Marble Art Quotes

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

The greatest artist does not have any concept Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain Within its excess, though only A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.

Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn And broils roots out the work of masonry, Nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till judgement that yourself arise, You in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.

If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole? You'd have to remove the layers. You'd have to risk breaking the ball for a chance at freeing it. Fear, knowledge, certainty - you'd have to be willing to let them all go.

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally. That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam. Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

If you are a person with sound judgment, you will not hesitate to sculpt the marble into an inspiring piece of meaningful art.

It is, therefore, a great source of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be possible to leave them behind altogether. The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his. From boyhood I have dwelt on foreign soil and I know with what grief sometimes the mind takes leave of the narrow hearth of a peasant's hut, and I know too how frankly it afterwards disdains marble firesides and panelled halls.

lying on marble the lazy cat gazes at dying stars

The Greeks shape bronze statues so real they seem to breathe, And carve cold marble until it almost comes to life. The Greeks compose great orations, and measure The heavens so well they can predict the rising of the stars. But you, Romans, remember your great arts; To govern the peoples with authority, To establish peace under the rule of law, To conquer the mighty, and show them mercy once they are conquered." -Virgil, Aeneid VI, 847-853

And it should feel good to hear her music, it should feel right. After all, she has gone to visit pieces of her art so many times. But they were only pieces, stripped of context. Sculptured birds on marble plinths, and paintings behind ropes. Didactic boxes taped to whitewashed walls and glass boxes that keep the present from the past. It is a different thing when the glass breaks. It is her mother in the doorway, withered to bone. It is Remy in the Paris salon. It is Sam, inviting her to stay, every time. It is Toby Marsh, playing their song. The only way Addie knows how to keep going is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.

The best of artists hath no art to show, Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell doth not include, To break the marble spell, is all the hand that serves the brain can do.

The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.

Everyone knows we need to have mud for lotuses to grow. The mud doesn’t smell so good, but the lotus flower smells very good. If you don’t have mud, the lotus won’t manifest. You can’t grow lotus flowers on marble. Without mud, there can be no lotus.

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we were to apply this visionary concept to education, it would be pointless to compare one child to another. Instead, all the energy would be focused on chipping away at the stone, getting rid of whatever is in the way of each child’s developing skills, mastery, and self-expression.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind...The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamor of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.

Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.

I do not know whether music knows how to despair over music, or marble over marble, but literature is an art which knows how to prophesize the time in which it might have fallen silent, how to attack its own virtue, and how to fall in love with its own dissolution and court its own end.

I barely duck out of the way of an empty coffee mug flying dangerously close to my head. It crashes and breaks loudly near the marble fireplace and Isa stomps into our bedroom. What the living fuck? Of course, the pussy-whipped jackass that I am, I follow her like a puppy dog, five steps behind her pouting ass. I make it to the bedroom in time to have the door promptly slammed in my face.

I must go now”, she said slowly and slipped her hand from his. Aarav looked at her face.. the water droplets pretended to be some shining gems embedded on a fine piece of white marble and a few strands of wet hair across, like some graceful ancient art on it. It took him a while to understand what she said. She just smiled softly with a hint of shyness. He kept looking at her.. the strands still intact, bothering him for some unknown reason. He raised his hand slowly towards her face.. her smile ceased with the movement. His dark brown eyes laid firm on her black ones, hearts pounding like door knocks.. he touched her face with his finger.. she half closed her eyes.

Eyes have not seen nor ears heard, neither hath it entered into the hearts of men, the things which God hath prepared for those who love the law.” When a sculptor looks at a formless piece of marble he sees, buried within its formless mass, his finished piece of art. The sculptor, instead of making his masterpiece, merely reveals it by removing that part of the marble which hides his conception. The same applies to you.

But then again, there’s nothing intrinsically valuable about any kind of art. That’s not me complaining or making light. It’s one of the most wonderful aspects to art—the fact that people decide what is beautiful. We don’t get to decide what is food and what is not. (Yes, exceptions exist. Don’t be pedantic. When you pass those marbles, we’re all going to laugh.) But we absolutely get to decide what counts as art. If Yumi’s people wanted to declare that rock arrangements surpassed painting or sculpture as an artistic creation…well, I personally found it fascinating. The spirits agreed.

A thousand years from now" Leonidas declared, "two thousand, three thousand years hence, men a hundred generations yet unborn may, for their private purposes, make journey to our country. They will come, scholars perhaps, or travelers from beyond the sea, prompted by curiosity regarding the past, or appetite for knowledge of the ancients. They will peer out across our plain and probe among the stone and rubble of our nation. What will they learn about us? Their shovels will unearth neither brilliant palaces nor temples. Their picks will prize forth no everlasting architecture or art. What will remain of the Spartans? Not monuments of marble or bronze, but this......what we do here, today." Out beyond the narrows, the enemy trumpets sounded.

Old men, old men, old men. Medals, medals, medals. Not a brow without a furrow, not a breast without a star. My brother and husband are uniquely-young here. The grouping of young Grand Dukes doesn't count because a grouping is just what they are: a marble bas-relief. Today the whole old-age of Russia seems to have flowed into this place in homage to the eternal youth of Greece. A living lesson of history and philosophy: this is what time does with people, this is what it does--with gods. This is what time does with a man, this is what (a glance at the statues) art does. And, the last lesson: this is what time does with a man; this is what a man does with time. But because of my youth I don't think about that, I feel only a cold shudder. ("The Opening of the Museum")

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one ”Go!”, his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species.

The story is told of Michelangelo being asked about his methods for sculpting. He replied simply that he worked on a block of marble, removing all that was not part of the sculpture until only the sculpture remained. I suspect this oversimplifies the art of sculpture, but it’s an excellent analogy for photography, which is essentially an art of exclusion.

