Good.

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

Alexander Calder

Conserving.

Conserving Alexander Calder's Red Lily Pads ...

Happy Birthday, Giorgio Vasari

Vasari, Self-Portrait, 1566

No one ever became excellent in any exercise whatsoever without beginning from his childhood to endure heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; wherefore those men are entirely deceived who think to be able, at their ease and with all the comforts of the world, to attain an honorable rank. It is not by sleeping but by waking and studying continually that progress is made.  It is greater vanity to pursue things more for their reputation than for what they really are, but these kinds of men can be found in any age, men who pay more attention to appearances than realities

Giorgio Vasari, born on this day in 1511, from Lives of the Artists

Dinnertime.

INTERVIEWER: I made the remark, and I don't think it's unfair to say, that in a sense, what Einstein gave to science, in the dimension of time, you've given to art, in the dimension of motion. 

CALDER: I don't know about that, but what would Einstein say? 

INTERVIEWER: Well, that's a very interesting point.  Well, now, how do you know when you're finished?

CALDER:  Uh, when it's dinnertime.

Enormity.

Chatham, July, 1987

Choose your heroes carefully, identifying those who were truly great and whose sensibilities you can relate to. Be contemptuous of notions like the one which holds that a drunk who routinely peed his pants while splashing paint all over the floor 50 years ago is an old master. Go back as far as you can in your discipline, remembering that very nearly 100 percent of everything produced in the arts in your time is pure shit. Never compare yourself to your contemporaries, but do mercilessly critique them, if only to yourself. Beware of all labels and -isms, tonalism, for example. There are no great paintings done in bright colors in the conventional sense of that term. As Camille Pissarro noted, “All painting is a matter of grays.” If you doubt this, study Goya, Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Titian, to mention only four. To see the exception, study Vermeer, and even he practices restraint to the point of pathos.

Be a seeker of truth and beauty. Never be impressed by the price of anything. There are a few rich people who are smart and nice, but generally speaking, associate with the wealthy at your own risk. Read as much good, classic literature and poetry as you can. You need to be fluent in the world of verbal ideas and concepts to enhance and balance the essentially nonverbal ones you use in your work. Most writers, by the way, do not really believe in the specificity of the nonverbal language. You must. Along with literature, read biographies and autobiographies and don’t stick just to the visual arts. Include them all.  This is to learn how others handled their journey, bearing in mind you can’t emulate someone else’s. Travel serves to inform us of the enormity of the world, and lets us see and experience things we might never have known existed. This helps us have a sense of humility, which I believe is very important.

Russell Chatham, from "Motive Is Everything: A Conversation With Artist, Writer, Publisher, Sportsman, Gourmet Chef & Restaurateur," an interview with John A. Murray

Alexander Calder, Work in Progress

Sing.

Sosa, Lark, 2001

WITH the LARK

Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,

Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;

Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,—

Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong.

All the night through, though I moan in the dark,

I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,

Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.

But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky,

I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry;

And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark,

I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be,

Where the rain shall not grieve thro’ the leaves of the tree,

There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known,

For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own;

And though life has been hard and death’s pathway been dark,

I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Simply.

A mobile has no utility and no meaning. It is simply beautiful. It has a great emotional effect if you understand it. Of course if it meant anything it would be easier to understand, but it would not be worthwhile.

Alexander Calder

Poetry

Calder, Vertical Foliage, 1941

To most people who look at a mobile, it's no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry.  When everything goes right, a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprise!

Alexander Calder

Happy Birthday, Henry Knox

Stuart, Henry Knox, 1806

On the very first impression of Faction and licentiousness the fine theoretic government of Massachusetts has given away and its laws arrested and trampled under foot. Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government, unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed coo high and collected coo rigidly. This is a deception equal to any that has been hitherto entertained. It is indeed a face, that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far remote from truth as light from darkness. The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes—But they see the weakness of government; They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is "That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept off the face of the earth." In a word they are determined to annihilate all debts public and private and have agrarian Laws which are easily effected by the means of unfunded paper money which shall be a tender in all cases whatever. 

