Art Commissions Quotes

Alex, the piece costs $40,000.” “Really? Shit.” “I’m sure we can—” “I thought it was expensive.” I allowed myself a soft laugh at her stunned expression. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll own a new piece of art, you’ll receive a hefty commission, and your manager will kiss your ass until the end of days. Win-win.

All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

Great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft: of knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing they had taught me their larcenous skills well.

If water could be shaped like clay, then swimming ducks would be master sculptors. If I were to commission a statue of myself, I'd hire splashing ducks at play.

No matter how many they may be we should go to God in all confidence and with true sorrow for our sins, saying “Our Father Who art in Heaven, forgive us our sins of thought and those of speech, forgive us our sins of commission and omission which make us infinitely guilty in the eyes of Thy Divine Justice.

ambitious provincial towns and tourist-oriented countries wanting to “do a Bilbao”—that is, to transform their reputations and raise their profile by commissioning an eye-catching modern art gallery.

Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head. It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.

Clotilde stammered. "Why didn't you hang yourself? You were just saying that art is eternal. I destroyed your eternal art. Why are you still alive, man?" "What's eternal is eternal, but I still have to get my commissions done on time," said Vasya. "What did you think?" Vasya was just an everyday hack sculptor of average talent. And Clothilde was reading too much Schiller.

There was no ambition to be famous, no desire to have pieces played by famous orchestras, no secret wish for commissions or prizes or for being “taken up” by prominent art lovers. I simply hoped I could learn to do something well.

...and also celebrate the Skill of the Scythians in that Art, who sent once to Darius King of Persia an Embassador that made him a present of a Bird, a Frog, a Mouse, and five Arrows, without speaking one word; and being ask'd what those Presents meant, and if he had Commission to say any thing, answer'd that he had not; Which puzzl'd and gravell'd Darius very much; till Gobrias, one of the seven Captains that had kil'd the Magi explain'd it, saying to Darius, By these Gifts and Offerings the Scythians silently tell you, that except the Persians like Birds fly up to Heaven, like Mice hide themselves near the Centre of the Earth, or like Frogs dive to the very bottom of Ponds and Lakes, they shall be destroyed by the Power and Arrows of the Scythians.

If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?

Mitterrand was a bold man,” Langdon replied, splitting the difference. The late French president who had commissioned the pyramid was said to have suffered from a “Pharaoh complex.” Singlehandedly responsible for filling Paris with Egyptian obelisks, art, and artifacts, François Mitterrand had an affinity for Egyptian culture that was so all-consuming that the French still referred to him as the Sphinx.

I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was Mache dich mein Herze rein from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed? But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians—it was pretty much the only option in their time—but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe. And what a shame that we are deprived of Haydn’s Evolution Oratorio—but that does not stop us from enjoying his Creation.

In fact, the age of the Tyrants is the scene of a religious renaissance which on all sides throws up new ecstatic confessions of faith, new secret cults and new sects; but at first these develop underground and do not as yet reach the light of art. Thus we no longer find art being commissioned and stimulated by religion, but, on the contrary, we find in this period religious zeal being inspired by the increased skill of the artist.

Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder’s widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the Kimbell with suitable reverence, but given the buildings they later commissioned, many post-Bilbao museum patrons obviously wanted something quite different. The disparity between Kahn’s museums and recent examples of that genre parallels the discrepancy he saw between postwar Modernism and ancient Classicism: “Our stuff looks tinny compared to it.” At a time when commercial values are systematically corrupting the museum - one of civilized society’s most elevating experiences - the example of Kahn, among the most courageous and successful architectural reformers of all time, seems more relevant and cautionary than ever.

Constant labour is the law of art as well as the law of life, for art is the creative activity of the mind. And so great artists, true poets, do not wait for either commissions or clients; they create today, tomorrow, ceaselessly.

An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it’s the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving.

When Leonardo was painting The Last Supper (fig. 74), spectators would visit and sit quietly just so they could watch him work. The creation of art, like the discussion of science, had become at times a public event. According to the account of a priest, Leonardo would “come here in the early hours of the morning and mount the scaffolding,” and then “remain there brush in hand from sunrise to sunset, forgetting to eat or drink, painting continually.” On other days, however, nothing would be painted. “He would remain in front of it for one or two hours and contemplate it in solitude, examining and criticizing to himself the figures he had created.” Then there were dramatic days that combined his obsessiveness and his penchant for procrastination. As if caught by whim or passion, he would arrive suddenly in the middle of the day, “climb the scaffolding, seize a brush, apply a brush stroke or two to one of the figures, and suddenly depart.”1 Leonardo’s quirky work habits may have fascinated the public, but they eventually began to worry Ludovico Sforza. Upon the death of his nephew, he had become the official Duke of Milan in early 1494, and he set about enhancing his stature in a time-honored way, through art patronage and public commissions. He also wanted to create a holy mausoleum for himself and his family, choosing a small but elegant church and monastery in the heart of Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which he had Leonardo’s friend Donato Bramante reconstruct. For the north wall of the new dining hall, or refectory, he had commissioned Leonardo to paint a Last Supper, one of the most popular scenes in religious art. At first Leonardo’s procrastination led to amusing tales, such as the time the church prior became frustrated and complained to Ludovico. “He wanted him never to lay down his brush, as if he were a laborer hoeing the Prior’s garden,” Vasari wrote. When Leonardo was summoned by the duke, they ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate, Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,” he told the duke, “for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

though she isn’t stupid at all. “Wow, other people are mastering this, even people who were as clueless as I was in the beginning, and I just can’t seem to learn to think in this manner.” 5. Caroline Sacks was experiencing what is called “relative deprivation,” a term coined by the sociologist Samuel Stouffer during the Second World War. Stouffer was commissioned by the U.S. Army to examine the attitudes and morale of American soldiers, and he ended up studying half a million men and women, looking at everything from how soldiers viewed their commanding officers to how black soldiers felt they were being treated to how difficult soldiers found it to serve in isolated outposts. But one set of questions Stouffer asked stood out. He quizzed both

Beth summoned the courage to look straight into Hart’s golden eyes. “Can you not consider that perhaps I fell in love with him?” Deeply, dramatically, foolishly in love. “No.” “Why not?” art drew a breath but didn’t speak. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I see,” Beth said softly. “You believe he’s mad, and you don’t think any woman could love that.” “Ian is mad. The commission of lunacy proved it. I was there. I saw.” “Then why not leave him in the asylum if you think he’s insane?” “Because I know what they did to him.” In the gentle twilight the powerful Duke of Kilmorgan looked suddenly haunted. “I saw what the damn quacks did. If he hadn’t been mad when he went in, the place would have driven him so.”.........Hart flicked his gaze away, but not before Beth saw the moisture in his eyes. ..... The breeze of the dying afternoon stirred his hair, tugged at the curls on Beth’s forehead. She watched as one of the highest dukes in the land blinked away tears.

