The Poetry of Sight

Les Coleman | More of Les

2012-01-19T16:25:00.000-06:00

Les Coleman © Trispectacles (1995). Photo by Nancy Fouts.

More from British artist Les Coleman—

Ventriloquists drink gottled geer.

There is no future in being a clairvoyant.

You can be sure that if it's in small print, it should be in large print.

The dice had never learned how to count beyond six.

Terror struck at the very heart of his epiglottis.

The smell was blinding.

Please refrain from prohibiting.

Seaside holidays should be seen as a last resort.

Audience tells stand up comedian to sit down.

The autobiography of a ghost writer.

They sawed the magician's coffin in half before lowering it into the ground.

Reading his own obituary caused him to have a heart attack.

He had all the symptoms of hypochondria.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith use a false name when signing the hotel register.

Copyright © by Les Coleman. Used by permission.

Mary Snyder Behrens | American Canvas

2012-01-16T12:33:00.001-06:00

Above (top to bottom) © Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas II, III and IV (2002). Mixed media on board. Each measures 48h x 30w x 4d inches.

THIS SERIES, called American Canvas, began in 2002. It is a sequence of canvas-less "paintings" that are comprised of discarded maps, law book and hymnal pages, stuck to dried latex house paint. These form the ground on which painting and pencil and other various markings are applied… >>more

Cubist Food

2012-01-05T16:44:00.000-06:00

A cartoon by Frank King (April 1913), making fun of cubist art.

James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibition catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students' works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogenous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

...

Joshua Fineberg in Classical Music: Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ear. London: Routledge, 2006—

Most art is crap. This may be a shocking idea to many people. We think of art as the great masterworks we know, and it's very easy to forget the mountains of mediocrity that were sifted to lift Bach or Dante or Emily Dickinson to their Olympian heights.

...

Alan Fletcher in The Art of Looking Sideways. Phaidon Press, 2001—

I made my weekly telephone call to my mother. "What have you been up to this week?" she asked—as usual. "Nothing much," I responded—as usual. Then adventurously said, "I've been putting a book together." "Oh, what's it about," she queried—with vague interest. My mother wasn't into reading, she equated it with working. "Well," I improvised, "it's about seeing." "Oh, I see"—she said. Then changed the subject. "Are you looking forward to going on holiday next week?"

Identical Twin Cities

2012-01-03T08:39:00.000-06:00

John Page, Together Now (2011). Collage on canvas, 34 x 40 in.

Trevor Fishlock, in Americans and Nothing Else. Cassell (1980)—

Minneapolis and St Paul..are nicknamed the Twin Cities. They are divided by the Mississippi River, and united by the belief that the inhabitants on the other side of the river are inferior.

...

Harrison Salisbury, in Chester G. Anderson, ed., Growing Up in Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976—

Once [after he moved to New York], on top of the Woolworth Building (the Empire State Building did not yet exist), a man asked my mother what it was that lay beyond the Hudson. She said New Jersey. "Oh, yes," he said. "Well, I've never been west of the Hudson." How to explain Minnesota—not only west of the Hudson but west of the Mississippi? It was not easy. New Yorkers didn't seem to understand the difference between Minneapolis and Indianapolis. And even when I explained they didn't seem to think it really made a difference. I knew that New Yorkers were very sophisticated people. In fact, I was ashamed of coming from a place out west where, as I understood the New York view, no one really lived and certainly no one from New York ever ventured.

...

Art Buchwald, More Caviar. New York: Harper, 1959—

Brno is a vry nce cty, but we ddn't get a chance to spnd mch tme thre... Thre are mny twns in Czechoslovakia wthout vwels, but Brno is the lrgest one of thm all.

David Meyer | On Ernie Summers

2012-01-02T12:29:00.000-06:00

Coles Phillips, Know All Men by These Presents (c1910). Library of Congress.

The following passages are from David Meyer's memoir of his friend Ernest Summers, in Ernie and Me (c2003)—

His antics in restaurants were always entertaining. "As Shakespeare once said, 'What foods these morsels be!'" was his usual comment when a meal was served... He would scoop up unused silverware into his coat sleeves and let it spill out again as he was paying for the meal. He was never rude to waiters, but he often confounded them. He kept a stack of freshly minted one-dollar bills glued together at one end so they appeared to be a pad of paper. As Ernie tore off singles to pay a bill, the expressions on the faces of the wait staff or cashiers were wonderful to watch. Decades before the advent of portable cell phones, he carried a phone receiver with a cord attached to the inside of his suit coat. A ringing device was in his pocket. We would be in a restaurant and as the waitress was taking the order, Ernie would have the phone "ring." He'd reach into his coat, pull out the receiver and put it to his ear. After saying "Hello" and "Hold on," he would hand it to the waitress and say, "It's for you." No one I saw who was given that fake phone ever hesitated saying "Hello" into its receiver.

...

On our first introduction he asked me how old I was.

"Seven," I think I told him.

"D'you know how old I was when I was your age?" he asked.

"No."

"I was eight."

It wasn't only waiters Ernie confounded; children were included.

"If S-O-U-P spells 'soup,'" he'd say, "What does G-O-U-P spell?"

"Goop?"

"No... 'Go up,'" he'd reply.

He'd also show how he had eleven fingers. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six," he's say, counting backwards, "and five on this hand makes eleven."

Early on he gave me a piece of advice which I have never forgotten:

He who takes what isn't his'n,

Pays a fine or goes to prison.

I've Got A Room in Chicago

2012-01-02T09:16:00.003-06:00

Canadian Pacific Railway (1940s)

Anon: I've got a room in Chicago, and she's got a flat behind.

Francois Rabelais: Nature abhors a vacuum.

Tennessee Williams: A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Charles Bragg: Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Anon: Hey. Pop! Vot is a vacuum?

—A vacuum is a void.

—I know it's a void, but vat does dat void mean?

Anon: Sorry about my dancing. I'm a little stiff from badminton.

—I don't care where you're from. You'll never dance with me again.

Henry Moore: [Before getting married] I had argued with all my friends that really artists shouldn't get married, they should be married to their art. After all Michelangelo wasn't married, Beethoven wasn't married and so on, all the examples of really good artists who weren't married; but after meeting Irina [his future wife], I began to say Rembrandt was married, Bach had twenty children and so on. All this attitude changed, and within six months we were married.

Finnegans Wake | James Joyce

2011-12-29T15:29:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Combat Fatigue. Digital montage (2004).

When I initially made this digital montage—in a form that alludes to a book spread—it had nothing to do with the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (1882-1941), at least not directly. In fact, the obscured image on the right is reworked from a photograph (in the Library of Congress) of an equally admired writer and Joyce's contemporary, the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). But it had everything to do with writing and designing. Years earlier, when I was in an architecture class in graduate school (the only one I've taken), I began to think about Venn diagrams in relation to figure-ground patterns, and then, by extension, to architectural building plans. In part I was led to this by the writings of Christopher Alexander. It seemed to me then that one can make purposeful "category confusions" (puns, rhymes, parodies, allusions and so on) in architectural building plans as easily as one can with words. I was "reading" Finnegans Wake at the time, so to some extent this came to me because of their concurrence.