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. But as for Mr. Gibson's colored Venuses (stained, I believe, with tobacco juice), and all other nudities of to-day, I really do not understand what they have to say to this generation, and would be glad to see as many heaps of quicklime in their stead.

Rachel left," he says, sighing. "Says she's never coming back." Galen nods. "She always says that. It's probably for the better tonight, though." They both wince as Rayna plants the ball of her foot in Emma's back, splaying her across the sea of shards. "I taught her that," Toraf says. "It's a good move." Neither of the combatants seem to care about the rain, lightning, or the whereabouts of their hostess. The storm billows in, drenching the furniture, the TV, the strange art on the wall. No wonder Rachel didn't want to see this. She fussed over this stuff for days. "So, it kind of threw me when she said she didn't like fish," Toraf says. "I noticed. Surprised me, too, but everything else is there." "Bad temper." "The eyes." "That white hair is shocking though, isn't it?" "Yeah, I like it. Shut up." Galen throws a sideways glare at his friend, whose grin makes him ball his fists. "Hard bones and thick skin, obviously. There's no sign of blood. And she took some pretty hard hits from Rayna," Toraf continues neutrally. Galen nods, relaxes his fists. "Plus, you feel the pull-" Toraf is greeted with a forceful shove that sends him skidding on one foot across the slippery marble floor. Laughing, he comes back to stand beside Galen again. "Jackass," Galen mutters. "Jackass? What's a jackass?" "Not sure. Emma called me that today when she was irritated with me." "You're insulting me in human-talk now? I'm disappointed in you, minnow." Toraf nods toward the girls. "Shouldn't we break this up soon?" "I don't think so. I think they need to work this out on their own." "What about Emma's head?" Galen shrugs. "Seems fine right now. Or she wouldn't have bashed the window into pieces with her forehead.

I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise.

Chaos erupting into beauty. That’s art.

For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.

Her neighborhood is obscenely beautiful. I cannot help but observe this as I stand on her marbled steps, flanked by stone griffins, beaks open in midscreech. A line of stately houses, a canopy of grandly bowing trees. Just a block from campus, off a poshly quaint street lined with bistros that offer champagne by the glass, cafés that make the cortadas with the ornate foam art that all the faculty drink, shops selling cold-pressed juice and organic dog treats. Unlike my street, which smells of sad man piss, hers smells of autumn leaves.

Once I'm through the doors, I often pause to take in the grandeur of the lobby. It never tarnishes. It never grows drab or dusty. It never dulls or fades. It is blessedly the same each and every day. There's the reception and concierge to the left, with its midnight-obsidian counter and smart-looking receptionists in black and white, like penguins. And there's the ample lobby itself, laid out in a horseshoe, with its fine Italian marble floors that radiate pristine white, drawing the eye up, up to the second-floor terrace. There are the ornate Art Deco features of the terrace and the grand marble staircase that brings you there, balustrades glowing and opulent, serpents twisting up to golden knobs held static in brass jaws. Guests will often stand at the rails, hands resting on a glowing post, as they survey the glorious scene below—porters marching crisscross, dragging suitcases behind them, guests lounging in sumptuous armchairs or couples tucked into emerald love seats, their secrets absorbed into the deep, plush velvet.

My interests don’t distract me from my art, but feed it. Music feeds math feeds science feeds painting. The only way to create something unique is to make connections between seemingly disparate things. If I focus only on art, my art will die.

«Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore vultus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos» "Others will hammer out more gently breathing bronzes, I believe so truly they will draw living expressions from marble, they will plead causes better and they will map with a compass the movements of the sky and will tell of rising stars: You, oh Roman, remember to rule the nations with authority (these will be your arts), and to impose a rule of peace, to spare the vanquished and to eradicate the arrogant

But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for — life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; — then, and so sanctifying wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy.

something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to dream of, rose-marble-fingered Women shed light down the great lines; But you have invoked the slime in the skull, The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods like racial dreams, the woman's desire, The man's fear, the hawk-faced prophet's; but nothing Human seems happy at the feet of yours. Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in the gray old years in the evening leaning Over the gray stones of the tower-top, You shall be called heartless and blind.

where the ballot-box, more precious than any work in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered.

And ever since the day before, Françoise, rejoicing in the opportunity to devote herself to that art of cooking at which she was so gifted, stimulated, moreover, by the prospect of a new guest, and knowing that she would have to compose, by methods known to her alone, a dish of boeuf à la gelée, had been living in the effervescence of creation; since she attached the utmost importance to the intrinsic quality of the materials which were to enter into the fabric of her work, she had gone herself to the Halles to procure the best cuts of rump-steak, shin of beef, calves’-feet, just as Michelangelo spent eight months in the mountains of Carrara choosing the most perfect blocks of marble for the monument of Julius II.

the Beaux Arts building’s grand Corinthian columns and its three immense archways. Two majestic marble lions served as bookends. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had named them Patience and Fortitude during the depths of the Great Depression in an effort to inspire his beleaguered New Yorkers, and Lacy had adopted them as her personal mascots. She looked to them now for the answers she sought, but Patience and Fortitude weren’t talking.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;--not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes modern man's speech.

Great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.

In the Whole Wide World Museum, Grover visits "The Things You See in the Sky Room", and the room full of "Long Thin Things You Can Write With", where a carrot has mistakingly wound up, so he returns it to an elegant marble pedestal in the middle of the otherwise empty "Carrot Room". As Grover reaches the end of the exhibit, he wonders: "Where did they put everything else?" That's when he reaches the wooden door marked: "Everything Else". When he opens it, of course, it's just the exit.

Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he’d seen at the People’s Palace, in D’Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing up in Hartland, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands. Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?