Taymor’s brilliant cinematic recreation of Kahlo’s accident is a powerful example of how the art of film – with its use of motion, images, sounds, visual allusions and symbols – can palpably convey what words cannot. The chilling and devastating psychophysical experience of the fateful crash, imaginatively conceived in the film, invades the minds and bodies of the audience, transcending the narrative line. The aftermath of the accident is expressed in a surreal manner with skeletal puppets commissioned from the Brothers Quai.

This is a political age. War, Fascism, concentration camps, rubber truncheons, atomic bombs, etc., are what we daily think about, and therefore to a great extent what we write about, even when we do not name them openly. We cannot help this. When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships. But not only is our subject-matter narrowed, but our whole attitude towards literature is coloured by loyalties which we at least intermittently realise to be non-literary. I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any accepted standards whatever—any external reference which can give meaning to the statement that such and such a book is “good” or “bad”—every literary judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive preference. One’s real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually “I like this book” or “I don’t like it,” and what follows is a rationalisation. But “I like this book” is not, I think, a non-literary reaction; the non-literary reaction is “This book is on my side, and therefore I must discover merits in it.” Of course, when one praises a book for political reasons one may be emotionally sincere, in the sense that one does feel strong approval of it, but also it often happens that party solidarity demands a plain lie. Anyone used to reviewing books for political periodicals is well aware of this. In general, if you are writing for a paper that you are in agreement with, you sin by commission, and if for a paper of the opposite stamp, by omission.

Mr. Harrison is gallant, and he understands art. Deene says the menfolk chatted away an entire afternoon while Jenny eavesdropped, and Mr. Harrison had eyes only for her.” Maggie picked up Timothy, though how he’d gotten into the room was a mystery. “Mr. Harrison insisted Jenny be free to help him complete his commissions, though when I pop into the studio, Jenny’s always before her own easel, spattered in paint and looking…” “Happy,” Sophie said. “She looks happy when she paints.” The cat started purring in Maggie’s lap, loud enough for all to hear. “We’re agreed, then,” Louisa said. “Mr. Harrison makes Jenny happy, and Paris would make her miserable.” Eve yawned, Maggie stroked the cat, and Sophie picked up an embroidery hoop. “Paris would make her miserable, if she were allowed to go, which will never come to pass as long as Their Graces draw breath.

While amassing one of the most lucrative fortunes in the world, the Kochs had also created an ideological assembly line justifying it. Now they had added a powerful political machine to protect it. They had hired top-level operatives, financed their own voter data bank, commissioned state-of-the-art polling, and created a fund-raising operation that enlisted hundreds of other wealthy Americans to help pay for it. They had also forged a coalition of some seventeen allied conservative groups with niche constituencies who would mask their centralized source of funding and carry their message. To mobilize Latino voters, they formed a group called the Libre Initiative. To reach conservative women, they funded Concerned Women for America. For millennials, they formed Generation Opportunity. To cover up fingerprints on television attack ads, they hid behind the American Future Fund and other front groups. Their network’s money also flowed to gun groups, retirees, veterans, antilabor groups, antitax groups, evangelical Christian groups, and even $4.5 million for something called the Center for Shared Services, which coordinated administrative tasks such as office space rentals and paperwork for the others. Americans for Prosperity, meanwhile, organized chapters all across the country. The Kochs had established what was in effect their own private political party.

Congress displayed contempt for the city's residents, yet it retained a fondness for buildings and parks. In 1900, the centennial of the federal government's move to Washington, many congressmen expressed frustration that the proud nation did not have a capital to rival London, Paris, and Berlin. The following year, Senator James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate District Committee, recruited architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to propose a park system. The team, thereafter known as the McMillan Commission, emerged with a bold proposal in the City Beautiful tradition, based on the White City of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. Their plan reaffirmed L'Enfant's avenues as the best guide for the city's growth and emphasized the majesty of government by calling for symmetrical compositions of horizontal, neoclassical buildings of marble and white granite sitting amid wide lawns and reflecting pools. Eventually, the plan resulted in the remaking of the Mall as an open lawn, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, and the building of Burnham's Union Station. Commissioned in 1903, when the state of the art in automobiles and airplanes was represented by the curved-dash Olds and the Wright Flyer, the station served as a vast and gorgeous granite monument to rail transportation.

Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky, and said he would pay only half the fee: ‘As for the rest, get it from the Twins.’ A little later, a servant came into the hall. He whispered to Simonides; there were two young men outside, asking for him by name. He rose and left the banqueting hall. He looked around for the two young men, but he could see no one. As he turned back, to go and finish his dinner, he heard a terrible noise, of stone splitting and crumbling. He heard the cries of the dying, as the roof of the hall collapsed. Of all the diners, he was the only one left alive. The bodies were so broken and disfigured that the relatives of the dead could not identify them. But Simonides was a remarkable man. Whatever he saw was imprinted on his mind. He led each of the relatives through the ruins; and pointing to the crushed remains, he said, there is your man. In linking the dead to their names, he worked from the seating plan in his head. It is Cicero who tells us this story. He tells us how, on that day, Simonides invented the art of memory. He remembered the names, the faces, some sour and bloated, some blithe, some bored. He remembered exactly where everyone was sitting, at the moment the roof fell in.

