “Marilyn Monroe on her hands and knees explains the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein.”
For a combination of misfit and swashbuckler in one Holy Name, see today’s earlier note, “The Artist’s Signature.”
See also my note of October 4, 2002, on Michelangelo, and the description of “the face of God” in this review.
Friday, October 11, 2002
Friday October 11, 2002
In Lieu of Rosebud, Part II*
Bernard Ridder dies at 85
Publisher built newspaper empire
BY MARTIN MERZER
Bernard H. Ridder Jr., once one of the nation’s most influential publishers and the inheritor and protector of a family tradition of newspapering, died Thursday night. He was 85….
”If there is one thing he instilled in me,” [his son] Peter Ridder said, “it was to be honest. If you don’t know the answer, say so.”
His father had been publisher of the St. Paul newspapers; his grandfather, Herman Ridder, launched the family business in 1875 as publisher of The Catholic News in New York.
Though six-foot-five and with a commanding presence, he also was known as an honest, compassionate man and boss.
A private memorial service will be held at a date to be determined, the family said. In lieu of flowers, relatives suggested a contribution to a charity of the donor’s choice.
Karl J. Karlson of The St. Paul Pioneer Press contributed to this report.
* For “In Lieu of Rosebud, Part I,” see my entry of October 10, 9:44 a.m., below.
My contributions:
“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock …”
It is with good reason that Spain and the Church venerate in St. Francis Borgia a great man and a great saint. The highest nobles of Spain are proud of their descent from, or their connexion with him. By his penitent and apostolic life he repaired the sins of his family and rendered glorious a name, which but for him, would have remained a source of humiliation for the Church.
His feast is celebrated 10 October.
The New York Times of October 11, 2002 —
This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature is Imre Kertész, a writer on Auschwitz.
http://auschwitz.dk/Orson.htm —
In honor of Orson Welles and Bernard Ridder (who both died on October 10), of Imre Kertész (who won a Nobel Prize on October 10), and of the parent site of the Third Man site,
this site’s music is now the Third Man Theme.
Comments Off on Friday October 11, 2002
Friday, October 4, 2002
Friday October 4, 2002
ART WARS:
The Agony and the Ya-Ya
Today’s birthdays:
- Charlton Heston
- Anne Rice
- Patti LaBelle
To honor the birth of these three noted spiritual leaders, I make the following suggestion: Use the mandorla as the New Orleans Mardi Gras symbol. Rice lives in New Orleans and LaBelle’s classic “Lady Marmalade” deals with life in that colorful city.
What, you may well ask, is the mandorla? This striking visual symbol was most recently displayed prominently at a meeting of U.S. cardinals in the Pope’s private library on Shakespeare’s birthday. The symbol appears in the upper half of a painting above the Pope.
From Church Anatomy:
The illustration below shows how Barbara G. Walker in her excellent book “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” describes the mandorla.
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The Agony Based on a novel by Irving Stone, this 1965 movie focuses on the relationship between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who commissioned the artist to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
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Vesica piscis Mandorla, “almond,” the pointed-oval sign of the yoni, is used in oriental art to signify the divine female genital; also called vesica piscis, the Vessel of the Fish. Almonds were holy symbols because of their female, yonic connotations. Christian art similarly used the mandorla as a frame for figures of God, Jesus, and saints, because the artists forgot what it formerly meant. I. Frazer, G.B., 403 |
For further details on the mandorla (also known as the “ya-ya”) see my June 12, 2002, note The Ya-Ya Monologues.
A somewhat less lurid use of the mandorla in religious art — the emblem of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, taken from the website of St. Michael’s Church in Charleston — is shown below.