I recognized the great monument from the illustration in the copy of /The Jungle Book/ that my mother kept in the top drawer of my bedside table. When I went with Sophia to the Taj Mahal for the first time, I was not as enchanted by the real mausoleum as I had been by its plaster, paint, and paper replica in the studio; the original posed a dreadfully seductive promise in cool marble of a strangely painful loveliness, a lover's lie that death itself might in some mysterious way, because of love, be lovely.

I'm profoundly attracted to classical Zen literature, I have the gall to lecture on it and the literature of Mahayana Buddhism one night a week at college, but my life itself couldn't very conceivably be less Zenful than it is, and what little I've been able to apprehend - I pick that verb with care - of the Zen experience has been a by-result of following my own rather natural path of extreme Zenlessness. Largely because Seymour himself literally begged me to do so, and I never knew him to be wrong in these matters.) Happily for me, and probably for everybody, I don't believe it's really necessary to bring Zen into this. The method of marble-shooting that Seymour, by sheer intuition, was recommending to me can be related, I'd say, legitimately and un-Easternly, to the fine art of snapping a cigarette end into a small wastebasket from across a room. An art, I believe, of which most male smokers are true masters only when either they don't care a hoot whether or not the butt goes into the basket or the room has been cleared of eyewitnesses, including, quite so to speak, the cigarette snapper himself. I'm going to try hard not to chew on that illustration, delectable as I find it, but I do think it proper to append - to revert momentarily to curb marbles - that after Seymour himself shot a marble, he would be all smiles when he heard a responsive click of glass striking glass, but it never appeared to be clear to him whose winning click it was. And it's also a fact that someone almost invariably had to pick up the marble he'd won and hand it to him.

Uh, you guys are totally ignoring the much more important question,” Keefe interrupted. He pointed across the courtyard to a weathered marble statue. “Am I the only one who’s noticed that dude is naked?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s the David.” “I don’t care what his name is,” Keefe said. “I still don’t want to see his stuff.” “I’m with Keefe on this one,” Dex jumped in. “Me too,” Biana agreed, blushing bright pink. “Yeah, why isn’t he wearing clothes?” Fitz asked, looking anywhere but at the statue. “Because it’s art!” Sophie said.

The Cloisters, I knew, had been brought into being—like so many institutions—by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The robber baron’s son had transformed sixty-six isolated acres and a small collection of medieval art into a fully realized medieval monastery. Crumbling remnants of twelfth-century abbeys and priories had been imported throughout the 1930s from Europe and rebuilt under the watchful eye of architect Charles Collens. Buildings that had been left to the ravages of weather and wars were reassembled and polished to a new-world sheen—entire twelfth-century chapels restored, marble colonnades buffed to their original gloss.

I sware unto you my furtherance if I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet, since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since this virtue it hath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss, give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me." ... So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld how earth gaped for Zeldornius.

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothetical perfect human being. Impersonal emotion! And what - I thought - do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or direct impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 'What could I buy that for?' Impulse of acquisition; or: 'From what quarry did it come?' Impulse of inquiry; or: 'Which would be the right end for my head?' Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition - I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse - to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word 'impersonal,' then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.

Here is another saying of Epicurus: ‘If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.’ Nature’s wants are small, while those of opinion are limitless. Imagine that you’ve piled, up all that a veritable host of rich men ever possessed, that fortune has carried you far beyond the bounds of wealth so far as any private individual is concerned, building you a roof of gold and clothing you in royal purple, conducting you to such a height of opulence and luxury that you hide the earth with marble floors – putting you in a position not merely to own, but to walk all over treasures – throw in sculptures, paintings, all that has been produced at tremendous pains by all the arts to satisfy extravagance: all these things will only induce in you a craving for even bigger things. Natural desires are limited; those which spring from false opinions have nowhere to stop, for falsity has no point of termination. When a person is following a track, there is an eventual end to it somewhere, but with wandering at large there is no limit. So give up pointless, empty journeys, and whenever you want to know whether the desire aroused in you by something you are pursuing is natural or quite unseeing, ask yourself whether it is capable of coming to rest at any point; if after going a long way there is always something remaining farther away, be sure it is not something natural. LETTER XVIII IT is the month of December, and yet the whole city is in a sweat! Festivity

For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim.

O Fabricius! What would your great soul have thought, if to your own misfortune you had been called back to life and had seen the pompous face of this Rome saved by your efforts and which your honourable name had distinguished more than all its conquests? 'Gods,' you would have said, 'what has happened to those thatched roofs and those rustic dwelling places where, back then, moderation and virtue lived? What fatal splendour has succeeded Roman simplicity? What is this strange language? What are these effeminate customs? What do these statues signify, these paintings, these buildings? You mad people, what have you done? You, masters of nations, have you turned yourself into the slaves of the frivolous men you conquered? Are you now governed by rhetoricians? Was it to enrich architects, painters, sculptors, and comic actors that you soaked Greece and Asia with your blood? Are the spoils of Carthage trophies for a flute player? Romans, hurry up and tear down these amphitheatres, break up these marbles, burn these paintings, chase out these slaves who are subjugating you, whose fatal arts are corrupting you. Let other hands distinguish themselves with vain talents. The only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making virtue reign there. When Cineas took our Senate for an assembly of kings, he was not dazzled by vain pomp or by affected elegance. He did not hear there this frivolous eloquence, the study and charm of futile men. What then did Cineas see that was so majestic? O citizens! He saw a spectacle which your riches or your arts could never produce, the most beautiful sight which has ever appeared under heaven, an assembly of two hundred virtuous men, worthy of commanding in Rome and governing the earth.

And health in art - what is that? It has nothing to do with a sane criticism of life. There is more health in Baudelaire than there is in [Kingsley]. Health is the artist's recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. It is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses - whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment with their glories - knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another's method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. The delight is like that given to us by music - for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring.

