Log24

"Truth and clarity remained his paramount goals…"

— Benedict Nightingale in today's online New York TImes  on an
English theatre director, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
who reportedly died yesterday at 86.

See also Paramount in this  journal.

A sentence from the New York Times Wire  discussed in the previous post —

"Through characters like Wolverine and Swamp Thing,
he helped bring a new depth to his art form."

For Wolverine and Swamp Thing in posts related to a different
art form — geometry — see …

• Sunday School (July 6, 2014) and 
• Like Decorations in a Cartoon Graveyard (March 25, 2017).

From a search in this journal for Seagram + Tradition —

Related art:  Saturday afternoon's Twin Pillars of Symmetry.

The phrase "twin pillars" in a New York Times  Fashion & Style
article today suggests a look at another pair of pillars —

This pair, from the realm of memory, history, and geometry disparaged
by the late painter Mark Rothko, might be viewed by Rothko
as  "parodies of ideas (which are ghosts)." (See the previous post.)

For a relationship between a 3-dimensional simplex and the {4, 3, 3},
see my note from May 21, 2014, on the tetrahedron and the tesseract.

See also Robert M. Pirsig in this journal on Dec. 26, 2012.

In memory of an American artist whose work resembles that of
the Soviet constructivist Karl Ioganson (c. 1890-1929).

The American artist reportedly died on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016.

The word "constructivism" also refers to a philosophy of mathematics.
See a Log24 post, "Constructivist Witness,"  of 1 AM ET on the above
date of death.

(Continued)

Code Blue

Update of 7:04 PM ET —

The source of the 404 message in the browsing history above
was the footnote below:

See also, from the above publication date, Hudson's Inscape.
The inscape is illustrated in posts now tagged Laughing Academy.

The title refers to a philosophy of mathematics.

For those who prefer metaphor… Folk Etymology.

See also Stages of Math at Princeton's  
Institute for Advanced Study in March 2013 —

— and in this journal starting in August 2014.

Click image to enlarge.

See also the large  Desargues configuration in this journal.

These are Rothko's Swamps .

See a Log24 search for related meditations.

For all three topics combined, see Coxeter —

" There is a pleasantly discursive treatment 
of Pontius Pilate’s unanswered question
‘What is truth?’ "

— Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau’s
     The Non-Euclidean Revolution

Update of 10 AM ET —  Related material, with an elementary example:

Posts tagged "Defining Form." The example —

John Updike on Don DeLillo's thirteenth novel, Cosmopolis —

" DeLillo’s post-Christian search for 'an order at some deep level'
has brought him to global computerization:
'the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative . . . . ' "

— The New Yorker , issue dated March 31, 2003

On that date ….

Related remark —

" There is a pleasantly discursive treatment 
of Pontius Pilate’s unanswered question
‘What is truth?’ "

— Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau’s
     The Non-Euclidean Revolution

"David Rockefeller plans to sell
a seminal painting by Mark Rothko
for what Sotheby's hopes will be
more than $40 million. Above,
a detail from the painting."

From the story:

"Mr. Rockefeller has owned the
painting since 1960, when he
bought it for less than $10,000….
He said that in November, during a
periodic appraisal of his art collection,
he noticed to his surprise that of all
his paintings, the Rothko had
appreciated in value the most.
'That got me thinking,' he said."

Art appreciation:

For Fred Sandback:
Time's a Round

The following entry of Feb. 25, 2003, was written for painter Mark Rothko, and may serve as well for minimalist artist Fred Sandback, also connected to the de Menil family of art patrons, who, like Rothko, has killed himself.

The following is from the cover of
"Finnegans Wake: a Symposium,"

a reprint of

Our Exagmination Round His Factification
for Incamination of Work in Progress,

Paris, Shakespeare and Company, 1929.

As well as being a memorial to Rothko and Sandback, the above picture may serve to mark the diamond anniversary of a dinner party at Shakespeare and Company on this date in 1928.  (See previous entry.)

A quotation from aaparis.org also seems relevant on this, the date usually given for the death of author Malcolm Lowry, in some of whose footsteps I have walked:

"We are not saints." 

— Chapter V, Alcoholics Anonymous

For Mark Rothko

Plagued in life by depression — what Styron, quoting Milton, called "darkness visible" — Rothko took his own life on this date in 1970.  As a sequel to the previous note, "Song of Not-Self," here are the more cheerful thoughts of the song "Time's a Round," the first of Shiva Dancing: The Rothko Chapel Songs, by C. K. Latham.  See also my comment on the previous entry (7:59 PM).

Time’s a round, time’s a round,
A circle, you see, a circle to be.

— C. K. Latham

10/23/02

Song of Not-Self

A critic on the abstract expressionists:

"…they painted that reality — that song of self — with a passion, bravura, and decisiveness unequaled in modern art."

Painter Mark Rothko:

"I don't express myself in painting. 
 I express my not-self."

On this day in 1957, Buddy Holly and his group recorded the hit version of "That'll Be the Day."

On this day in 1970, painter Mark Rothko committed suicide in his New York City studio.

On February 27, 1971, the Rothko Chapel was formally dedicated in Houston, Texas.

On May 26, 1971, Don McLean recorded "American Pie."

Rothko was apparently an alcoholic; whether he spent his last day enacting McLean's lyrics I do not know.

Rothko is said to have written that

"The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give (among others) memory, history or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood."

— Mark Rothko, The Tiger's Eye, 1, no. 9 (October 1949), p. 114

Whether Holly's concept "the day that I die" is a mere parody of an idea or "an idea in itself," the reader may judge.  The reader may also judge the wisdom of building a chapel to illustrate the clarity of thought processes such as Rothko's in 1949.  I personally feel that someone who can call geometry a "swamp" may not be the best guide to religious meditation.

For another view, see this essay by Erik Anderson Reece.