For a start, most books like this, rich in such expensive pigments, had been made for palaces or cathedrals. But a haggadah is used only at home. The word is from the Hebrew root ngd, “to tell,” and it comes from the biblical command that instructs parents to tell their children the story of the Exodus. This “telling” varies widely, and over the centuries each Jewish community has developed its own variations on this home-based celebration. But no one knew why this haggadah was illustrated with numerous miniature paintings, at a time when most Jews considered figurative art a violation of the commandments. It was unlikely that a Jew would have been in a position to learn the skilled painting techniques evinced here. The style was not unlike the work of Christian illuminators. And yet, most of the miniatures illustrated biblical scenes as interpreted in the Midrash, or Jewish biblical exegesis. I turned the parchment and suddenly found myself gazing at the illustration that had provoked more scholarly speculation than all the others. It was a domestic scene. A family of Jews—Spanish, by their dress—sits at a Passover meal. We see the ritual foods, the matzoh to commemorate the unleavened bread that the Hebrews baked in haste on the night before they fled Egypt, a shank bone to remember the lamb’s blood on the doorposts that had caused the angel of death to “pass over” Jewish homes. The father, reclining as per custom, to show that he is a free man and not a slave, sips wine from a golden goblet as his small son, beside him, raises a cup. The mother sits serenely in the fine gown and jeweled headdress of the day. Probably the scene is a portrait of the family who commissioned this particular haggadah. But there is another woman at the table, ebony-skinned and saffron-robed, holding a piece of matzoh. Too finely dressed to be a servant, and fully participating in the Jewish rite, the identity of that African woman in saffron has perplexed the book’s scholars for a century. Slowly, deliberately, I examined and made notes on the condition of each page. Each time I turned a parchment, I checked and adjusted the position of the supporting forms. Never stress the book—the conservator’s chief commandment. But the people who had owned this book had known unbearable stress: pogrom, Inquisition, exile, genocide, war.

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson later said that there should be a “consilience” between art and science. 79 Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison took selected images with her on her first trip to space, including a poster of dancer and former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Judith Jamison performing the dance Cry, and a Bundu statue from Sierra Leone, because, as she said, “the creativity that allowed us . . . to conceive and build and launch the space shuttle, springs from the same source as the imagination and analysis it took to carve a Bundu statue, or the ingenuity it took to design, choreograph, and stage ‘Cry.’ . . . That’s what we have to reconcile in our minds, how these things fit together.” 80 As a jazz musician once told me, musicians are mathematicians as well as artists. Morse’s story suggests that the argument started not because of the need to bring art and science together, but because they were once not so far apart. 81 When Frank Jewett Mather Jr. of The Nation stated that Morse “was an inventor superimposed upon an artist,” it was factually true. 82 Equally true is that Morse could become an inventor because he was an artist all the while. In one of the final paintings that laid him flat, the painting that failed to secure his last attempt at a commission, one he had worked fifteen years to achieve, Morse may have left a clue about his shift from art to invention, and the fact that the skills required for both are the same. He painted The House of Representatives (1822–23) as evidence of his suitability for a commission from Congress to complete a suite of paintings that still adorn the U.S. Capitol building. The painting has an odd compositional focus. In the center is a man screwing in an oil chandelier, preoccupied with currents. Morse was “rejected beyond hope of appeal” by the congressional commission led by John Quincy Adams. When he toured the picture for seven weeks—displayed in a coffee house in Salem, Massachusetts, and at exhibitions in New York, Boston, Middleton, and Hartford, Connecticut—it lost twenty dollars in the first two weeks. Compounded by a litany of embarrassing, near-soul-stealing artistic failures, he took to his bed for weeks, “more seriously depressed than ever.” This final rejection forced him to shift his energies to his telegraph invention. 83 By 1844 Morse went to the Capitol focused on a current that would occupy the work of Congress—obtaining a patent for the telegraph.

The second issue this picture raises is the idea of the patron – the painting has two titles: one describes the subject matter, the other refers to the family who commissioned it.

In May 2003, a bill aimed at requiring the Alabama Historical Commission to provide a current inventory of landmarks in the site eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places could thus state: The history of Africatown, USA originated in Ghana, West Africa, near the present city of Tamale in 1859. The tribes of Africa were engaged in civil war, and the prevailing tribes sold the members of the conquered tribes into slavery. The village of the Tarkbar tribe near the city of Tamale was raided by Dahomey warriors, and the survivors of the raid were taken to Whydah, now the People’s Republic of Benin, and put up for sale. The captured tribesmen were sold for $100 each at Whydah. They were taken to the United States on board the schooner Clotilde, under the command of Maine Capt. William Foster who had been hired by Capt. Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipper and shipyard owner who had built the schooner Clotilde in Mobile in 1856.15 This is the official version of the story, also found in a piece emanating from the office of former representative Herbert “Sonny” Callahan, created in 2000 for the Local Legacies Project of the Library of Congress.16 The Africatown Community Mobilization Project uses it on its brochure. In addition to the offensive misuse of “tribe,” almost everything in this text is historically inaccurate and unwittingly derogatory. The project’s brochure contains further mistakes that come from a 1993 article produced by the Alabama State Council on the Arts.17

SYLVESTER STALLONE: Mike Ovitz carried a heavy hammer, and he swung it like he was Beverly Hills Thor. He went around smashing people, sometimes I think just for the fun of it. He did things to me that I thought were beyond unfair. We got into sort of a business with art, and the person he hooked me up with turned out to be a disaster, and had me spending a great deal of money on art that turned out to be—well, I don’t want to get into it because of the lawsuit, but it just wasn’t good. The next thing I know, he’s throwing an engagement party for them at CAA, a building that I basically put tons of money into with my commissions. I told him, “I find this to be really offensive. You know how much these people hurt me, yet you’re celebrating them?” He said to me, “What do you want me to do? Cancel it? Throw them out? And embarrass yourself and me all over the city? Would that make you happy?” I believe that was the last time I talked to him for many, many years. Is he beloved? That’s a rhetorical question.