Not to pretend to explain Joyce's comic novel, its two central characters are HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) and ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle). Beyond that, you can find a detailed and reasonably good summary at the Wikipedia article on the book. For the moment, I would simply like to share a few examples of the astonishing word play that Joyce employs throughout the book.

He frequently offers sentences that say one thing and yet, by the way they are written, they echo (or parody) other famous passages, especially religious texts. Listen to these two examples:

"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singitime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!"

"Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allaluvial! Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger."

The complexity of the patterns he makes is beyond belief. Here's a particularly interesting part in which he poses a question, then follows with an answer:

"8. And how war yore maggies?

Answer: They war loving, they love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking, as born for lorn in lore of love to live and wive by wile and rile by rule of ruse 'reathed rose and hose hol'd home, yeth cometh elope year, coach and four, Sweet Peck-at-my-Heart picks one man more."

Finally, I don't know how many people realize that, throughout this astonishing book, Joyce has embedded word sequences—words that begin with h, c and e—to allude of course to HCE (the protagonist). There are tons of them, but here a few:

"Howth Castle and Environs. he calmly extensolies. Hic cubat edilus. How Copenhagen ended. happinest childher everwere. Hush! Caution! Echoland! How charmingly exquisite! human, erring and condonable. heptagon crystal emprisoms. Heave, coves, emptybloddy! Hengler's Circus Entertainment. Heinz cans everywhere."

Priestly Curators

2011-12-25T09:19:00.001-06:00

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas Series, mixed media, 4" w x 5.5" h

British artist-writer Patrick Hughes, from the essay "A Bit of Artobiography," in the catalog of his recent exhibition at Flowers Galleries in London, titled Patrick Hughes: Fifty Years in Show Business 1961-2011—

"The museum of art has replaced the church for popular devotion, and so the curator is the new priest. The priestly curator's job is to introduce new mysteries and moralities to the impressionable public, backed up by spectacle and verbiage.

My art has always appealed directly to the people, calling out over the heads of the priests straight to the congregation, doing the vicars and bishops of official art out of a job. I am an unbeliever. I do not speak in tongues. Thus officialdom ignores me. I like to think that art is a lingua franca which can be understood by all the inhabitants of the planet. The idea of Korean art or New Zealand art or Polish art or Nicaraguan art or Californian art or Kenyan art is anathema to me. Writers may be stuck in their languages, but we artists can be seen and understood by all."

Les Coleman | Just Thunking

2011-12-12T09:31:00.000-06:00

Whatever can be said about British artist and writer Les Coleman (whose work we have followed for decades), he is not thoughtless.

He thunks, he unthunks—and now in his latest book, he's been having afterthunks. It's called (appropriately) Afterthunks (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Boekie Woekie, 2011. ISBN 978-90-78191-25-4). Above is a scan of the cover, as beautifully designed as are the interior pages by Colin Sackett. Some of Coleman's other books are available here at the same publisher's website (scroll down the page to find his name). Like many of his earlier publications, this is a book of his puzzling aphorisms (his thunks), ever so wonderfully interspersed with his equally "doubletake" drawings (one of which is shown below). As for the verbal thunks themselves, here are some teasing samples of those:

A triple-edged sword.

What is it about rag that makes a bull see red?

Houdini spent his life escaping from himself.

Terrified of shooting himself in the foot, he had both feet amputated.

"How the Electric Chair Saved Me From the Firing Squad"

As I have myself have always said, Les is more.

Sirloin Steak and Whiskey

2011-11-26T15:58:00.001-06:00

Mary Snyder Behrens, Trammel: White Wish III (2005) ©

From James Webb Young, The Diary of an Ad Man: The War Years, June 1, 1942-December 31, 1943 (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1944)—

"Talked with domestic science editor of one of the women's magazines. She told me that she had tested literally thousands of recipes, covering almost every kind of food. Asked her what, after all this, she considered the best eating. She thought it was pretty hard to beat a good sirloin steak, washed down with straight whiskey. Western gal."

Wright's City National Bank & Park Inn

2011-10-31T16:26:00.002-05:00

Frank Lloyd Wright, City National Bank (restored)

Park Inn (restored)

RECENTLY WE were delighted to see the restored exteriors of the City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel, two adjacent buildings in downtown Mason City, Iowa. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, and completed in 1910, these are famous, influential works that are said to have influenced young European architects of that era, and to have contributed to Wright's own subsequent designs for the Midway Gardens and the Imperial Hotel. The interiors have also been fully restored, and the hotel is once again accepting room reservations. For detailed information, click here.

Packin' Cats for the Army | Geraldine Schwarz

2011-10-30T14:23:00.000-05:00

US aviator John B. Moisant and his cat (1910)

PICTURED ABOVE are American pioneer aviator John B. Moisant (1868-1910) and his tabby cat companion (who often flew with him), variously known as Mademoiselle Fifi, Paree or Spark Plug. Moisant died in a fatal crash in 1910, but the cat lived on and, in the bottom photo, is dressed in appropriate mourning attire and poised in a basket at his funeral.

This reminds me of a new book by Iowa author Geraldine Schwarz, titled Packin' Cats for the Arrr-mee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, a delightfully rich and vivid memoir about growing up with her brother (John Robert Fromm) on a farm near Mason City, Iowa, during World War II. Here's how it opens—

We werevery-very good to our cats—always thinking what we could do to makethem more comfortable, to make them happy, to keep them entertained. On coldwinter mornings, we liked to have "cat warmings" because we knew the catswould be warmer if they curled up together. We got them all in the woodhouseand made a good spot in the corncobs where they could all sleep. But theydidn't stay together very well. The tomcats fought with each other, and most ofthe others had better things to do. So we tried stufﬁng them in a cardboardbox and folding the lid closed.

Our workalways had to be accompanied with a slogan or a song, so pretty soon we were singing, "We're PACK-in' cats for the ARRR-mee." The cats didn't have the same commitment to the war effort as we did—they were not as patriotic. Afterthey had been crammed in the box and escaped a couple times, they really didn'twant to stay there no matter how cozy it was. It was kind of hard to catch themagain. If they got over the wall between the wood-and-cob part to the coal bin, wegave up on them and settled for any cats we could push in and closed the lid.Then one skinny head would come poking through the little opening and we'd have to start "PACK-in'cats for the ARRR-mee" all over again!

It's a wonderful book, replete with snapshots ("you-are-there") and scans of actual remnants from her childhood (including, for example, an account ledger of all the cats on the property), Schwarz's narrative is so fluid and so disarmingly conversational that, once you begin reading, it's hard to take a break—for fear of possibly missing out.

Here is the author's synopsis, as quoted from the dust jacket—

Packin' cats was never easy. They didn't like to be pushed into boxes even if it was for their own good. But if it had been easy, it wouldn't have been fun. It would have been "play," and that was what city kids did. We always thought of everything we did around the farm as "work." We liked to be useful, to be helpful…especially to cats and all our other livestock.

We had a great life on the farm—and that's not from the perspective of a grown-up looking back on a distant childhood. We knew it was great even while we were kids. And we were never bored—we found hundreds of ways to have fun.

Our folks loved the farm, so we did, too. The farm belonged to us and we belonged to it. We depended on each other and took care of each other. It was sometimes tough, but it was such a good life.