The numbers of these people may amount in [M]assachusetts to about one fifth part of several populous counties, and to them may be collected, people of similar sentiments, from the States of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire so as to constitute a body of 12 or 15,000 desperate and unprincipled men—They are chiefly of the Young and active part of the community, more easily collected than perhaps Kept together afterwards—But they will probably commit overt acts of treason which will compel them to embody for their own safety—once embodied they will be constrained to submit to discipline for the same reason. Having proceeded to this length for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable rebellion against reason, the principles of all government, and against the very name of liberty. This dreadful situation has alarmed every man of principle and property in New England—They start as from a dream, and ask what has been the Cause of our delusion? What is to afford us security against the violence of lawless men? Our government must be braced, changed, or altered to secure our lives and property. We imagined that the mildness of our government and the virtue of the people were so correspondent, that we were not as other nations requiring brutal force to support the laws—But we find that we are men, actual men, possessing all the turbulent passions belonging to that animal and that we must have a government proper and adequate for him—The people of Massachusetts for instance, are far advanced in this doctrine, and the men of reflection, and principle, are determined to endeavor to establish a government which shall have the power to protect them in their lawful pursuits, and which will be efficient in all cases of internal commotions or foreign invasions—They mean that liberty shall form the basis, a liberty resulting from the equal and firm administration of the laws. They wish for a general government of unity as they see that the local legislatures, must naturally and necessarily tend to retard general government. 

We have arrived at that point of time in which we are forced to see our national humiliation, and that a progression in this line, cannot be productive of happiness either private or public—something is wanting and something must be done or we shall be involved in all the horror of faction and civil war without a prospect of its termination—Every tried friend to the liberties of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which will result from a government of events—Unless this is done we shall be liable to be ruled by an Arbitrary and Capricious armed tyranny, whose word and will must be Law. 

 Henry Knox, born on this date in 1750, from his letter to George Washington, October 23, 1786

The "Knox Moving Co." scene from John Adams ...

An excellent book ...

Satisfactory.

He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the current.

Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.

Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.

He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff.

Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump-line. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and then turned off around a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.

Ernest Hemingway, from "Big Two-Hearted River, Part One"

Even.

Use.

Raverat, The Magician’s Chariot, 1939

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Ray Bradbury, from an interview with the Chicago Sun Times, August 24, 2003

Quest.

Courbet, Self-Portrait with Black Dog, 1844

I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

Gustave Courbet

Musically.

van Gogh, Wheat Field with a Lark, Summer, 1887

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.

Vincent van Gogh, from his letter to Theo van Gogh, 24 September 1888

Rewarded.

Rockwell, Boy Reading of Adventure, 1920

The Atlantic says the end of reading is here ...

Rennix told me that some students now view reading as an unnecessarily burdensome way of acquiring knowledge. “By asking them to read,” she said, “professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through this more difficult medium.”

Later ...

If we fill our time with short-form videos instead of books, our reading skills atrophy. We have less background knowledge to aid comprehension. There’s no danger of spontaneous mass illiteracy, but the complex cognitive skills that reading fosters start to degrade. The library of the mind falls into disrepair.

Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.

My students hear this from me every single day:  "Psst!  Hey all you readers!  Keep at it!  The habits of those around you are making it easier and easier for you to succeed!

Twain tried to warn us: The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot.

Right.

In my view all such definitions start from the wrong end of the subject, which is not about ‘things in the world’ but about a particular experience of them, and about the pursuit of meaning that springs from that experience. Does this imply that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, that there is no objective property that we recognize and about whose nature and value we can agree? My answer is simply this: everything I have said about the experience of beauty implies that it is rationally founded. It challenges us to find meaning in its object, to make critical comparisons, and to examine our own lives and emotions in the light of what we find.  Art, nature and the human form all invite us to place this experience in the centre of our lives. If we do so, then it offers a place of refreshment of which we will never tire. But to imagine that we can do this, and still be free to see beauty as nothing more than a subjective preference or a source of transient pleasure, is to misunderstand the depth to which reason and value penetrate our lives. It is to fail to see that, for a free being, there is right feeling, right experience and right enjoyment just as much as right action. The judgement of beauty orders the emotions and desires of those who make it. It may express their pleasure and their taste: but it is pleasure in what they value and taste for their true ideals.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Happy Birthday, Edgar Degas

Degas, Olive Trees Against a Mountainous Background, 1892

One sees what one wants to see. It is false, and that falsity is the foundation of art.  You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do today. Otherwise working is just a waste of time.

Edgar Degas, born on this day in 1834, from Renoir: His Life and Work, by Fosca Francois

Happy Birthday, Sir Joshua

Reynolds, Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1769

In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, born on this day in 1723, from Discourses