I dial her mum's number, then sit down cross-legged, facing the wall. When she comes on the line, she sounds uncertain, hesitant. 'Hey! Guess where I am?' I ask, my voice loud with false cheer. 'Rami told me. The Wellesly Hospital in Worthing. What's it like?' 'For a loony-bin it's actually quite decent,' I reply. 'I don't have Sky or an en-suite, and the menu isn't exactly à la carte, but you know...' I tail off. There is a silence. 'Do you have your own room?' Jenna asks, 'Oh yeah, yeah. I have a lovely view of the sea between the bars of my window.' She doesn't laugh. 'Have you started' -there is a pause as she searches for the right word -'threatment?' 'Yeah, yeah. We had group therapy today. Tomorrow we'll probably have art therapy - maybe I'll draw you a hourse and a garden. I know, perhaps they'll teach us to make baskets! Isn't that why they call us basket cases?' 'Flynn, stop,' Jennah softly implores. 'And we'll probably have music therapy the day after. Maybe I'll get to play the tambourine. Or the triangle. I've always wanted to play the triangle!' 'Flynn-' 'No, I'm serious! I'll ask for some manuscript paper and see if I can write a composition for tambourine and triangle. Then I can post if off to you to hand in for my next composition assignment.' 'Flynn, listen-' 'Hold on, hold on! I'm making a note to myself now: Find fellow insane musician and start composing the Flynn Laukonen Sonata for Tambourine and Triangle.' 'Flynn-' 'And then, when they let me out, if they ever let me out, perhaps you could pull a few strigns and organize for me and my tambourine buddy to give a recital. I'm not sure where though -how about the subway at Marble Arch tube? Nice and central, good acoustics-' 'What are the other people like?' Jennah cuts in, an edge to her voice. I notice she doesn't use the word patients. Clever Jennah. For a moment there you almost made me forget I was locked up in a mental institution. 'Round the bend, just like me,' I reply. 'I'm in excellent company. We'll be swapping suicide tips in no time at all!' I give a harsh laugh.

Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the seaweeds, all of like value to him now. “The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,” remarked she. “But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient repose.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

Tresses of lustrous, snow-white hair tumbled from their cloth-bound imprisonment, streaming like a waterfall down the young woman’s back. In an effort to make his student more at ease, Alexi did his best to appear wholly disinterested as she carefully removed her protections with delicate, private ceremony. But then she turned to face him, clutching those items that had held her unusual features in mystery : glasses, gloves, long scarf. "As you would have it so, Professor, here is your pupil in all her ghastliness." Though Miss Parker's hands clearly trembled, her voice did not. Luminous crystal eyes held streaks of pale blue shooting from tiny black pupils. A face youthful but devoid of color, smooth and unblemished like porcelain, had graceful lines as well-defined and proportioned as a marble statue. Her long, blanched locks shimmered in the candlelight like spider silk. Upon high cheekbones lay hints of rouge : any more would have appeared garish against her blindingly white skin, but she had been artful in her application. Her rosebud lips were tinted in the same manner. "You see, Professor, even you, so stern and stoic, cannot hide your shock, surprise, distaste-" "Distaste ?" he interrupted quietly. "Is that what you see ?

An idea has formed in my mind. At university, I performed pieces where I'd sit on various materials that had long life spans, like plastic, trees, stone, and I gradually glued my skin to them, or else connected myself to the material with clay or plaster and painted the joins to look like the material---the bark of a tree, marble, cement. I wanted to look like I was a part of whatever material I was using and it was a part of me. I think that those works came from a kind of naive and youthful desire to be seen for what I was. For my body to be seen for what it is: this un-decaying, eternal thing---familiarly human, but also not.

From the fourteenth to the nineteenth century we have merely been expending the incalculable treasures discovered then and using up the great supply of energies gathered up to that time. Hence, modern history is the antithesis of the Middle Ages; man no longer wants to keep silent about himself: he hastens to express to others every slightest feeling and every new thought he may have through the medium of colors or sounds and, without fail, by means of the printing press. One might say that just as man studiously effaced himself up to the fourteenth century, so he becomes garrulous once he crosses into that century and all the succeeding ones. Not only what is wise, not only what is noble, but also what is ridiculous, stupid, and hideous in himself he couches in poetry and prose, sets to music, and would very much like, but he is unable, to express in marble and to fix within architectural lines. It is remarkable that architecture - that kind of impersonal art, that form of creation in which the creator is merged with his epoch and people, in which he does not rise above them, nor set apart his own I on their background - declines, as soon as we enter modern history, and not once during this period does it rise to the sublime or the beautiful. ("On Symbolists And Decadents")

After my return to Paris, one thing seemed obvious: To see Manhattan again, to feel as good about New York as Liza Minnelli sounded singing about it at Giants Stadium in 1986 (Google it), I had to start treating it as if it were a foreign city; to bring a reporter's eye and habits, care, and attention to daily life. But as that was the sort of vague self-directive easily ignored, I gave myself a specific assignment: Once a week, during routine errands, I would try something new or go someplace I hadn't been in a long while. It could be as quick as a walk past the supposedly haunted brownstone at 14 West 10th Street, where former resident Mark Twain is said to be among the ghosts. It could a stroll on the High Line, the elevated park with birch trees and long grasses growing where freight trains used to roll. Or it could be a snowy evening visit to the New York Public Library's Beaux-Arts flagship on Fifth Avenue, where Pamuk wrote the first sentence of The Museum of Innocence. There I wandered past white marble walls and candelabras, under chandeliers and ornate ceiling murals, through the room with more than ten thousand maps of my city, eventually taking a seat at a communal wood table to read a translation of Petrarch's Life of Solitude, to rare to be lent out. Tourist Tuesdays I called these outings, to no one but myself.