Jacquie Colvin, jacket and book design

Here are the bibliographic details: Packin' Cats for the Arrr-meee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, by Deanie and Johnnie, also known as Geraldine Fromm Schwarz and John Robert Fromm. Book design by Jacquie Colvin. Decorah IA: South Bear Press, 2011. 167 pp. 52 black and white photos. 29 color photos. Clothbound. First edition $25.00. ISBN 978-0-9761381-9-8. Library of Congress Control Number 2011909978. Available from South Bear Press, 2248 South Bear Road, Decorah IA 52101. Website www.southbearpress.org.

Ventriloquism for Dummies

2011-10-15T12:52:00.001-05:00

Howdy Doody Patent No 156,687 (1950)

In the late 18th century, a British entertainer named James Burns, known as "Shelford Tommy," persuaded a freight carrier to empty his wagon in order to search for a child whose cries for help seemed to be coming from inside the load he was hauling.

During the same period, when a York shoemaker was accused by fifty witnesses of having tossed a crying baby into the river, he defined himself in court by producing a second crying baby, which he then shockingly beheaded—but which, upon closer inspection, was shown to be only an inanimate doll.

Both Burns and the shoemaker were experts at ventriloquism, the act of making it seem that a voice or other sound has emanated not from ones own larynx, but from some other adjacent entity. A person who does this professionally is called a ventriloquist or "belly speaker," a coinage that comes from the merger of two Latin words, venter (belly) and loqui (to speak). More

John Page | American Artist

2011-10-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

Artworks © John Page

For more than thirty years, printmaker and painter John Page (1923-) was on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa. He retired in 1988, and he and his wife Mary Lou moved to a retirement community in Arizona. Above are two of my favorite works from the hundreds he produced over a long (and on-going) artistic career. As a graphic designer, I am inevitably drawn to images not so much for the story they tell—but because they tell it well. The top image is a monoprint of a reclining nude, completed by John in 1980. I find it breathtaking when an artwork teeters on the line between structural perfection and gestural spontaneity; surely, this print does just that. The lower image is one of twenty small colored etchings (called the River Series) that John made in the summer of 1966. They are based on on-site drawings of seemingly insignificant scenes along the Cedar River, in the vicinity of Cedar Falls, Iowa (where the university is located). Again, while I surely relate to the story that's told, I am even more deeply astonished by the rhythmic perfection ("the exact words in the right order") that makes it an even more beautiful poem. In recent years, still living in the Southwest, John has turned to small, abstract watercolors, and, at the moment (October thru December 2011), some of these are being shown at the Posada Java in Green Valley AZ.

Cynical Girl

2011-09-10T20:27:00.000-05:00

Roy R. Behrens, logo for an online business shop called Cynical Girl (2011).

Apple Charlotte Logo

2011-09-10T20:18:00.000-05:00

Roy R. Behrens, logo for a vintage online shop

Theatre Poster

2011-09-09T16:56:00.001-05:00

Kultur Vultur

2011-08-28T10:12:00.002-05:00

Remains of our barn and a vulture on July 11, 2011

This is what our barn looked like on the morning of July 11, as we walked out to take stock of the damage from a huge derecho windstorm that came through without warning at 4:30 in the morning. There was no tornado siren since, of course, it's not a tornado, just a massive straight wind, this one peaking at a speed of 130 mph. Preoccupied with cleaning up, there's not much time for blogging now. That morning, as we stumbled out in disbelief, a vulture landed on the barn, perhaps an indication that we weren't moving fast enough. I am reminded of Gertrude Stein's remark about Oakland CA: That "when you get there, there is no there there." So it is with our farm. Equally suitable may be Bobby Dylan's line: "I ain't workin' on Mary's farm no more" (simply because it no longer exists).

Costumes as Performance & Activism

2011-06-10T10:08:00.001-05:00

Roy R. Behrens, Poster Design (detail), 2011

There is such enormous satisfaction in the process of graphic design, especially when a client is clear about the focus of an event (or product or whatever), budget restrictions, and so on—and thereafter it's left to my judgment. A good example recently is this logo-like title image I made for an upcoming symposium (lectures, exhibits, performances) on Costumes as Performance and Activism, sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa Arts Consortium and the Costume Society of America Midwest Region, on October 14-15, 2011. And of course it's the same kind of pleasure that designers of costumes and clothing enjoy.

Walter Hamady | The Gabberjabbs

2011-04-29T07:34:00.002-05:00

Years ago, a friend of Walter Hamady said (as Hamady himself recalls), "right in front of my mother, 'Walter, you are a bastard!' And my dear sweet mother pulled up bigger than life-size and with huffy indignation said, 'He is not a bastard! I know who his father was and we were married at the time!" more>>

More Than A Few Least Favorite Things

2011-04-09T17:22:00.001-05:00

The likes and many dislikes of Inez McAlister Faber in Out Here on Soap Creek (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982), pp. 23-24—

Probably many people wiser than I dislike some of the things I like, such as hoeing, canning, cleaning house, cutting corn fodder, living in the country, being in my thirties, dahlias, roses, meals on time, empty houses with ﬂowers still growing in the yards, old furniture, small boys, books, newspaper editorials, astronomy, chickens, dogs, cows, horses, meat or gravy cooked in a cast-iron skillet, wafﬂes, carrots and spinach. It is quite likely that others, and I have no quarrel with them, like many of the things I hate, including petunias, cats, children who have been taught that they are cute, grown-ups who try to act kiddish, male or female sissies, superiority complexes, machine hemstitching, tablecloths hemmed on the machine, cows with horns, weedy gardens, dwelling houses painted green, rain on washday, so-called living rooms that are only used for company, and overstuffed davenports. Large women in striped or checked dresses, bad table manners, being ﬂatly contradicted, people who handle books roughly or who lay an open book face down upon a table, people who read over my shoulder, inquisitiveness, concrete walks in front of farm homes, fried parsnips, mashed potatoes, interruptions while ironing, washing milk pails, cleaning muddy overshoes, cooking for visitors who do not come, going to bed, getting up, washing yesterdays dishes, and talking over the telephone.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Damaged Wings

2011-04-09T13:40:00.001-05:00

Death's Head Moth

Ernest Hemingway describes F. Scott Fitzgerald as follows in A Moveable Feast (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964)—

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterﬂy's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterﬂy did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not ﬂy anymore because the love of ﬂight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Not Truss Worthy | Edward Marsh

2011-04-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

Edward Marsh, Ambrosia and Small Beer (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), p. 220—

A soldier up for medical exam proved to have been wearing a truss for the last 6 years, and was classiﬁed as P.E. or Permanently Exempt. On his way out he gave this news to his pal, who immediately asked for the loan of the truss, which was granted. The examiner asked how long he had been wearing it, and he said, "Six years," whereupon he was classiﬁed as M.E. "What's that?" he asked. "Middle East." "How can I go to the Middle East when I've been wearing a truss for 6 years?" "If you can wear a truss for 6 years upside-down, you can jolly well ride a camel for 6 months."

