May 1, 2005

• Logos

  Harvard’s Barry Mazur on
  one mathematical style:

  “It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary
  that incorporates the theory and nothing else.”

  Samuel Beckett, Quad (1981):

  
  
  A Jungian on this six-line logo:

  “They are the same six lines
  that
  exist in the I Ching….
  
  Now observe the square more closely:
  four
  of the lines are of equal length,
  the other two are longer….
  For
  this reason symmetry
  cannot be statically produced
  and a dance
  results.”
   
  – Marie-Louise von Franz,
  Number and Time (1970),
  Northwestern U. Press
  paperback, 1979, p. 108

  A related logo from

  Columbia University’s

  Department of Art History
  and Archaeology:

  
   
  Also from that department:

  Rosalind Krauss,

  

  Meyer Schapiro Professor
  of Modern Art and Theory:

  “There is no painter in the West
  who can be unaware of
  the symbolic
  power
  of the cruciform shape
  and the Pandora’s box
  of spiritual
  reference
  that is opened
  once one uses it.”

  “In the garden of Adding
  live Even and Odd…”
  – The Midrash Jazz Quartet in
  City of God, by E. L. Doctorow
  

  THE GREEK CROSS

  A cross in which all the arms
  are the same length.

  Here, for reference, is a Greek cross
  within a nine-square grid:

  

   Related religious meditation for
      Doctorow’s ”Garden of Adding”…

   4 + 5 = 9.

  Types of Greek cross
  illustrated in Wikipedia
  under “cross“:

  

  
  From designboom.com:

  THE BAPTISMAL CROSS

  

  is a cross with eight arms:
  a Greek cross, which is superimposed

  on a Greek ‘chi,’ the first letter
  of the Greek word for ‘Christ.’
  Since the number eight is symbolic
  of rebirth or regeneration,

  this cross is often used
  as a baptismal cross.

  Related material:

  

  Fritz Leiber’s “spider”
  or “double cross” logo.
  See Why Me? and
  A Shot at Redemption.

  Happy Orthodox Easter.

  • 1:11 pm
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