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.

Varanasi is the holiest city in Hinduism in India, which is a very unique city in india. The land of Varanasi (Kashi) has been the ultimate pilgrimage spot for Hindus for ages. Often referred to as Benares, Varanasi is the oldest living city in the world. Ganges in Varanasi is believed to have the power to wash away the sins of mortals. Ganges is said to have its origins in the tresses of Lord Shiva and in Varanasi, it expands to the mighty river that we know of. The city is a center of learning and civilization for over 3000 years. With Sarnath, the place where Buddha preached his first sermon after enlightenment, just 10 km away, Varanasi has been a symbol of Hindu renaissance. Knowledge, philosophy, culture, devotion to Gods, Indian arts and crafts have all flourished here for centuries. The holy city has many other temples also. The Tulsi Manas mandir is a modern marble temple. The walls of the temple are engraved with verses and scenes from Ramcharitmanas, hindi version of Ramayana, written by Tulsidas ji who lived here. Varanasi has produced numerous famous scholars and intellectuals, who have left their mark in respective fields of activity. Varanasi is home to numerous universities, college, schools, Madarsas and Pathshalas and the Guru Shishya tradition still continue in many institutions. The literary tradition of languages, dialects, newspapers, magazines and libraries continue to even this day. In varanasi one must have to do Boat Ride.

All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art 'to have a mission,' are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. 'I have no reverence,' said Keats, 'for the public, nor for anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great men and the principle of Beauty.' Such then is the principle which I believe to be guiding and underlying our English Renaissance, a Renaissance many-sided and wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities, yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not complete. For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that too. It is not that the flawless serenity of marble cannot bear the burden of the modern intellectual spirit, or become instinct with the fire of romantic passion - the tomb of Duke Lorenzo and the chapel of the Medici show us that - but it is that, as Theophile Gautier used to say, the visible world is dead, LE MONDE VISIBLE A DISPARU.

We remained there some time, then went back into the other galleries of the museum. In the interval more people had arrived, and it was now obvious that they did not really belong here. With pale faces and threadbare clothes, they wandered, hands behind their backs, rather diffidently through the rooms, with eyes that were seeing something far other than the Renaissance pictures and the still, marble antique figures. Many were sitting on the red upholstered seats that were placed around. They sat wearily there, as if prepared to stand up at once, should anyone come to move them on. You could see in their attitudes that upholstered seats were something which it was quite incredible it should cost nothing to sit on. They were used to receiving nothing for nothing. It was very quiet in all the rooms, and despite all the visitors one hardly heard a word; and yet it seemed to me as if I were looking on at an enormous struggle—the soundless struggle of men who were stricken down, but did not mean to give in yet. They had been thrown out from the fields of their work, their striving, their callings; now they had come into the quiet rooms of Art, in order not to fall into paralysis and despair. They were thinking of bread, always and only of bread and occupation; but they came here to escape from their thoughts for a few hours—and amongst the clean-cut Roman heads and the imperishable grace of white, Greek female figures they wandered around with the dragging gait, the bowed shoulders of men who have no purpose—a shocking contrast, a cheerless picture of what humanity had been able, and unable, to achieve in a thousand years—the summit of eternal works of art, but not even bread enough for each of their brothers.

Many people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings. They love the artist in him and are intensely bored by the preacher; but at the same time it is rather difficult to separate Tolstoy the preacher from Tolstoy the artist—it is the same deep slow voice, the same robust shoulder pushing up a cloud of visions or a load of ideas. What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his sandalled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper—far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention from observing the way the dark hair curled above Anna's white neck. But the thing cannot be done : Tolstoy is homogeneous, is one, and the struggle which, especially in the later years, went on between the man who gloated over the beauty of black earth, white flesh, blue snow, green fields, purple thunderclouds, and the man who maintained that fiction is sinful and art immoral—this struggle was still confined within the same man. Whether painting or preaching, Tolstoy was striving, in spite of all obstacles, to get at the truth. As the author of Anna Karenin, he used one method of discovering truth; in his sermons, he used another; but somehow, no matter how subtle his art was and no matter how dull some of his other attitudes were, truth which he was ponderously groping for or magically finding just around the corner, was always the same truth — this truth was he and this he was an art. What troubles one, is merely that he did not always recognize his own self when confronted with truth. I like the story of his picking up a book one dreary day in his old age, many years after he had stopped writing novels, and starting to read in the middle, and getting interested and very much pleased, and then looking at the title—and seeing: Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy. What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina—not truth but the inner light of truth. When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels? Essential truth, istina, is one of the few words in the Russian language that cannot be rhymed. It has no verbal mate, no verbal associations, it stands alone and aloof, with only a vague suggestion of the root "to stand" in the dark brilliancy of its immemorial rock. Most Russian writers have been tremendously interested in Truth's exact whereabouts and essential properties. To Pushkin it was of marble under a noble sun ; Dostoevski, a much inferior artist, saw it as a thing of blood and tears and hysterical and topical politics and sweat; and Chekhov kept a quizzical eye upon it, while seemingly engrossed in the hazy scenery all around. Tolstoy marched straight at it, head bent and fists clenched, and found the place where the cross had once stood, or found—the image of his own self.

There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a spiritual quality. But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind of art for art's sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us.