Get To Work | Richard Hugo

2011-04-07T17:28:00.000-05:00

Fine advice from poet Richard Hugo in The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979)—

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will ﬁnd that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the ﬁrst poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

Eddie Marsh Meets H.M. Stanley

2011-04-07T17:18:00.000-05:00

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1872), with Kalulu, his adopted son

A couple of times in my life, when I first met in person someone who I had been wanting to meet for years, I became suddenly, atypically tongue-tied. As Edward Marsh describes in his memoir A Number of People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1939), he had the same experience when he first met the famous journalist and explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley (as in "Doctor Livingston, I presume") at a party (p. 41)—

At a party of old Mrs. Tennant's he [Stanley] crossed the room to where I was standing forlorn, and said: "I see you're looking neglected, so I've come to talk to you." This well-meant gambit completely froze the genial current of my soul, and neither of us could think of anything further to say.

Implicitness, Closure and Flow | Csikszentmihalyi

2011-04-03T08:10:00.002-05:00

Diagram © Roy R. Behrens (2011)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NY: Harper and Row, 1990, p. 53—

Whenever I took our hunting dog, Hussar, for a walk in the open ﬁelds he liked to play a very simple game—the prototype of the most culturally widespread game of human children, escape and pursuit. He would run circles around me at top speed, with his tongue hanging out and his eyes warily watching every move I made, daring me to catch him. Occasionally I would take a lunge, and if I was lucky I got to touch him. Now the interesting part is that whenever I was tired, and moved half-heartedly, Hussar would run much tighter circles, making it relatively easy for me to catch him; on the other hand, if I was in good shape and willing to extend myself, he would enlarge the diameter of his circle. In this way, the difﬁculty of the game was kept contant. With an uncanny sense for the ﬁne balancings of challenges and skills, he would make sure that the game would yield the maximum enjoyment for us both.

[Compare Arthur Koestler's contention (in The Act of Creation) that the value of cryptic communication "is not to obscure the message, but to make it more luminous by compelling the recipient to work it out for himself—to re-create it."]

Here's the Butter—But Where's the Cat?

2011-04-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

Frances Simpson, Book of the Cat (1903)

Victor Frankl, "Reduction and Nihilism" in Arthur Koestler and J.R. Smythies, eds., Beyond Reductionism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 403—

There were two neighbors; one of them contended that the other's cat had stolen and eaten ﬁve pounds of his butter; there was a bitter argument and ﬁnally they agreed to seek the advice of the rabbi. They went to the rabbi and the owner of the cat said: "It cannot be, my cat doesn't care for butter at all" but the other insisted that it was his cat and the rabbi said: "Bring me the scales." And they brought the scales and he asked: "How many pounds of butter?" "Five pounds." And believe it or not, the weight of the cat was exactly ﬁve pounds. So the rabbi said: "Now I have the butter, but where is the cat?"

Grasshopper Lecture | Louis Agassiz

2011-04-02T10:46:00.001-05:00

Louis Agassiz statue at Stanford University, as toppled by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906

Louis Agassiz, in Lane Cooper, ed., Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illustrative Extracts on His Method of Instruction. Ithaca NY: Comstock Publishing, 1945, p. 82—

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

Humphrey Howarth's Naked Duel

2011-04-02T10:20:00.000-05:00

British poet Samuel Rogers, in Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856)—

[In 1806] Humphrey Howarth, the [Army] surgeon [and Member of Parliament], was called out [challenged to a pistol duel], and made his appearance in the ﬁeld stark naked, to the astonishment of the challenger, who asked him what he meant. "I know," said H., "that if any part of the clothing is carried into the body by a gunshot wound, festering ensues; and therefore I have met you thus." His antagonist declared that, ﬁghting with a man in puris naturalibus would be quite ridiculous; and accordingly they parted without further discussion.

Drunk by God!

2011-04-02T10:03:00.001-05:00

British poet Samuel Rogers, in Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (1856)—

Dr. [George] Fordyce [a prominent Scottish physician] sometimes drank a good deal at dinner. He was summoned one evening to see a lady patient, when he was more than half-seas-over, and conscious that he was so. Feeling her pulse, and ﬁnding himself unable to count its beats, he muttered, "Drunk by God!"

Next morning, recollecting the circumstance, he was greatly vexed: and just as he was thinking what explanation of his behavior he should offer to the lady, a letter from her was put into his hand. "She too well knew," said the letter, "that he had discovered the unfortunate condition in which she was when he last visited her; and she entreated him to keep the matter secret in consideration of the enclosed (a hundred-pound banknote)."

Mad Magazine in Collision

2011-04-02T09:50:00.000-05:00

Frank Jacobs in The Mad World of William M. Gaines. New York: Bantam Books, 1973, p. 77—

In the fall of 1954, [William M.] Gaines [founder and publisher of MAD magazine] and Nancy [a close friend and staff member] were turning into a gas station on West 96th Street in Manhattan. As they made their turn, a car came down the street and barreled into them. No one was hurt, and Gaines exchanged the usual insurance data with the driver of the other car, whose name was Gene Zahn. About a year later, two blocks from the gas station, Gaines pulled up to a newspaper stand. After buying his paper, he returned to his car, backed out a few feet, and was struck by a car rounding the corner. No one was hurt, and Gaines exchanged the usual insurance data with the driver of the other car, whose name was Gene Zahn.

"Didn't we have an accident a year ago?" Gaines asked.

"I believe we did," answered Zahn, giving a polite nod to Nancy, whom he remembered from the previous run-in. "Say, don't you think it's time you two got married?"

Gaines thought if over and decided that the point was well-taken. Within a month, he and Nancy were married.

Growing Up on a Farm | Herbert Read

2011-03-29T09:20:00.000-05:00

From the autobiography of British art theorist Sir Herbert Read, The Contrary Experience. New York: Horizon Press, 1963, pp. 22-23—

But the scenes [of growing up on a farm] that I have described, and many others of the same nature, such as the searing of horses' tails, the killing of poultry, the birth of cattle, even the lewdness of a half-witted laborer, were witnessed by us children with complete passivity—just as I have seen children of the same age watching a bullﬁght in Spain quite unmoved by its horrors. Pity, and even terror are emotions which develop when we are no longer innocent, and the sentimental adult who induces such emotions in the child is probably breaking through defenses which nature has wisely put round the tender mind. The child even has a natural craving for horrors. He survives just because he is without sentiment, for only in this way can his green heart harden sufﬁciently to withstand the wounds that wait for it.

Water Over the Dame

2011-03-29T09:09:00.000-05:00

Anon, The Olio [1796] as quoted in Louis Kronenberger, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. New York: Viking, 1972, p. 238—

One day Lady Onslow, being desirious of knowing the most remarkable planets and constellations, requested Mr. Harvest, on a ﬁne starlight night, to point them out to her, which he undertook to do; but in the midst of his lecture, having occasion to make water, thought that need not interrupt it, and accordingly directing that operation with one hand, went on in his explanation, pointing out the constellations with the other.

Cutting Meat with Scissors | Context

2011-03-29T08:55:00.000-05:00

German satirist G.C. Lichtenberg, as quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World (New York: Viking Press, 1970), pp. 136-137—

How much depends upon the way things are presented in this world can be seen from the very fact that coffee drunk out of wine glasses is really miserable stuff, as is meat cut at the table with a pair of scissors. Worst of all, as I once actually saw, is butter spread on a piece of bread with an old but very clean razor.