Cultural Diplomacy—and an Accolade Among Piazzolla’s tasks during his first summer at the Chalet El Casco was the composition of “Le Grand Tango,” a ten-minute piece for cello and piano commissioned by Efraín Paesky, Director of the OAS Division of Arts, and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom Piazzolla sent the score. Rostropovich had not heard of Piazzolla at the time and did not look seriously at the music for several years.7 Written in ternary form, the work bears all Piazzolla’s hallmarks: tight construction, strong accents, harmonic tensions, rhythmic complexity and melodic inspiration, all apparent from the fierce cello scrapes at the beginning. Piazzolla uses intervals not frequently visited on the cello fingerboard. Its largely tender mood, notably on display in the cello’s snaking melodic line in the reflective middle section, becomes more profoundly complex in its emotional range toward the end. With its intricate juxtapositions of driving rhythms and heart-rending tags of tune, it is just about the most exciting music Piazzolla ever wrote, a masterpiece. Piazzolla was eager for Rostropovich to play it, but the chance did not come for eight years. Rostropovich, having looked at the music, and “astounded by the great talent of Astor,” decided he would include it in a concert. He made some changes in the cello part and wanted Piazzolla to hear them before he played the piece. Accordingly, in April 1990, he rehearsed it with Argentine pianist Susana Mendelievich in a room at the Teatro Colón, and Piazzolla gently coached the maestro in tango style—”Yes, tan-go, tan-go, tan-go.” The two men took an instant liking to one another.8 It was, says Mendelievich, “as if Rostropovich had played tangos all his life.” “Le Grand Tango” had its world premiere in New Orleans on April 24, 1990. Sarah Wolfensohn was the pianist. Three days later, they both played this piece again at the Gusman Cultural Center in Miami. [NOTE C] Rostropovich performed “Le Grand Tango” at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, in July 1994; the pianist was Lambert Orkis. More recently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma has described “Le Grand Tango” as one of his “favorite pieces of music,” praising its “inextricable rhythmic sense...total freedom, passion, ecstasy.

YOU ARE NOT A FINISHED WORK OF ART YOU ARE A COMMISSIONED WORK IN PROGRESS HANGING IN A GALLERY UNDER CONSTRUCTION! KEEP PUSHING!

Nick implied the job pays crap, so they can’t expect me to be some sort of art professor, right?” She paused when the bartender appeared with a bottle of beer and a slender fluted glass of champagne. The bubbles streaming upward through the pale liquid reminded him of Emma’s personality: round and fizzy, rising as high as they could go. He felt like shit. “Of course, I still need to find a place to live,” Emma said after taking a sip of her drink. “But as long as I have a place to work, I’m good. I can always buy a tent.” “You don’t have to buy a tent,” he said curtly. “Just joking.” She reached across the table and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “But at least now I don’t have to worry about finding a place to live where I can also work.” He drank some beer straight from the bottle, relishing its sour flavor. Closing his eyes, he pictured that small, windowless room in the community center, its linoleum floor, its cinderblock walls, its sheer ugliness. She was thrilled because she thought it was her only option. But it wasn’t. “Look, Emma—if you want, I’ll take my house off the market. I don’t have to get rid of it. If you want to continue to live there…” She’d raised her champagne flute to her lips, but his words clearly startled her enough to make her lower the glass and gape at him. “But you came to Brogan’s Point to sell the house.” “It can wait.” “And I can’t keep teaching there. You said so yourself. There are those nasty zoning laws. And insurance issues, and liability. All that legal stuff.” She pressed her lips together, effectively smothering her radiant smile. “Taking the room at the community center means I’ll be able to teach there this summer in Nick’s program. So I’ll earn a little more money and maybe make contact with more people who might want to commission Dream Portraits.” She shook her head. “I can make it work.” “You could make it work in my house, too. Stay. Stay as long as you want. We’re not a landlord and tenant anymore. We’ve gone beyond that, haven’t we?” She stared at him, suddenly wary. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t sure what was troubling her. “Emma. We’ve made love. Several times.” Several spectacular times, he wanted to add. “You can stay on in the house. Forget about the rent. That’s the least I owe you.” Her expression went from wary to deflated, from deflated to suspicious. Her voice was cool, barely an inch from icy. “You don’t owe me anything, Max—unless you want to pay me for your portrait. I can’t calculate the cost until I figure out what the painting will…entail.” She seemed to trip over that last word, for some reason. “But as far as the house… I don’t need you to do that.” “Do what? Take it off sale? It isn’t even on sale yet.” “You don’t have to let me stay on in the house because we had sex. I didn’t make love with you because I wanted something in return. You don’t owe me anything.” She sighed again. The fireworks vanished from her eyes, extinguished

The sitter is depicted as having a homely face, a wide-spaced and flat face, small nose and thin lips. This apparent lack of idealised beauty has led to a general belief that this work was painted on commission, although it is possible that the model was the artist’s daughter. The picture encourages the viewer to be curious about the young woman’s thoughts, feelings, or character, something typical in many of Vermeer’s paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring and this painting are unusual for Vermeer in that they lack his usual rich background. Instead the girls are framed by a background of deep black, producing an isolating effect and heightening the girls’ appearance of vulnerability.

Corbett condemned a failure of imagination that devalued the process: the persistent heresy of regarding military and naval strategy as two different subjects that can be dealt with apart, of refusing to see them broadly as mere branches of the great art of war, two branches so intimately intertwined that one can never be treated apart from the other, and least of all when we are dealing with the fundamental problems of Insular or Imperial Defence. Lord Elgin’s Commission had treated the Navy as ‘a negligible quantity’, because it had no authority to consider wider strategic issues.76

Empathetic selling is the one where you don’t sell something to a person just to increase your commission or profits but you sell it because it will genuinely help the customer.

And just what is the most precious thing in life that riches can supply? Easy. For me, it’s Time. Time. Time to read and write poetry if I want to. Or to write a book if it takes my fancy. Time to travel on the slightest whim, to walk in the woods, to think, to commission art, to read, to drink, to hang out with friends and loved ones … to do just about anything really, as long as it does not involve day after grinding day making money in an office or a factory for somebody else.

One of the oldest surviving Christian buildings in Ravenna, the so-called Mausoleum of the Empress Galla Placidia, was built sometime in the early fifth century. This small, cross-shaped structure was originally attached to the south end of the narthex of the mostly destroyed Church of Santa Croce. In light of the fact that she was actually buried in Rome, Galla Placidia may have commissioned the small oratory to house a relic of the True Cross (as its shape and the church’s name suggest), rather than as an imperial mausoleum.

Specifically, that one artist who sculpted Lucifer so beautifully that it was too tempting for the church, so they commissioned his brother to try again—and he made him even hotter? That kind of art. Sinful. Forbidden. Perfected.

Shaney is a prince?” Sara squeaked the question. “Why does no one tell me these things? This is my kingdom, but I don’t know what’s going on.

when the world produces works of art and music that are against the standards and the teachings of Christianity, that should be considered opposition against the existence and commission of the church.

