Arthur Koestler / not in his most admirable state

Koestler on creativity

Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century. New York: Harper and Row, 1987, pp. 441-444—

The outstanding personality at the Berlin congress was undoubtedly Arthur Koestler. He was in his element — masterful in expression, keen in give and take, and unwontedly eloquent. Tireless in energy, he had an excellent sense for practical detail. And most surprising to me, he was disciplined and cooperative. There was, however, one aspect of his behavior, not relevant to the proceedings of the Congress, that I found so painful that I could hardly bear to be in the same room with him when he let himself go. This was his rude and cruel treatment of his wife, who though obviously hurt by his remarks seemed to dote on him all the more. It must have been the country bumpkin in me that prompted me to say to him, when we were taking private farewells of each other the last night before our departure: "Well, Arthur, you really excelled yourself at our meetings. We couldn't have succeeded so well without you. I admired everything you did — except the way you spoke to your wife." He cast a startled look at me but said nothing.

The next morning, while I was having coffee early in the breakfast room of the Hotel am Steinplaz, Koestler waved to me from the other end of the room and then approached as I finished. Taking me under the arm, he walked me toward the waiting bus and solemnly said: "Sidney, as a friend, I want to tell you something important. Whatever you do, don't drink! As soon as you get too much liquor in you, you say the most terrible things." He obviously assumed that I must have been drunk the night before to say such a horrendous thing to him. In truth I was stone sober.

the professor cannot meet with his asses today

Digital Montage [detail] / Roy R. Behrens

Ralph Oesper [referring to the 19th century Scottish physicist Sir William Thomson] in The Human Side of Scientists (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 1975), p. 181—

One day, because of an engagement elsewhere, he posted the following notice on the door of his lecture room: "Professor Thomson will not meet his classes today." The young men decided to play a joke on their beloved teacher, and one of them carefully erased the "c" so that the note read: "Professor Thomson will not meet his lasses today." They then left. The class gathered the next day and anticipated that the professor would make some suitable remark about the altered notice. He came slightly late, but obviously he had already seen what they had left. The notice of the day before had been changed once again, and this time by the professor himself. It now read: "Professor Thomson will not meet his asses today."

Postscript: This reminds me of those rare occasions when, as a university professor, I was too ill to teach. Sometimes (oh, surely not always!) I would post the following note on my classroom door: Class has been cancelled. Professor Behrens is il[sic] today.

Einstein's visitors / a conspiratorial bowl of soup

Digital Montage [detail] / Roy R. Behrens

Lancelot Law Whyte (recalling a visit to Albert Einstein's home), quoted in G.J. Whitrow, Einstein: The Man and His Achievement (New York: Dover, 1973)—

After we had been talking for about twenty minutes the maid came in with a huge bowl of soup. I wondered what was happening and I thought that this was probably a signal for me to leave. But when the girl left the room Einstein said to me in a conspiratorial whisper, "That's a trick. If I am bored talking to somebody, when the maid comes in I don't push the bowl of soup away and the girl takes whomever I am with away and I am free." Einstein pushed the bowl away, and so I was quite happy and much flattered and more at my ease for the rest of the talk.

pungently pointed puns best punished promptly

Anon / visual pun

Puns, pungently pointed and perpetrated promptly are productive of a proruption of a pretty proportion of piquant pleasure; but puns protracted and in every person's premises, should be punishable by a propulsion of the perpetrator from the punning premises.

Boston Evening Transcript (6 August 1832), quoted by C.G. Loomis in "Traditional American Wordplay, Wellerisms, or Yankeeisms" in Western Folklore 8 (1949), p. 2.

BALLAST Quarterly Review / all issues online

At the moment I am preparing an online class session on the experience of founding a magazine in 1985. The magazine was BALLAST Quarterly Review, which I began in Milwaukee, while teaching at the university there. In 2002, a substantially different account of how that magazine began was published in an essay / interview titled How BALLAST Began, which can still be found online. 

The magazine's publication continued for 21 years. It was chosen by Milwaukee Magazine as one of "the best things in Milwaukee" and was also featured prominently in the Whole Earth Catalog, Communication Arts, AIGA Journal, and other publications.

Elsewhere, I have said that BALLAST was an online commonplace book. For those who may not know the term "commonplace book," it is a notebook or scrapbook of sorts in which someone collects interesting information (bits that trigger a double take) that he or she has run across. I had initially posted such findings (both text and image items) on a bulletin board in the hallway outside my office at the university. It became popular, as students who were passing by would check for the newest additions. With BALLAST I began to post such things not in the hallway but in a self-published quarterly mailing.

Throughout the life of the magazine, this forced me to keep reading, in search of flotsam and jetsam to include. In time, I also published essays and a multitude of book and film reviews, all of which were then republished in the journal Leonardo (MIT). But at least half of the pleasure derived from the inclusion of visual components that my students and I or others produced, or from historic sources. All issues of the magazine have since been scanned for reposting on the internet by the ScholarWorks division of the Rod Library at the University of Northern Iowa. Anyone can now search, read online, or download (free of charge) all issues of BALLAST as printable pdfs.

Simultaneous contrast / its role in art and design

In a popular online video talk, there is an overview of the function and importance of simultaneous contrast in art and design.

Its relevance to color theory was popularized by the teachings of Johannes Itten at the Bauhaus, and by Josef Albers (also from the Bauhaus) while he was teacher at Yale.

Its significance, as I try to show, is far greater than in the teachings of Itten and Albers. It had been researched and written about much earlier, in the nineteenth century, by the French scientist Michel Eugene Chevreul, who was the person who gave it the name.

RELATED LINKS

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? / Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage / Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness / Under the big top at Sims' circus