Inattentional Blindness | Thoreau

2011-03-29T08:37:00.000-05:00

From Henry Petroski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. New York: Knopf, 1989, pp. 3-4—

Henry David Thoreau seemed to think of everything when he made a list of essential supplies for a twelve-day excursion into the Maine woods. He included pins, needles, and thread among the items to be carried in an India-rubber knapsack, and he even gave the dimensions of an ample tent: "six by seven feet, and four feet high in the middle, will do." He wanted to be doubly sure to be able to start a ﬁre and to wash up, and so he listed: "matches (some also in a small vial in the waist-coat pocket); soap, two pieces." He speciﬁed the number of old newspapers (three or four, presumably to be used for cleaning chores), the length of strong cord (twenty feet), the size of his blanket (seven feet long), and the amount of "soft hardbread" (twenty-eight pounds!)…

But there is one object that Thoreau neglected to mention, one that he most certainly carried himself. For without this object Thoreau could not have sketched either the ﬂeeting fauna he would not shoot or the larger ﬂora he could not uproot. Without it he could not label his blotting paper pressing leaves or his insect boxes holding beetles; without it he could not record the measurements he made; without it he could not write home on the paper he brought; without it he could not make his list. [He had forgotten to mention the pencil that enabled him to make the list.]

Biblical Printing Errors | Bloopers

2011-03-26T16:52:00.000-05:00

The following is adapted from the article "Bible, specially named editions" in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Third Edition. (New York: Harper and Row, 1987)—

In the so-called Wicked Bible, printed in London by Baker and Lucas in 1632, the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, to make it "Thou shalt commit adultery."

Genesis 24:61, which is supposed to read "Rebecca arose, and her damsels," was mistakenly printed as "Rebecca arose, and her camels" in an edition known as Rebecca's Camels Bible, printed in 1823.

Published in 1702, the Printers' Bible contained an error in Psalms 119:161 in which the word printers was substituted for princes, so that King David was said to complain that "printers have persecuted me without a cause."

In the Murderers' Bible, published in 1801, the word murmurers was misprinted as murderers in Jude 16, resulting in a verse that reads "These are murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts..."

The To Remain Bible refers to a ﬂawed edition, published at Cambridge in 1805, in which Galatians 4:29 was mistakenly printed as "he that was born after the ﬂesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit to remain, even so it is now." The words to remain are erroneous. While checking the galleys, a proofreader questioned if there should be a comma after the word spirit. The editor responded by penciling "to remain" in the margin, which was then mistakenly typeset.

Shotgun Seminars at Princeton

2011-03-26T16:18:00.000-05:00

From Freeman Dyson, Inﬁnite in all Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988)—

At our institute in Princeton we sometimes organize meetings which are announced as Shotgun Seminars. A Shotgun Seminar is a talk given by an Institute member to a volunteer audience. The subject of the talk is announced a week in advance, but the name of the speaker is not. Before the talk begins, the names of all people in the room are written on scraps of paper, the scraps of paper are put into a box, the box is ceremoniously shaken and one name is picked out at random. The name picked out is the name of the speaker. The unbreakable rule of the seminar is that nobody whose name is not in the box may listen to the talk. This rule ensures that everybody does the necessary homework. The audience is ready to argue and contradict whenever the speaker ﬂounders. Anybody who has not given serious thought to the subject of the seminar had better not come.

The Evils of Hell Juice

2011-03-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

From Bruce Siberts, in Walker D. Wyman, ed., Nothing But Prairie and Sky: Life on the Dakota Range in the Early Days (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), pp. 5-6—

Our family were strict Methodists, attended church regular, and none of them ever got drunk, chewed or smoked tobacco, or used bad language. Only Uncle Ed, who bought cattle and hogs for the Chicago market, was different. He chewed tobacco, was suspected of drinking beer once, and had the reputation of seeing a show in Chicago called The Black Crook, in which women wore tights. As Uncle Ed and Mr. Crum, a neighbor, were the only Methodists who used tobacco, except on the sly, it was urged that they be expelled from the church. But in looking over the records, it was learned that they were the best in paying money for the support of the church so they were allowed to remain in good standing. However, the minister preached a good sermon on the evils of tobacco, saying, "There you sit with hell juice running out of your mouths," and on in that line for two hours. Uncle Ed said that the preacher could kiss his foot and go to hell. Only he didn't say foot.

Mail Art | Collage

2011-03-26T14:01:00.000-05:00

Roy R. Behrens © Mail Art Collage (1980)

Back in the pre-computer days in the 1970s and 80s, it was common to complete a letter by making a collage on the envelope, using rubber stamps, labels, transfer type, hand-colored image fragments, or whatever. We mailed the best ones to ourselves, in the hope that the post office workers would contribute to it through multiple cancellations.

Joseph Langland | Something Well Said

2011-03-14T13:01:00.000-05:00

From a Joseph Langland's essay on "Poetry! What in the World are You Saying?"—

One is drawn to poetry not nearly so much because someone thinks he has something important to say as that he thinks he can say something well. And when something is well said, it is more important than the same idea less well said. All those who care for civilization know the truth of this.

William H. Gass | Music of Prose

2011-03-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

This astonishing passage is from "The Music of Prose" in William H. Gass, Finding a Form (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)—

For prose [like music] has a pace; it is dotted with stops and pauses, frequent rests, inflections rise and fall like a low range of hills; certain tones are prolonged; there are patterns of stress and harmonious measures; there is a proper method of pronunciation, even if it is rarely observed; alliteration will trouble the tongue, consonance ease its sound out, so that any mouth making that music will feel its performance even to the back of the teeth and to the glottal's stop; mellifluousness is not impossible, and harshness is easy; drum roll and clangor can be confidently called for—lisp, slur, and growl; so there will be a syllabic beat in imitation of the heart, while rhyme will recall a word we passed perhaps too indifferently; vowels will open and consonants close like blooming plants; repetitive schemes will act as refrains, and there will be phrases—little motifs—to return to, like the tonic; clauses will be balanced by other clauses the way a waiter carries trays; parallel lines will nevertheless meet in their common subject; clots of concepts will dissolve and then recombine, so we shall find endless variations on the same theme; a central idea, along with its many modifications, like soloist and chorus, will take their turns until, suddenly, all sing at once the same sound.

Bless With the Bats | Digital montage

2011-02-13T20:07:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Bless With The Bats (2011). Digital montage.

When The Nazis Came | Poster

2011-02-10T13:55:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © When The Nazis Came (2011). Poster design.

Walter Hamady | Poster

2011-02-06T10:39:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Walter Hamady Exhibition Poster (2004).

Attention to Detail | Digital montage

2011-02-04T10:29:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Attention to Detail (2011). Digital montage. Artist's collection.

Gravestone of designer Roy R. Behrens

2011-02-03T11:33:00.000-06:00

Gravestone of writer / designer Roy R. Behrens. Text by Mary Snyder Behrens.

Man On Wheels | Digital montage

2011-02-02T22:22:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Man on Wheels (2011). Digital montage. Artist's collection.

Dazzle Camouflaged Frog | Digital montage

2011-02-01T10:13:00.001-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Dazzle Camouflaged Frog (2011). Digital montage. Artist's collection.

Air War | Digital montage

2011-01-30T21:01:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Air War (2011). Digital Montage. Artist's collection.

William T. Sherman | Digital montage

2011-01-30T08:51:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © William T. Sherman (2011). Digital montage.