Lord gave His church some final instructions. In fact, the very last words He spoke on earth have been commonly known as “the Great Commission.”1 This unchanging command is to “make disciples of all ethnic groups of the world” (Matt. 28:19-20). All four Gospels, along with the book of Acts, repeat the disciple-making mission entrusted to the church.2 In fact, from a hermeneutical perspective, one must interpret the entire New Testament in light of the Great Commission and the redemptive work of Jesus. The salvific mission of Jesus remains the same and has been handed down to every believer. The follower of Christ must obediently pick up the baton and carry on the mission of Jesus. On the other hand, the Great Commission has fallen on hard times and in reality has been re-defined as “the Great Omission.”3 Perhaps one’s conscience has been soothed by the fine art of “making church members” or helping the poor. Nevertheless, the haunting words of the Great Commission continue to echo from the pages of Scripture, “make disciples of all nations” not just casual followers. Far too often, Christians are content with leading people to say a prayer or sign a card in order to ease their guilty hearts. The bar of discipleship has been lowered, and leadership has accepted the fact that most church members will never be involved in the disciple-making mission of Jesus. In fact, low expectations have become the norm in everyday Christianity. The content of preaching continues to be “dumbed down,” and the ever-widening gap between the professional clergy and the common layman continues to expand. As long as the offerings exceed the budget, leadership will accept the status quo. Nevertheless, the church remains oblivious to the mission of Jesus. Perhaps missiologist Ed Stetzer has correctly surmised the situation: The greatest travesty in the contemporary church is we pile hundreds of Christians into our churches and stack them in on padded pews very similar to products stacked on shelves in the grocery store and we let them come and go and do absolutely nothing and we let them think they’re okay. The greatest sin in most churches is that we have made it okay to do nothing and call ourselves a follower of Jesus.4

Sins of omission should be regarded as far more serious than sins of commission,

If an artist of the caliber of Leonardo or Michelangelo was paid a hefty commission for a new private piece of art, that artwork had to be a constant delight and stimulus for the rest of the patron’s life, and then usually go on to become a family heirloom. If an artwork was commissioned by the government, it had to serve as a permanent expression of that society’s ethos and values.

The Service Mindset. When I began my real estate career at the age of twenty-two, I had a fresh Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing in one hand and ‘a tiger by the tail’ in the other. I was on a mission to be successful in life and in business and make a lot of money in the process. Every goal I set was about Me. Me. Me! I was driven by: How much money could I make? Which property listings paid the biggest commissions? How many calls did I need to make to schedule new appointments? How many listings did I need to have to hit my target? You can see where I am going with this! Working full-time, nights and weekends, seven days a week, I only made eleven thousand dollars in the first year! I was tired, disillusioned, and knew that I had to either change careers or massively shift my mindset. I chose the latter. I took ALL focus off me and re-directed my time, energy, and resources to serving my clients. Their hopes, needs, and desires became my primary focus. How could I help solve their problems?

The Service Mindset. When I began my real estate career at the age of twenty-two, I had a fresh Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing in one hand and ‘a tiger by the tail’ in the other. I was on a mission to be successful in life and in business and make a lot of money in the process. Every goal I set was about Me. Me. Me! I was driven by: How much money could I make? Which property listings paid the biggest commissions? How many calls did I need to make to schedule new appointments? How many listings did I need to have to hit my target? You can see where I am going with this! Working full-time, nights and weekends, seven days a week, I only made eleven thousand dollars in the first year! I was tired, disillusioned, and knew that I had to either change careers or massively shift my mindset. I chose the latter. I took ALL focus off me and re-directed my time, energy, and resources to serving my clients. Their hopes, needs, and desires became my primary focus. How could I help solve their problems? And then EVERYTHING began to turn around . . .

The inventory listed every work of art in the Western world—France, the Netherlands, Britain, and even the United States (which Kümmel said possessed nine such works)—that rightly belonged to Germany. Under Hitler’s definition, this included every work taken from Germany since 1500, every work by any artist of German or Austrian descent, every work commissioned or completed in Germany, and every work deemed to have been executed in a Germanic style. The

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There are many manipulators highly skilled in telling “big” lies and thus in making those lies seem true. For example, if one studies the history of the CIA, one can document any number of unethical deeds that have been covered up by lies (see any volume of Covert Action Quarterly for documentation of the misdeeds and dirty tricks of the CIA in every region of the world).14 Virtually all of these unethical acts were officially denied at the time of their commission. Dirty

Radia Hosni, mhitimu wa mikanda miwili myeusi ya sanaa za mapigano za kareti na kung’fu katika ngazi ya dani mbili za kung’fu na dani moja ya kareti, mwanajeshi wa Tunisia aliyepata mafunzo ya kawaida ya kijeshi nchini Ufaransa na mafunzo ya kikomandoo nchini Uingereza kabla ya kujiunga na Tume ya Dunia, alikuwa mshindi wa tuzo ya shujaa wa taifa la Tunisia. Hussein Kashoggi alipokuwa akiwasili Tunis kutokea Copenhagen, Radia alikuwa katika Uwanja wa Mpira wa El Menzah akiangalia mechi kati ya Stade Tunisien na Espérance ST – timu ambayo mchumba wake Fathi Meoki alikuwa kocha msaidizi. Fujo zilipozuka, baada ya Stade Tunisien kufungwa bao moja kwa sifuri na Espérance ST, Radia alipanda Quadrifoglio na kuondoka kuelekea Uwanja wa Ndege wa Tunis-Carthage; ambapo alimpokea Hussein Kashoggi na jambazi wa Kolonia Santita, Delfina Moore.

We’ve all known that one salesperson whose primary motivation in a transaction is to earn a commission—regardless of their customer’s needs. From their body language to their self-driven talking points to the “close three times and then some” techniques–they come across as egocentric and uncaring.

