September 4, 2009

  • ART WARS:

    Closing the Circle

    Continued from Monday

    "This is a chapel 
     of mischance;
    ill luck betide it, 'tis
    the cursedest kirk
      that ever I came in!"

    Philip Kennicott on
    Kirk Varnedoe in
    The Washington Post:

    "Varnedoe's lectures were
    ultimately about faith,
    about his faith in
    the power of abstraction,
     and abstraction as a kind of
        anti-religious faith in itself...."

    Kennicott's remarks were
     on Sunday, May 18, 2003.
    They were subtitled
    "Closing the Circle
    on Abstract Art."

    Also on Sunday, May 18, 2003:

     "Will the circle be unbroken?
      As if some southern congregation
      is praying we will come to understand."

    Princeton University Press    :

    Empty canvas on cover of Varnedoe's 'Pictures of Nothing'

    See also

    Parmiggiani's 
      Giordano Bruno --

    Parmiggiani's Bruno: empty canvas with sculpture of Durer's solid

    Dürer's Melencolia I --

    Durer, Melencolia I

    and Log24 entries
    of May 19-22, 2009,
    ending with
        "Steiner System" --

    Diamond-shaped face of Durer's 'Melencolia I' solid, with  four colored pencils from Diane Robertson Design

    George Steiner on chess
    (see yesterday morning):

    "There are siren moments when quite normal creatures otherwise engaged, men such as Lenin and myself, feel like giving up everything-- marriage, mortgages, careers, the Russian Revolution-- in order to spend their days and nights moving little carved objects up and down a quadrate board."

    Steiner continues...

    "Allegoric associations of death with chess are perennial...."

    Yes, they are.

    April is Math Awareness Month.
    This year's theme is "mathematics and art."

    Mathematics and Art: Totentanz from Seventh Seal

    Cf. both of yesterday's entries.