If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

Once upon a time, there were two youngsters, a boy and a girl. Their families hated each other. But the boy snuck into a party hosted by the girl’s family because he was kind of a dick. The girl sees the boy, and angels sing so sweetly to her lady-parts that she instantly falls in love with him. Just like that. And so he sneaks into her garden and they decide to get married the next freaking day, because, you know, that’s totally practical, especially when your parents want to murder each other. Jump ahead a few days. Their families find out about the marriage and throw a shit-fit. Mercutio dies. The girl is so upset that she drinks a potion that will put her to sleep for two days. But, unfortunately, the young couple hasn’t learned the ins and outs of good marital communication yet, and the young girl totally forgets to mention something about it to her new husband. The young man therefore mistakes his new wife’s self-induced coma for suicide. He then totally loses his marbles and he commits suicide, thinking he’s going to be with her in the afterlife or some shit. But then she wakes up from her two-day coma, only to learn that her new husband has committed suicide, so she has the exact same idea and kills herself too. The end. Romeo

a brief history of art Cave paintings. Clay then bronze statues. Then for about 1,400 years, people painted nothing except bold but rudimentary pictures of either the Virgin Mary and Child or the Crucifixion. Some bright spark realised that things in the distance looked smaller and the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion improved hugely. Suddenly everyone was good at hands and facial expression and now the statues were in marble. Fat cherubs started appearing, while elsewhere there was a craze for domestic interiors and women standing by windows doing needlework. Dead pheasants and bunches of grapes and lots of detail. Cherubs disappeared and instead there were fanciful, idealised landscapes, then portraits of aristocrats on horseback, then huge canvasses of battles and shipwrecks. Then it was back to women lying on sofas or getting out of the bath, murkier this time, less detailed then a great many wine bottles and apples, then ballet dancers. Paintings developed a certain splodginess - critical term - so that they barely resembled what they were meant to be. Someone signed a urinal, and it all went mad. Neat squares of primary colour were followed by great blocks of emulsion, then soup cans, then someone picked up a video camera, someone else poured concrete, and the whole thing became hopelessly fractured into a kind of confusing, anything-goes free for all.

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

Molesworth’s patron, Lord Shaftesbury. That word was politeness. Shaftesbury took a term associated with the world of jewelers and stonemasons (as in “polished” stones and marble) and elevated it to the highest of human virtues. Being polished or polite was more than just good manners, as we might say. Politeness for Shaftesbury encapsulated all the strengths of a sophisticated culture: its keen sense of understanding, its flourishing art and literature, its self-confidence, its regard for truth and the importance of intellectual criticism, and, most important, an appreciation of the humane side of our character. The motto of the Shaftesburys was “love, serve.” Kindness, compassion, self-restraint, and a sense of humor were, for Shaftesbury, the final fruits of a “polished” culture.

A murder victim hung like art? That threw him back and flooded his gut with something akin to nausea, though the feeling faded quickly once he started to examine the crime scene. The man was suspended from a six foot marble statue right of the Troubadours auctioneer’s podium, facing a large room with fifty chairs, twenty-five on each side.

In the entr’acte Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Levin maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to do, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the pedestal. "These phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they were positively clinging on the ladder," said Levin. [...] Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.

Thus the one absolutely essential requirement for the art of cooking is a love for its raw materials: the shape and feel of eggs, the sniff of flour, or mint, or garlic, the marvelous form and shimmer of a mackerel, the marbled red texture of a cut of beef, the pale green translucence of fresh lettuce, the concentric ellipses of a sliced onion, and the weight, warmth, and resilience of flour–dusted dough under your fingers. The spiritual attitude of the cook will be all the more enriched if there is a familiarity with barns and vineyards, fishing wharves and dairies, orchards and kitchen gardens.

In the simplest version of the problem, there are two urns. Inside the first urn are 50 white marbles and 50 black marbles. Inside the second urn is a mix of white and black marbles in an unknown proportion. There may be 99 white marbles and 1 black marble, 98 white marbles and 2 black marbles, and so on, all the way to a possible mix of 1 white marble and 99 black marbles. Now, you get to draw a marble from one of the urns. If you draw a black marble, you win cash. So which urn do you choose? It doesn’t take a lot of thought to figure out that the odds of drawing a black marble are the same from either urn but, as Ellsberg showed, people strongly prefer the first urn. What makes the difference is uncertainty. With both urns, it is uncertain whether you will draw a black or white marble, but with the first urn, unlike the second, there is no uncertainty about the contents, which is enough to make it by far the preferred choice. Our aversion to uncertainty can even make people prefer the certainty of a bad thing to the mere possibility of one. Researchers have shown, for example, that people given a colostomy they knew was permanent were happier six months later than those who had a colostomy that may or may not be permanent. See

Shakespeare Sonnet XVIII: Twilight Vampires Shall I compare thee to a Twilight brute? Thou art more alluring and far too cute. Thy skin like marble quarried from Carrara's mines, Stands an Augustan temple of flawless white. Thy complexion like gems sparkle in heaven's vault When fair sun rises and bids adieu to Stygian night. Thy teeth, like Wolverine's talons, lie hidden Until primed to pierce their prey. (OMG, you'd be one badass X-Men If only you could work by day). Thy eyes turn crimson like the devil's cock, When upon human blood ye feast. Who can turn their gaze from thee, Not I, nor king, nor priest. So long as mortals can breathe or Children of the Moon can see, Take my love, my freshest blood, which bequeaths immortal life to thee.

Elegance and simplicity . . . plastic, including polyester resin, which has several attractions: permanence (indoors), an aura of difficulty and technical expertise, and preciousness . . . rivaling bronze or marble. . . . in short, the aroma of Los Angeles in the sixties — newness, postcard sunset color, and intimations oif aerospace profundity.

Keep chippin' away at that marble block until it becomes a statue

Plato’s heirs—armed with his methods, but unchained from his wistful predilections—abstracted away the faces of the pagan gods: the marbles that in Homer’s day were warm Olympian flesh were philosophized into dust and that dust into theology. Consequently, the labor of keeping beauty and goodness yoked became moot as their separation in the realm of experience, in art and religion—their correspondent spheres of human activity—became so obviously distinct. Christianity supplanted paganism and the art of yore, which had formerly been principally confined to civil and religious expression, was gradually supplanted by an art that was its own unique means by which humanity understood itself. In due course, following the birth of Romanticism, art stood on the field of history its own inexorable self.