She adores me. Said almost as much in plain English.” Saying the words out loud sent warmth cascading through Elijah’s chest. He studied his work more closely, relieved to find that even on a deliberate critical inspection, the sketch still struck him as having that ineffable something that made an image art, and an accurate likeness a portrait. The boys were the dominant elements of the sketch, and yet, there was Genevieve Windham in all her beauty at the center of it. Her words came back to him as he noted details he didn’t recall sketching. You’ve caught the love. Like he’d contracted a rare, untreatable condition. Which… he… had. His first commission of a juvenile portrait was going to be a resounding success because he’d caught the love. Lady Genevieve adored his work, him, and the pleasure they could share, and looking at the image he’d rendered of her, Elijah realized he adored her right back. Alas

As part of a clandestine advance guard, their route was perilously unprotected. Lucas was glad to have Toussaint watching his back. Soldiering was in the private’s blood, but it wasn’t in Lucas’s. He’d been diverted from the infantry into the CRC, the Cultural Recovery Commission, a minuscule cadre of experts in art and architecture, recruited and dispatched to find, preserve, and protect the treasures that the Nazis had looted so far in their conquest of Europe. In

I presume this is part of your erotic art collection?" she mused out loud. "It is most beautifully done; only look at the masterful brushwork and the lush, luminous colors. Curiously enough, it reminds me of Boucher, though I suppose it was done by a less well-known artist." He lifted a brow. "I am impressed, madam, since Boucher is exactly who painted the work. You do indeed know your art. The provenance says he did this painting as a private commission for a wealthy, anonymous patron. I acquired it at an equally private auction a few years ago and have enjoyed viewing it ever since." "Well, if this painting is representative of your collection, I would guess that all the works must have scandalous, clandestine origins due to the lurid nature of the subject matter." "Actually, this is one of the less provocative pieces," he informed her. "The majority of my collection is housed in a separate gallery devoted strictly to erotic art and literature. A couple of the maids won't even go inside to clean." Esme turned her gaze on him. "Is it really that bad?" "Or that good, depending on your point of view." He grinned. "I'll show it to you sometime, if you'd like. After all, you are an art lover. Come to think, perhaps I should frame the naked sketch you did of me and add it to the collection. Or would you prefer to keep it and hang it on your bedroom wall?" "I believe I will leave it exactly where it is, else the entire house know what you look like without clothing. Although knowing you, you'd likely be as proud as Bacchus here and every bit as shameless." His grin widened. "Yes, but only because certain parts of me actually do rival the gods.

That view came to be embodied in a highly influential 1950 report by a special committee of the American Political Science Association, titled “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.” The commission, chaired by political scientist E. E. Schattschneider of Wesleyan University, argued that the parties should sharpen their ideological appeals, better highlight their differences, nationalize their internal infrastructure, and work to make their core voters more energized and engaged. Some critics could see the risks of such an approach, and they focused precisely on the threat it posed to the capacity of our system to engender cohesion. Political scientist James Q. Wilson warned in 1962 that such reforms would “mean that political conflict will be intensified, social cleavages will be exaggerated, party leaders will tend to be men skilled in the rhetorical arts, and the parties’ ability to produce agreement by trading issue free resources will be reduced.” In retrospect, he was prophetic.

Good follow-up, just like a good golf game, is an art form: It takes practice, grace, and diligence to make the ball go where you want, and eventually in the hole—and it works. Had I not been on my follow-up A game, the International Man of Mystery still would have bought an incredibly expensive apartment, it just wouldn’t have been from me. Another broker would have gotten that commission. Ouch. And that would have really sucked because he and I go wayyy back.

For a study in contrast, consider the European Union’s venture interventions. In 2001, the European Commission allocated more than €2 billion ($1.9 billion) for venture subsidies. But it failed to pair this capital with the design features underpinning Israel’s success. Europe did not recognize limited partnerships. It did not address burdensome labor-market regulations. It failed to build startup-friendly stock markets to facilitate VC exits. As a result, rather than crowding in private venture operators, the European initiative crowded them out: given the limited entrepreneurial opportunities in Europe, commercial VC partnerships were not interested in competing with subsidized public investors.54 Worse, because government-sponsored investors were less skilled and motivated than private ones, this displacement reduced the quality of European VC: deal selection and post-investment coaching deteriorated. From the beginning of the industry through the end of 2007, the average European venture fund generated a return of minus 4 percent.

Pablo Picasso is the gangland champion, the most pilfered artist of all time, and perhaps he deserves it. One of the first arrests following the 1911 Mona Lisa theft was actually Picasso, then twenty-nine years old and living in Paris. He was hauled into the central police station and accused of masterminding the crime with an acquaintance of his, a Belgian con man and serial thief named Géry Pieret. Picasso was terrified. Though innocent of the Mona Lisa job, he had in fact commissioned Pieret to steal from the Louvre a few years earlier.

When employees are at odds over commission allocation, as a leader, an optimal /highly effective strategy entails meticulously assessing the quandary, proposing a transparent and collaborative resolution, securing consensus, meticulously documenting both the agreement and its implementation, and then enacting the solution with precision. Conflict resolution transcends being merely an art; it is equally a science. It aims at circling things out and putting the matters into perspective for the next move and it's purpose is to bring clarity to the situation and lay the groundwork for the next stage of the task or a new assignment.

By March 1947, the Coremans commission had proved beyond any doubt that Van Meegeren’s tale was true. He had indeed forged the “Vermeer” he sold Goering, and all the others. He could not be accused of selling off Holland’s heritage since he had not enriched Goering but had cheated him out of millions. The collaboration charge was dropped. Van Meegeren would go to trial, but only for fraud.

As a sculptor, Faffan had no choice but to depend almost entirely on prizes, grants and commissions, which made for a highly unreliable income.

The first lesson of church plantology is that planting a church should never be our focus. Christ never commanded his disciples to plant churches, because it’s not what He wanted them to focus on. Focusing on the church to be planted leads to church starting, whereas focusing on the Great Commission itself leads to church planting.

A sea of faces, young, perspiring and eager, had been raised solemnly -for forty-five minutes—to the platform where Guy Francon had held forth as the speaker at the commencement exercises of the Stanton Institute of Technology, Guy Francon who had brought his own person from New York for the occasion; Guy Francon, of the illustrious firm of Francon & Heyer, vice-president of the Architects’ Guild of America, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, member of the National Fine Arts Commission, Secretary of the Arts and Crafts League of New York, chairman of the Society for Architectural Enlightenment of the U.S.A.; Guy Francon, knight of the Legion of Honor of France, decorated by the governments of Great Britain, Belgium, Monaco and Siam;

It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things his brother’s imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made no attempt to analyze the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he felt Katharine Gaylord’s need for him, and he accepted it as a commission from his brother to help this woman to die. Day by day he felt her demands on him grow more imperious, her need for him grow more acute and positive; and day by day he felt that in his peculiar relation to her his own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. His power to minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link with his brother’s life. He understood all that his physical resemblance meant to her. He knew that she sat by him always watching for some common trick of gesture, some familiar play of expression, some illusion of light and shadow, in which he should seem wholly Adriance. He knew that she lived upon this and that her disease fed upon it; that it sent shudders of remembrance through her and that in the exhaustion which followed this turmoil of her dying senses, she slept deep and sweet and dreamed of youth and art and days in a certain old Florentine garden, and not of bitterness and death.