Auto Parts | Digital montage

2011-01-29T15:58:00.001-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Auto Parts (2011). Digital montage. Artist's collection.

Shell | Digital Collage

2011-01-28T09:54:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Shell (2011). Digital collage. Artist's collection.

Artists Who Suffer | Digital montage

2011-01-25T16:03:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Artists Who Suffer (2011). Digital montage.

Ballet of Words | Digital montage

2011-01-25T09:02:00.001-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Ballet of Words (2011). Digital montage.

Paul Gauguin | Digital montage

2011-01-24T16:03:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Many Excellent Cooks (2011). Digital montage.

Angels Can Fly | Digital montage

2011-01-23T17:25:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Angels Can Fly (2011). Wood type collage poster.

William Blake | Digital montage

2011-01-22T17:34:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © William Blake (2011). Digital montage poster.

Oscar Wilde | Digital Montage

2011-01-22T17:29:00.002-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Portrait of Oscar Wilde (2011). Digital montage poster.

Stein, Cook and Le Corbusier

2011-01-16T10:18:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Gertrude Stein, William Edwards Cook, and Le Corbusier (2005).

Combat Fatigue | Digital Montage

2011-01-16T10:06:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © Combat Fatigue. Digital montage (2004). Artist's collection.

Book Designer Merle Armitage | Website

2011-01-13T10:12:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens © American book designer Merle Armitage website

Magazine Cover | Collage

2011-01-13T09:45:00.000-06:00

Book Cover | Collage

2011-01-13T09:40:00.000-06:00

Icarus | Book Collage

2011-01-08T11:11:00.000-06:00

Ukiyo-e Book Collage | ESK

2011-01-08T11:04:00.000-06:00

Portrait of Guy Davenport | Collage

2011-01-07T17:12:00.000-06:00

Graphic Design Exhibition | Poster

2011-01-07T15:08:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens, Poster for Student Exhibition (2011).

Sigmund Freud | Collage Portrait

2011-01-02T13:13:00.000-06:00

Artist Mary Snyder Behrens | Exhibition Catalog

2010-12-31T08:20:00.000-06:00

Holocaust Series | Poster

2010-12-31T08:10:00.000-06:00

Donfé Ca-Choo | Book Collage

2010-12-30T08:12:00.001-06:00

Native Tongue | Digital Montage

2010-12-30T08:03:00.001-06:00

Ukiyo-e Book Collage | ADU

2010-12-30T07:54:00.000-06:00

Rudolf Arnheim Website

2010-12-29T10:47:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens (c2008), website designed in memory of Rudolf Arnheim

Schwarz Exhibition Poster 2007

2010-12-29T10:36:00.000-06:00

Roy R. Behrens (2007), poster for Schwarz pottery exhibition

William James | Collage Portrait

2010-12-25T14:54:00.000-06:00

Mon Dieu | Book Collage

2010-12-25T14:40:00.001-06:00


Roy R. Behrens, Mon Dieu (1993)©. Book collage, 6.5 x 9 in. Walter Hamady Collection.

Henny Youngman in Alaska

2010-11-25T08:14:00.000-06:00

Here's an old Henny Youngman joke—

A priest is assigned to Alaska. A year later, the bishop goes up to visit him. The bishop asks, "So how do you like it up here?" The priest answers, "I tell you, if it wasn't for my Rosary, and two martinis a day, I'd be in pretty sad shape. Speaking of which, would you yourself like a martini, Father?" "Ah, but of course," the bishop replies. And the priest yells out to the kitchen, "Rosary, bring the bishop a martini!"

Making Books

2010-11-25T08:02:00.001-06:00

From Ned Rorem, Lies: A Diary (Cambridge MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), p. 29—

Nice anecdote about Peter Benchley and the not-too-bright brother of Mr. Glidden who sometimes sits behind the cash register at the Glidden's Fish Store.

The brother: "Hear you make books."

Peter B: "Well, I write the words. Other people set the type, bind the pages, design the cover."

Glidden's brother (losing interest): "Oh, you have help."

Ruari McLean's Landlady

2010-11-22T11:00:00.000-06:00

Here is a wonderful story by British typographer Ruari McLean from his "typographical autobiography" True to Type (New Castle DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000)—

When I got back to Bradford [England, after visiting the austere Modernist apartment of typographer Jan Tschichold] from Basel, I found that the room I rented from Mrs. Buchsieb contained too many ornaments. I began counting them, and found that the room itself contained one hundred and thirty-six objets d'art and eighty-nine pictures, prints, calendars, plates, mirrors, and texts on the walls. I decided I could stand it no longer. I placed all the vases in queue on the piano beside the door as a sign for their removal, and put a lot of other stuff out of sight, leaving the mantel shelf quite bare. I stood back to admire the effect, thought enviously of Tschichold's room in Basel, left a box of my own matches looking rather like a night watchman's hut on a slum clearance site, and went out to post a letter and have a drink.

When I returned, the room was exactly as it had been before my ministrations, except that Mrs. Buchsieb was standing in the middle of it looking like a dive-bomber about to strike.

Henry Moore on Shut-Eye Golf

2010-11-22T10:38:00.001-06:00

Eric Ravilious, May. Woodcut, 1925. Public domain image.

British sculptor Henry Moore, in a conversation about his friend Ben Nicholson (who was very good at shut-eye golf) in Maurice de Sausmarez, ed., Ben Nicholson: A Studio International Special (London: Studio International, 1969), p. 24—

Ah yes, shut-eye golf. That was introduced and I think invented by [British artist] Eric Ravilious. On this large sheet of paper you drew an imaginary golf course with a variety of obstacles—e.g., a dog, a tree, a cow, a bandstand, a duck pond and so on—and then you'd put a few extra bunkers in; it was a golf course in plan. Then you put the point of pencil in hole 1, had a good look at the course and where hole 2 was, and what obstacles lay between, then you had to close your eyes and attempt to draw a line to hole 2, without the line touching any drawn obstacle. Sometimes you did it in one, but more often at ones first shot ones line touched a tree, or bunker, or ended up far away from the hole—one had to play a second, a third and so on until the pencil rested plumb in the hole. You could play a nine-hole course, or eighteen holes, and as in real golf the least score was the winner.

James Watson: Avoid Dumb People

2010-11-22T10:11:00.001-06:00

Dust jacket of Mastery, designed by Bill Stanton

From an interview with Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist James D. Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) in Joan Evelyn Ames, Mastery: Interviews with Thirty Remarkable People (Portland OR: Rudra Press, 1997), p. 69—

My chief piece of advice to a young person is go to a place where people are bright. That is, avoid dumb people—those people who can't give anything to you—and turn to people who are brighter than yourself.