Ten shockingly arty events What arty types like to call a ‘creative tension’ exists in art and music, about working right at the limits of public taste. Plus, there’s money to be made there. Here’s ten examples reflecting both motivations. Painting: Manet’s Breakfast on the Lawn, featuring a group of sophisticated French aristocrats picnicking outside, shocked the art world back in 1862 because one of the young lady guests is stark naked! Painting: Balthus’s Guitar Lesson (1934), depicting a teacher fondling the private parts of a nude pupil, caused predictable uproar. The artist claimed this was part of his strategy to ‘make people more aware’. Music: Jump to 1969 when Jimi Hendrix performed his own interpretation of the American National Anthem at the hippy festival Woodstock, shocking the mainstream US. Film: In 1974 censors deemed Night Porter, a film about a love affair between an ex-Nazi SS commander and his beautiful young prisoner (featuring flashbacks to concentration camp romps and lots of sexy scenes in bed with Nazi apparel), out of bounds. Installation: In December 1993 the 50-metre-high obelisk in the Place Concorde in the centre of Paris was covered in a giant fluorescent red condom by a group called ActUp. Publishing: In 1989 Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses outraged Islamic authorities for its irreverent treatment of Islam. In 2005 cartoons making political points about Islam featuring the prophet Mohammed likewise resulted in riots in many Muslim cities around the world, with several people killed. Installation: In 1992 the soon-to-be extremely rich English artist Damien Hirst exhibited a 7-metre-long shark in a giant box of formaldehyde in a London art gallery – the first of a series of dead things in preservative. Sculpture: In 1999 Sotheby’s in London sold a urinoir or toilet-bowl-thing by Marcel Duchamp as art for more than a million pounds ($1,762,000) to a Greek collector. He must have lost his marbles! Painting: Also in 1999 The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting by Chris Ofili representing the Christian icon as a rather crude figure constructed out of elephant dung, caused a storm. Curiously, it was banned in Australia because (like Damien Hirst’s shark) the artist was being funded by people (the Saatchis) who stood to benefit financially from controversy. Sculpture: In 2008 Gunther von Hagens, also known as Dr Death, exhibited in several European cities a collection of skinned corpses mounted in grotesque postures that he insists should count as art.

Everyone always assumed it was her mom who was the grilled cheese aficionado, but it was her dad who had mastered the art first. "Remember when Dad would make us breakfast grilled cheeses?" May asked. She and her mom had finally found a rhythm where they could work and talk at the same time. "I miss those," May said. Her mom swallowed, then cleared her throat. "I don't know what he did that made them so good. The Nutella and mascarpone was my favorite. I think he browned the butter first- he always did something to make it a little special." She even managed a tiny smile. May smiled back at her. "I liked the bacon and egg with marble cheese." "He grilled that one in bacon grease." "The house would smell so good." "Except that one time he got distracted by a crossword and burned the sandwiches. It took all day to to get the smell of burned toast smoke out of the house. And you have to admit, not every one of his creations was good." May scrunched her face, remembering some of the worst. Her mom wiped at her eyes and flipped the sandwiches in front of her. "Like the pickle and Brie combo. What was he thinking?" "That wasn't as bad as the pineapple and blue cheese.

It depends what you mean by ‘really good’,” said Mrs. Millard thoughtfully. “If you mean is it a work of art which will enrol you in the annals of fame it isn’t good at all. Alas, my poor Jane, you will never see your sculptured bust displayed on a marble column in the British Museum — or wherever it is that they display sculptured busts of the famous — but, unless I am very much mistaken, you will see a great many copies of The Mulberry Coach on the shelves of libraries and the counters of bookstalls all over the country — and probably in America as well if you have the temerity to cross the Atlantic Ocean. You see, my dear Jane, The Mulberry Coach provides an escape from the drabness of the modern world.” She

The walls were painted a robin's-egg blue. Antique wood-and-glass display cases had mottled milk chocolate-brown marble countertops. Antique iron-and-glass stands would make the future little cakes (under their glass domes) pop up and down on the counter like jaunty hats. From the top of the left wall of the bakery, Gavin had hung a canvas curtain and arranged a display area in front of it. Both the curtain and display would change each month- as would, of course, the colors and flavors we showcased. The idea was to sell not only cakes, but also cake stands, serving pieces, plates, paper napkins, and other goodies, so once your little cakes got home, they'd look as good as they did in my bakery. One-stop shopping. On the right, Gavin had arranged a seating area with dark bentwood chairs and cafe tables. It looked like a tea salon in Paris. I sighed with delight. But I wanted to see where I would spend most of my time. The work and storage areas were screened off in the back, although I would have been happy to show off my two Vulcan convection-ovens-on-wheels and the big stainless steel worktable with the cool marble slab at one end for chocolate work. The calm milk-chocolate plaster walls, stainless steel, and white marble made the workspace look like a shrine to the cake baker's art.