Jahangir was, after all, an enormously sensitive, curious and intelligent man: observant of the world around him and a keen collector of its curiosities, from Venetian swords and globes to Safavid silks, jade pebbles and even narwhal teeth. A proud inheritor of the Indo-Mughal tradition of aesthetics and knowledge, as well as maintaining the Empire and commissioning great works of art, he took an

Simultaneously, in a stroke of what can only be called genius, accountants have managed to define those responsibilities so narrowly that they are basically meaningless. Throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, accounting trade groups argued that accounting was an art, not a science, and that they needed flexibility to make the best judgments for different situations. “Accountancy never was or could be an exact science, and every profit or loss . . . is in very substantial measure an expression of opinion,” the Journal of Accountancy wrote in 1912. More than pride underlay this dogma. If accounting was merely a matter of working through a step-by-step checklist, then companies might replace accountants with lower-paid clerks, as had happened in the railroad industry after the Interstate Commerce Commission required uniform reporting procedures.

South Africa, the embodiment of symphonia, the sounding of all the voices together. A living, breathing entity. Returning from a visit to a medical clinic in the township of her name, Alexandra said: “What’s so amazing is that nobody is hiding anything. All the problems of society hit you in the face. You can see the terrible conditions of the squatter camps, and the total disparity among people’s lives. It’s all in the open. And it is tolerable,” she said, “because you see that it’s not how people want it to be. It seems as though everyone knows that everybody is trying to change it. They don’t identify a particular group as being a problem. It’s the whole society that has the problem, like a broken bone. I wonder how much of this has to do with the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It is a greater work to forgive than to prevent the commission of sin; as it is a greater work to raise a dead man than to cure a sick man; one is a work of art, the other belongs only to omnipotence.

To get around the omission bias, put yourself in the shoes of the harmed individual. If you were that baby about to get vaccinated, what is more preferable to you: a 10/10,000 chance of death from the disease or a 5/10,000 chance death from the vaccine? And does it matter if these chances are a matter of commission or omission?

In addition, these little stopping-off points serve as periodic rapport checks. For example, if you say to your prospect “Make sense so far?” and they reply “Yes,” then you’re in rapport; however, if they reply, “No,” then you’re out of rapport, and you can’t move forward in the script until you’ve gotten to the bottom of things. If you do, then your prospect will be thinking: “This guy couldn’t care less about what I’m saying; he’s just looking to make a commission.” So, instead of moving forward, you’re going to loop back and give your prospect a little more information that relates to that topic, and then ask them again if things make sense so far. Once they say yes—which they almost always will in this case—you can then safely move forward.

Here are a few quick examples of language patterns that work very well with this type of step-down approach: “If you give me 1 percent of your trust, I’ll earn the other 99 percent.” “Frankly, on such a small sale like this, after I split my commission with the firm and the government, I can’t put puppy chow in my dog’s bowl.” “I’m obviously not getting rich here, but, again, this will serve as a benchmark for future business.

Lamentations The book of Lamentations in the English Bible takes its name from the Greek and Latin versions, which translate the Hebrew qinoth “dirges, laments.” The Hebrew Bible names a book by the first word or phrase. Lamentations is one of the “megilloth,” or five scrolls that are read during various of the annual festivals. Lamentations has traditionally been read in observation of Tish b’av (ninth of the month ‘Av), the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. While Tish b’av is a later development, it is a likely extension of the communal mourning over Jerusalem reflected in Jer 41:5; Zec 7:3–5; 8:19. Historical Setting Lamentations focuses on the trauma experienced by the kingdom of Judah at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. In 604 BC Nebuchadnezzar’s military confronted the western states, and Babylonian power was brought to bear on Judah. In less than a decade the devastation of Judah had begun with the first deportation. Typical of ancient Near Eastern warfare, if time permitted, cities fortified as Jerusalem was were often “softened” by siege warfare. This protracted strangulation of a city deprived the defenders and citizenry of food and often of water. Thirst and starvation would decimate the besieged population. Though from an earlier period, the art and inscriptions of the Assyrian palaces provide insight into the horrors of the siege. They also show the intensity of devastation once the defenses were broken down. There was no theory of “separation of church and state” in the ancient Near East. The city-state was viewed as the realm of a patron deity. Palace and temple were intimately connected functionally and were often closely situated physically. One implication of this view is that in order to vanquish a city-state, not only must the military be defeated and the royal court put out of commission (either by killing the king or rendering him unfit to reign—often by mutilation), but the temple and its accoutrements were to be looted and put out of commission. Putting the god under submission was just as important as putting the king and his military under submission. When the kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonian Empire (586 BC), the temple and the palace were destroyed, along with the rest of the capital city, and the leadership and much of the population were carried away captive.

Shortly after the advent of Louis Philippe, the movement to save France’s architectural heritage began in earnest. One of the more important acts in this preservation campaign occurred shortly after the July Revolution, when the official post of inspector of historical monuments was created; then, seven years later, the Commission on Historical Monuments was established, with Prosper Merimee, the renowned novelist and passionate archaeologist, at its head. Under the auspices of this agency surveys were made of monuments all over France, and requests for funds for restorations were directed to Parliament. At odds with our present notion that a good restoration is a minimal one, the nineteenth-century concept included additions that were in some way in keeping with the spirit of the building. This entailed adding intense polychromy and mural paintings to the walls of many of these newly appreciated edifices.

Responding ot the need to represent French Canada in the company's offerings, Franca and Ambrose researched French-Canadian folk songs and arts and crafts, commissioned a score, on George Crum's recommendation, from Hector Gratton, and put together what was intended as a light and amusing ballet on folk themes. It was well-received outside Quebec, but met strong opposition in Montreal, where it was seen as the worst kind of tokenism as well as a slight to the true nature of Quebec culture. Paul Roussel, reviewing for Le Canada, called into question the validity of its inspiration. He suggested that, suitably revised, it might make an amusing trifle, but in its present form it could not lay claim to any Quebecois cultural authenticity.