Alec Guinness, Hiccups and the Pope

2010-11-19T17:22:00.000-06:00

In an autobiography, British actor Alec Guinness (aka Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) recalled a very odd audience with the Pope in Blessings in Disguise (Pleasantville NY: Akadine Press, 2001), p. 46—

[In 1958, four days before the death of Pope Pius XII, British actor Alec Guinness was allowed to join an audience with the Holy Father, in a group that consisted primarily of plastic surgeons. Guinness stood “near the end of the line next to a middle-aged American couple,” where] I didn’t grasp what the Pope said to me...but I assumed it was about surgical alterations to the face and not about theatrical make-up; but I did catch every word said by the Americans. They both kneeled to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring, and then the man burst into loud sobs, the tears coursing down his face. The Pope [who was suffering from hiccups] patted him, took his hand, saying the Italian equivalent of “There! There!” and the man grasped his white cassock. The wife explained her husband away with a motherly smile. I imagined her to be a woman who would not have permitted him to buy his own shirts, socks or underpants. “He’s so moved, Your Holiness,” she said. “It is such an honor to meet you. Isn’t it, dear? He’s always like this on great occasions. Aren’t you, dear? Oh, he’s very moved! And just think, Your Holiness—we’ve come all the way from Michigan!” The Pope mastered a hiccup. “Michigan?” “Sure, Michigan.” “I know Michigan,” the Pope said, and managing to free himself from the plastic surgeon’s grip he raised a hand in blessing: “A special blessing on Michigan!” Those were probably the last words of English he spoke. The entourage sped him away from the audience chamber. His private doctor followed, glowering at each of us in turn as he passed.

Heather McHugh: Do You Eat English?

2010-11-19T11:04:00.000-06:00

Here's a great passage from American poet Heather McHugh (in Gregory Orr and Ellen Bryants Voigt, eds., Poets Teaching Poets), who was deservedly given this year the MacArthur Award—

[Her essay "Moving Means, Meaning Moves: Notes on Lyric Destination"] first took form as a lecture given in Bergen, Norway (a place where, as no tourist agency likes to tell you, it rains 305 days a year; in some senses, every destination is unexpected). I was there for one academic quarter, without the benefit of any knowledge of Norwegian, and it reminded me of the general truth that poets bear a naive or estranged relation to language. For example, it kept striking me as concretely evocative that the word for speak was snakker: "Snakker du engelsk?" smacked of "Do you eat English?" (not the fast food of choice, in America). And every time I saw that perfectly innocent Norwegian phrase meaning "Very good," I was subject to a sudden sense of titillating oxymoron: the Norwegian reads bare bra and cannot help packing, in an American eye, considerable wallop.

Mediocre Emulations

2010-11-19T10:52:00.000-06:00

A thought-provoking comment by American art historian James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibitions catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogeneous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

No One Is A Continent, Not Even Queen Victoria

2010-11-18T21:34:00.001-06:00

This is from Scottish author Muriel Spark in her Momento Mori (New York: Macmillan, 1959)—

The real rise of democracy in the British Isles occurred in Scotland by means of Queen Victoria's [weakness of the] bladder… When she went to stay at Balmoral in her latter years a number of privies were caused to be built at the back of little cottages which had not previously possessed privies. This was to enable the Queen to go on her morning drive round the countryside in comfort, and to descend from her carriage from time to time, ostensibly to visit the humble cottagers in their dwellings. Eventually, word went round that Queen Victoria was exceedingly democratic. Of course it was all due to her little weakness. But everyone copied the Queen and the idea spread, and now you see we have a great democracy.

Jack Kerouac Meets Buffalo Bill

2010-11-06T12:06:00.000-05:00

Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was a 19th-century author of dime novels. It is he who is usually credited with establishing the legend of William F. Cody as Buffalo Bill. Buntline could write as many as six dime novels in a week. His writing method, as it turns out, seems to have anticipated that of Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac (a method called spontaneous prose, about which Truman Capote once said, "That's not writing, it's typing"), who is said to have typed his novel On the Road on one long role of paper, with no revisions. Here's how Buntline described his way of working, as quoted in Robert A. Carter, Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend (Edison NJ: Castle Books, 2000), p. 139—

I take a bound book of blank paper, set my title at the head of it, and begin to write about the fictitious character who is to be the hero of it. I push ahead as fast as I can write, never blotting out anything I have once written, and never making a correction or modification. If you will examine the leaves of my manuscript you will see that the pages are clean with no erasures—no interlineations. If a book does not suit me when I have finished it, or at any stage of its progress, I simply throw it in the fire and begin again, without any reference to the discarded text.

Josef Albers on Frank Lloyd Wright

2010-11-06T11:38:00.001-05:00

A note by Bauhaus artist Josef Albers (who later taught at Black Mountain College and Yale) in which he recalls an encounter with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938, as quoted by Nicholas Fox Weber in Achim Borcardt-Hume, ed., Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 109—

I remember when the Bauhaus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened: very late. 11 or 12 when all were gone except a few from the Bauhaus. [Walter] Gropius, [Herbert] Bayer, Anni [Albers], me. Appeared Frank Lloyd Wright. In a Havelock [a cloth attached to the back of the hat, to protect ones neck from sunburn] and Wagnerian velvet cap (with a challenging older lady) telling us very loud, "You are all wrong." And who was it later saying: "Frank Lloyd Wright?—he is always frank, and not always right."

Mister Meshugge

2010-09-16T19:30:00.000-05:00

From George Grosz, An Autobiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 90-91—

It was in a café [in Berlin] that I first heard a jazz band. People called it a noise band. It was not a jazz band in the American sense, but more of a café orchestra gone crazy. Two or three musicians with saws and cow bells would parody the general melody with rhythmic interruptions. The conductor called himself Mister Meshugge [Yiddish for Mister Crazy] and acted like a madman. He would pretend he had lost control, would break his baton to pieces and smash his violin over the head of a musician. At the end he would grab the bass and use it as a weapon in the ensuing battle, finally throwing the splinters into the audience that screamed with delight and threw them back. Throughout the performance waiters kept on serving the musicians more beer and drinks, increasing the general gaiety. Meschugee would grab instruments from the hands of the musicians, and sing and dance. Suddenly he would jump onto the piano, pretend he was a monkey, scratch himself, grab a large glass of beer to toast the audience, but then, quick as a flash, pour it down one of the trumpets. The audience was convulsed with laughter.

Fish to Fish

2010-09-16T19:00:00.000-05:00

From Magda Bogin, Natalya, God’s Messenger (NY: Scribner, 1994)—

We slip through our lives like water, says my aunt. What we know is a blur. But history does not repeat itself. Little by little, knowledge is passed on. Fish to fish, we press small morsels of the truth into each other’s mouths as we swim past.

An Artist's Loyalty to Form

2010-09-16T17:27:00.002-05:00

From William H. Gass, Finding a Form (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 35—

I believe that the artist’s fundamental loyalty must be to form, and his energy employed in the activity of making. Every other diddly desire can find expression; every crackpot idea or local obsession, every bias and graciousness and mark of malice, may have an hour; but it must never be allowed to carry the day. If, of course, one wants to be a publicist for something; if you believe you are a philosopher first and Nietzsche second; if you think the gift of prophecy has been given you; then, by all means, write your bad poems, your insufferable fictions, enjoy the fame that easy ideas often offer, ride the flatulent winds of change, fly like the latest fad to the nearest dead tree, but do not count the seasons of your oblivion.

