Wednesday, September 1, 2004

The ancient masters slept without dreams and woke up without worries. Their food was plain. Their breath came from deep inside them. They didn’t cling to life, weren’t anxious about death. They emerged without desire and reentered without resistance. They came easily; they went easily. They didn’t forget where they were from; they didn’t ask where they were going. They took everything as it came, gladly, and walked into death without fear. They accepteded life as a gift, and they handed it back gratefully. -- Chuang-tzu

Any thoughts? <!-- img src="http://downloads.weblogger.com/weblogger1/theme11/comment.gif" border="0" width="140" height="20" alt="presented by Weblogger.com">

Monday, August 30, 2004

Two wonderful photos of St. Mark's, Venice, Italy.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Three by David Teniers the Younger --

The Gallery of Archduke Leopold in Brussels, 1639

The Gallery of Archduke Leopold in Brussels, 1640

The Gallery of Archduke Leopold in Brussels, 1641

And two more by the same artist --

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery, ca. 1647

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria in his Gallery, 1651

Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome, 1757, by Giovanni Paolo Pannini

*

Along similar lines, there are nine paintings of artists' studios.

The Artist in his Studio, 1626-28, by Rembrandt.

Painter in His Studio, 1631, by Jan Miense Molenaer.

Painter in his Studio, 1647, by Gerrit Dou.

The Painter in his Studio, ca. 1650, by Hendrick Gerritsz Pot.

The Painter in His Studio, 1663, by Adriaen Jansz. van Ostade.

The Artist's Studio, 1666, by Jacob van Oost, the Elder

Painter in his Studio, ca. 1740, by François Boucher

Painter in his Studio, 1740-45, by Pietro Longhi

The Studio of the Painter, 1747-49, by Pierre Subleyras

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Graham Greene - "After Henry James a disaster overtook the English novel... For after the death of James the religious sense was lost to the English novel, and with the religious sense went the sense of the importance of the human act."

An interview with artist and writer Anne Truitt, in 2002, when she was 81 years old. She is the author of three published journals that I own and like very much - Daybook, Turn, and Prospect.

*

Not that many artists placed figures of St Thomas Aquinas in their work, but he does show up here and there. I have an interest in him because he is the patron saint of scholars and scientists. And also because his work often reflects a kindly humanism. Here are some of the works I was able to find that portray him --

Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, ca. 1340, by Francesco Traini.

Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, 1471, by Benozzo Gozzoli.

Sts Thomas Aquinas and Flavian; Sts Peter the Martyr and Vitus, 1508, by Lorenzo Lotto.

Sts Pius, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Martyr, 1730-33, by Sebastiano Ricci.

Friday, August 27, 2004

I like paintings that show a room with a variety of objects in it. Here are three by Frans Francken II, a seventeenth-century Dutch artist --

An Antique Dealer's Gallery, 1615-20

Sebastiaan Leerse in his Gallery

Art Room, 1636

*

I really should read more about Leo Strauss, since my heroes at Cornell were disciples of his. I could start, perhaps, with Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror, by Nicholas Xenos.

*

Yesterday I came across an article that quoted extensively from a paper published in 2002 by Walrus Research, a popular public radio research firm headed by Giovannoni protégés. Walrus gathered groups of classical music listeners from various markets into a series of focus groups. Classical music listeners, the researchers discovered, "use classical music to escape from the problems of the world." . . . They use the music format to attain an internal state, soothing and calm, intensely personal." . . . .

"Classical listeners enter a dream world with images of paradise."

[They] seek an emotion derived from the aesthetic."

"The classical listener values lone serenity."

"The portal to classical music is emotional."

"Classical listeners use the station for gratification of their private, internal needs."