Posts from the ‘Art’ Category
“There is no work of art without a subject,” said Ortega — and with him here I do not demur. Subject matter isn’t the only component of art, nor is it the most complicated, but it is the most fundamental. It is the component toward which all others are geared. Subject is what the artist presents. It […]
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Human happiness is lightness and joy. It is the light and joyful glow over the fact of being alive — of living life with energy and with zeal and enthusiasm: a buoyancy of spirit and benevolent sense of delight over the anticipation of what life, in all its strange and magical wonder, has in store. But […]
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“Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Esthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful.” Stories and art are important because human beings are conceptual. This among other things means that humans survive by use of their reasoning brains. Humans evolved neither the balls of bulls, nor the trunks of elephants, nor the claws […]
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Lesbian pulp? Golden Age? Who knew? I submit if Rendezvous in Lesbos doesn’t give you a big boner, then you don’t have a pulse. Those truly awesome photos come from Yale University’s Beinecke Library, Room 26, the “Cabinet of Curiosities,” Lesbian Pulp Novels, 1935-1965. The Yale Library blog on this subject reads, in part: The […]
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The latest trend in pulp. It’s called 3-D tattooing, and you’ve got to see it to believe it: Read the full article here. Is it beauty? I don’t know, but I kind of like it. (Hat tip Chronicles of Ara)
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At the bar where I work (and work), when after an interview the drunken reporter asked me “Are you a tit man or an ass man?” I replied: “High cheekbones” (improvising a little on my favorite poet, whose name is Karl Shapiro): Verlaine compares the buttocks and the breasts: Buttocks the holy throne of the indecencies. […]
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Self-consciousness, as August Mclaughlin notes in a recent post, will almost invariably show through in your headshots. But there’s a way you can avoid it: Don’t try too hard. Use your imagination to drift away during the shoot. In particular, don’t think about the photos during the shoot. This may sound odd, but it helps […]
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It’s been said that a true artist doesn’t ever lose sight of reality: she stylizes it. It’s been also noted that a good painting often looks more real than reality itself. The reason both of these things are true is that art — which includes literature — is selectivity. Selectivity is the process of choosing […]
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Stories are important because human beings are conceptual. This among other things means that humans survive by use of their reasoning brains. Humans evolved neither the balls of bulls, nor the trunks of elephants, nor the claws of bears, nor the necks of giraffes, but the brains of Homo sapiens, with a capacity to think. […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011