Walker Evans Recalled

2010-09-16T17:14:00.001-05:00

Photographer Dorothea Lange (when asked her opinion of American photographer Walker Evans, who, like her, had been employed by the Farm Security Administration during the Depression) in an Archives of American Art oral history interview, conducted by Richard K. Doud, on May 22, 1964—

A problem child. But I don’t know whether he’s a problem child to himself. But when anyone asks me what I know about someone who’s an artist, I can only answer, “Please, look at his work.” Because if you want to know anything about a person, doesn’t his work tell you? I mean, how can you know more? Walker Evans is, in my opinion, an extraordinary man. He had extraordinary eyesight. There is always a little twist in it somewhere, there is a bitterness, not always, I take that word out, and there is an edge, a bitter edge to Walker. That I sensed; and it’s pleasurable to me. I like that bitter edge. He seemed very straight and very true. I don’t care if he’s a son-of- a-gun.

Esthetics and Ecopoetics

2010-09-16T17:03:00.002-05:00

From Frederick Turner, “An Ecopoetics of Beauty and Meaning” in Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts (Lexington KY: Icus Books, 1999), p. 125—

Perception constructs a precise, individuated world of solid objects “out there,” endowed with color, shape, smell, and acoustic and tactile properties. It is generous to the outside world, giving it properties it did not necessarily possess until some advanced vertebrate was able, through its marvelously parsimonious cortical world-construction system, to provide them. Perception is both more global, more holistic, than sensation—because it takes into account an entire outside world—and more exact, more particular, because it recognizes individual objects and parts of objects...What is this awareness that is to perception what perception is to sensation, and sensation to reaction? The answer is: aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience is as much more constructive, as much more generous to the outside world, as much more holistic, and as much more exact and particularizing than ordinary perception, as ordinary perception is than mere sensation. Thus by ratios we may ascend from the known to the very essence of the knower. Aesthetic perception is not vague and “touchy-feely” relative to ordinary perception; quite the reverse. This is why, given an infinite number of theories that will logically explain the facts, scientists will sensibly always choose the most beautiful theory. For good reason: this is the way the world works.

Fence Standing

2010-06-22T09:37:00.003-05:00

Above Recently we ran across these separate but similar images. The top photograph is from a 1908 issue of the Strand Magazine, and was taken in Madison WI on November 2, 1907, on the occasion of a football game between Wisconsin and Indiana. These spectators are outside the bounds of the football stadium, and are standing on fence posts in order to see over the fence. The photo below that was probably made during the same time decade, and shows Republican socialite Eugenie Mary "May" Ladenberg Davie in attendance at a horse race. In this case, the news reporters are standing on the fence. This is in the Bain Collection at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

I Think That I Shall Never See

2010-06-06T13:34:00.003-05:00

From Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Laurel 1987), p. 391. The narrator's voice is that of Critchfield's mother, Anne (Williams) Critchfield, who is recalling what happened after she applied for the position of policewoman at the Police Department in Fargo, North Dakota (c1939)—

Almost two months later, the Police Department phoned one day and asked me to come in. I reported to the station downtown and they gave me some clerical work to do. Soon a tourist-park policeman brought in two boys. One was carrying a brand-new Boy Scout ax. They'd been caught chopping down trees in a park south of town. He left it up to me what to do. That first day and from then on, I was given pretty much of a free hand. I thought: let the punishment fit the crime. I told the boys they must memorize Joyce Kilmer's "Trees." They did. I was to work as a policewoman eight years. Just in my last months, a big husky policeman came up to me, grinned, and began, "I think I shall never see…"

Victorian Split Personality

2010-05-20T08:35:00.001-05:00

Somewhere I have a delightful book of photographs by Mark Sloan, titled Dear Mr. Ripley: A Compendium of Curiosities from the Believe It or Not! Archives (NY: Bullfinch Press, 1993)—unfortunately, I can't find it at the moment. It includes such oddities as women with baby faces on their knee caps, animals with meaningful shapes on their sides, and other examples of "spurious images." One I especially remember is a photograph of a tavern owner from Cresco, Iowa (hometown of Norman Borlaug), in which he is both dressed and shaven to be two radically different persons, one on each half of his body, e.g., bearded on one half, clean-shaven on the other; dressed in white clothing on one half, in black on the other. I remembered this a few weeks ago when I ran across the set of three photographs shown here, which appeared initially in a Victorian-era British magazine around the turn of the century. It consists of course of three photographs of the same person in the same outfit, but seen from three different directions (there is some cheating going on in the photograph on the right, because the top hat has been omitted), which the result that the same person is both a Victorian "gentleman" and a "hobo," or migrating vagrant.

Where Something or Someone Is From

2010-04-29T15:12:00.004-05:00

From Michael Martone, Flatness and Other Landscapes: Essays by Michael Martone. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000, a book in which he also notes that "If the rest of Americans know anything about this region [the Midwest] they know it as the place where something or someone is from" (p. 105)—

Circleville, Ohio, is known for its pumpkins. Blue Earth, Minnesota, is known for the Jolly Green Giant. Wausau, Wisconsin, is known for its insurance. Warsaw, Indiana, is the world capital of artificial knees and replacement hips. In Bryan, the Ohio Art Company follows the ancient craft of constructing Etch-A-Sketches. Battle Creek builds cereals; Muncie builds mason jars; and Oshkosh builds jeans. In Auburn they built Auburns and Cords and Dusenbergs, the survivors of the species returning to the Indiana village each Labor Day like swallows to Capistrano. There are glass cities and seats of furniture. Homes of flags and birthplaces of cheeses. Lima gave its name to the best steam engines in the history of the world. There are town famous for bikes, canal boats, lentils, Bing cherries, mint, jams, jellies, preserves, spark plugs, band instruments, copper wire, mobile homes, motorcycles, the Dum-Dum sucker, and even the kitchen sink. These town are like diminutive solar systems; the life of each town orbits the bright center of its product, produce, or past, its identity caught up in the gravity of the plant or the plant. Even the larger cities participate in this reduction to a simple common denominator, the brewers of Milwaukee for example. And what do they do in Detroit?

Looking Out Our Eye Hoals

2010-04-25T11:45:00.003-05:00

From Russel Hoban, Riddley Walker. Indiana University Press, 1998—

You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name…Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals…It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can…Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Temmering it is and feart. It puts on like we put our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Sometimes it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us apart…Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me away. Iwl tel you something Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.

Spot Check

2010-04-24T16:22:00.004-05:00

Here, an especially curious note from Henry Miller, To Paint Is To Love Again. New York: Grossman, 1968, p. 7. See also Miller's thoughts about book design at A Tribute to Merle Armitage—

What is more intriguing than a spot on the bathroom floor which, as you sit emptying your bowels, assumes a hundred different forms, figures, shapes? Often I found myself on my knees studying a stain on the floor—studying it to detect all that was hidden at first sight.

A Bearded Virgin Mary

2010-04-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

Above Engraving of a young, bearded John Singer Sargent, published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol LXXV No 447 (October 1887), p. 68. Compare that with this statement by Pablo Picasso about beards and the generation of ideas, as quoted in Brassai, Picasso and Company. New York: Doubleday, 1966, p. 55—

Ideas are just points of departure. It's rare for me to be able to pinpoint them, just as they came to my mind. As soon as I set to work, others seem to flow from the pen. To know what you want to draw, you have to begin drawing it. If it turns out to be a man, I draw a man—if it's a woman, I draw a woman. There's an old Spanish proverb: "If it has a beard, it's a man; if it doesn't have a beard, it's a woman." Or, in another version, "If it has a beard, it's Saint Joseph; if it doesn't have a beard, it's the Virgin Mary."