Vernet received his commission for this project in 1838, a year in which concessions for the construction of railroads were a subject of passionate debate, and many of the deputies were carried away by visions of the glorious future this new invention would usher in, typical of which was the speech of the director of bridges and railroads in which he proclaimed that, after the invention of the printing press, railroads represented the greatest advance in the history of civilization. In response to this enthusiasm Vernet broke traditional rules of decorum in his enormous mural, combining classical figures and traditional allegorical emblems with products of the industrial revolution. In one section of his mural composition, usually entitled Le Génie de la Science (The genius of Science), a nude allegorical figure is seated in the foreground, one hand on an air pump, the other on an anvil, while a modern steam locomotive is driven toward a railroad tunnel in the background (see Figure 2-2). If Vernet had been limited to one symbol to characterize the social and economic reality of the July Monarchy, it is doubtful that he could have found a better one.

This attitude finds a late but still abundantly clear expression in the conventions of the classical court theatre, in which the actor, quite regardless of the demands of stage deception, addresses the audience directly, apostrophizes it, as it were, with every word and gesture, and not only avoids ‘turning his back’ on the audience but emphasizes by every possible means that the whole proceeding is a pure fiction, an entertainment conducted in accordance with previously agreed rules. The naturalistic theatre forms the transition to the absolute opposite of this ‘frontal’ art, namely the film, which, with its mobilization of the audience, leading them to the events instead of leading and presenting the events to them, and attempting to represent the action in such a way as to suggest that the actors have been caught red-handed, by chance and by surprise, reduces the fictions and conventions of the theatre to a minimum. With its robust illusionism, its forthright and indiscreet directness, its violent attack on the audience, it expresses a democratic conception of art, held by liberal, anti-authoritarian societies, just as clearly as the whole of the courtly and aristocratic art—by its mere emphasis of the stage, the footlights, the frame and the socle—is the unmistakable expression of a highly artificial, specially commissioned occasion, from which it is obvious that the patron is an initiated connoisseur who does not need to be deceived.

We need beauty now more than ever before. But I have grown impatient with the beautiful art of galleries & museums, with auctions & collections & commissions, with curators & prizes & award galas. They operate in a world where beautiful things are made & sold & that transaction is final & enough.

The superintendent of the new consolidated school, Emory Huyck, had been recommended for the job by his alma mater, Michigan State Agricultural College.1 He was born in 1894 in Butternut, Michigan, not far from Carson City, one of eleven children, all of whom would outlive him, as would both his parents, William and Mary. After graduating from high school at the top of his class, Emory briefly attended the Ferris Institute in Big Rapids, Michigan. Ferris had been founded in 1884 by future Michigan governor and US senator Woodbridge Nathan Ferris as an “industrial school” meant to provide both practical training and a basic liberal arts education “to all young men and women, regardless of their ages, regardless of their mental attainments, regardless of their present conditions, who desire to make themselves stronger and better.”2 In 1917, while teaching at a school in the Montcalm County village of Pierson, Emory registered for the draft. His registration card suggests that he was not merely willing but was keen to serve his country. To the question “Do you claim exemption from draft?” he answered with an emphatic “I do not,” rather than a simple “no,” as most young men did.3 Stationed at Camp Custer near Battle Creek during the war years, he served as a training officer. He would eventually be commissioned second lieutenant of cavalry in the Officers’ Reserve Corps.4

This spread between replacement value and liquidation value may be high for real property—often as much as 10 to 20 percent. For instance, I buy a $100,000 painting and pay $7,000 more in sales taxes, for a total of $107,000. The next day I change my mind and sell it for the same price of $100,000, paying $10,000 in commissions, for net proceeds of $90,000. The spread was $90,000 to $107,000, a difference of $17,000 or 17 percent of the “base” price of $100,000. This is what is lost in a round of buying and selling. It’s that way with houses, cars, art, and jewelry. In contrast, the cost to trade listed securities is typically only a small fraction of a percent—which, along with their liquidity, makes them more appealing stores of wealth.

I spent the two and one-half months between my meeting with the Art Commission and the beginning of my actual mural work in soaking up impressions of the productive activities of the city. I studied industrial scenes by night as well as by day, making literally thousands of sketches of towering blast furnaces, serpentine conveyor belts, impressive scientific laboratories, busy assembling rooms; also of precision instruments, some of them massive yet delicate; and of the men who worked them all. I walked for miles through the immense workshops of the Ford, Chrysler, Edison, Michigan Alkali, and Parke-Davis plants. I was afire with enthusiasm. My childhood passion for mechanical toys had been transmuted to a delight in machinery for its own sake and for its meaning to man -- his self-fulfillment and liberation from drudgery and poverty. That is why now I placed the collective hero, man-and-machine, higher than the old traditional heroes of art and legend. I felt that in the society of the future as already, to some extent, that of the present, man-and-machine would be as important as air, water, and the light of the sun. This was the "philosophy," the state of mind in which I undertook my Detroit frescoes.

As part of a clandestine advance guard, their route was perilously unprotected. Lucas was glad to have Toussaint watching his back. Soldiering was in the private’s blood, but it wasn’t in Lucas’s. He’d been diverted from the infantry into the CRC, the Cultural Recovery Commission, a minuscule cadre of experts in art and architecture, recruited and dispatched to find, preserve, and protect the treasures that the Nazis had looted so far in their conquest of Europe.

Filippo Brunelleschi, the great Renaissance artist and architect, was a great practitioner of the art of making others come to him as a sign of his power. On one occasion he had been engaged to repair the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence. The commission was important and prestigious. But when the city officials hired a second man, Lorenzo Ghiberti, to work with Brunelleschi, the great artist brooded in secret. He knew that Ghiberti had gotten the job through his connections, and that he would do none of the work and get half the credit. At a critical moment of the construction, then, Brunelleschi suddenly developed a mysterious illness. He had to stop work, but pointed out to city officials that they had hired Ghiberti, who should have been able to continue the work on his own. Soon it became clear that Ghiberti was useless and the officials came begging to Brunelleschi. He ignored them, insisting that Ghiberti should finish the project, until finally they realized the problem: They fired Ghiberti. By some miracle, Brunelleschi recovered within days. He did not have to throw a tantrum or make a fool of himself; he simply practiced the art of “making others come to you.