In 1925, a master plan was instituted to blend the French neo-classical design with the tropical background. The Art Deco movement, both in Havana and in Miami Beach, took hold during the late 1920’s, and is found primarily in the residential section of Miramar. Miramar is where most of the embassies are located, including the massive Russian embassy. The predominant street is Fifth Avenue known as La Quinta Avenida, along which is found the church of Jesus de Miramar, the Teatro Miramar and the Karl Marx Theater. There is also the Old Miramar Yacht Club and the El Ajibe Restaurant, recently visited and televised by Anthony Bourdain on his show, “No Reservations.” Anthony Bourdain originally on the Travel Channel is now being shown on CNN. The modern five-star Meliá Habana hotel, known for its cigar bar, is located opposite the Miramar Trade Centre. Started in 1772, el Paseo del Prado, also known as el Paseo de Marti, became the picturesque main street of Havana. It was the first street in the city to be paved and runs north and south, dividing Centro Habana from Old Havana. Having been designed by Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, a French landscape architect, it connects the Malecón, the city’s coastal esplanade, with a centrally located park, Parque Central. Although the streets on either side are still in disrepair, the grand pedestrian walkway goes for ten nicely maintained blocks. The promenade has a decorated, inlaid, marble terrazzo pavement with a balustrade of small posts. It is shaded by a tree-lined corridor and has white marble benches for the weary tourist. Arguably, the Malecón is the most photographed street in Havana. It lies as a bulwark just across the horizon from the United States, which is only 90, sometimes treacherous miles away. It is approximately 5 miles long, following the northern coast of the city from east to west. This broad boulevard is ideal for the revelers partaking in parades and is the street used for Fiesta Mardi Gras, known in Cuba as Los Carnavales. It has at times also been used for “spontaneous demonstrations” against the United States. It runs from the entrance to Havana harbor, alongside the Centro Habana neighborhood to the Vedado neighborhood, past the United States Embassy on the Calle Calzada.

In essence, Ficino’s philosophy elevated the liberal arts, pure scientific research, and the centrality of the individual and his or her immortal soul’s redemption through beauty and love. It taught that there are absolute concepts that exist outside of human variations and distortions, among them the concepts of Absolute Good, Absolute Love, and Absolute Beauty. This is almost certainly what Michelangelo had in mind when in later life he explained, “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and in action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”5 For Michelangelo, imbued with this Platonic mind-set, art was not creating as much as it was uncovering hidden preexistent absolute beauty. “I saw the angel in the marble,” he said, “and I carved until I set him free.”6

The pastry kitchen is colder than I had imagined but smells delicious, as sweet and crisp as the bite of an apple. The walls are covered in white tiles, and almost everything is made of stainless steel. There are quite a few Chinese chefs in the kitchen, busy at work. They don't look rushed at all, carefully executing their tasks. One chef is releasing praline balls from their molds and then dipping them in a bowl of melted chocolate. It looks like a silken soup, and my mouth waters. He drops each ball in with a large fork and slowly stirs it around. When it comes up again, it has the satin sheen of the warm chocolate. He rolls it, the fork providing a cradle against a marble bench top until it is cool. The fork leaves no crease or mark on the finished product, a perfect sphere. There is such slow art to it; I feel hypnotized.

James"---- Diana tapped her American Express card on the table--- "tell Cassie about the food hall at Harrods." "The architecture is Beaux Arts style, all gold finishes and intricate ironwork. The floors are black-and-white marble, and the most amazing chandeliers hang from the ceiling. The cheese hall has more than three hundred varieties of cheese, and the meat hall serves wild boar and Cornish hens. The candy hall is like Christmas every day with giant jars of jelly beans, caramels, lollipops, and candy corn.

She hated religion as much as she loved its architecture. She detested the pomposity of its spiritual leaders, be they Muslim, Christian or Jews. Whenever she spoke to them, she was outraged by their confident certainty that they were right and all others were wrong, their self-righteousness, haughtiness and aggrandizement. The art and architecture of religion had been amongst mankind's finest achievements, but its inspiration had brought destruction to countless millions. Even the ancient artefacts she'd personally uncovered in the desert, monuments to humanity's earliest attempts to come to terms with spiritual explanations for natural phenomena, had been exquisite, but etched into their stone or marble were the blood and bones of those who believed differently.

Take the architectural legacy of Bucharest: Byzantine, Brâncoveanu, Ottoman, Renaissance, Venetian Classical, French Baroque, Austrian Secession, Art Deco, and Modernist, all writhing and struggling to break free of a dirty gray sea of pillbox Stalinism, like Michelangelo’s Unfinished Slaves struggling to break free of their marble blocks.

CHAPTER 13 EDIT The Invisible Art I SAW THE ANGEL IN THE MARBLE AND CARVED UNTIL I SET HIM FREE. —Michelangelo

But to serve any discipline of art, be it to chip a David out of an unwieldy piece of marble, to take oils and put a clown on canvas, to write a drama about a young man who kills his father and marries his mother and suffers for these actions, to hear a melody and set the notes down for a string quartet, is to affirm meaning, despite all the ambiguities and tragedies and misunderstanding which surround us.

occasion, might reveal itself in the rarest of true art. The entirety of his life was devoted to the hope that someday he would create a sculpture so perfectly carved and balanced, set in just the right place among the trees, that it would be capable of reflecting this light. He had seen it in the works of others, yet he believed he had failed in his own. I wish he could have known the truth. Just weeks after he died, I went to see the bear. It was the end of an autumn day, and as I stepped into the meadow, the light of the setting sun was cooling from oranges and reds to the bluer shades. He had never looked so alive; shadows dipped and curved along his outstretched claws, his fur and muscles seemed poised for life, and for a moment, the sun just touching the horizon, the marble seemed to be formed of translucent light itself. I had no doubt of what I was witnessing—this was not simply a flattering cast of sunset; this was the light Father had sought his entire life. The nearest I can describe is when Father took the back off a piano and showed me how a strong, clear note could cause other strings to vibrate without ever setting finger to them. He said the strings were

Father spoke of a light that is older than the stars, a divine light that is fleeting yet always present if only one could recognize it. It pours in and out of the souls of the living and dead, gathers in the quiet places in the forest, and on occasion, might reveal itself in the rarest of true art. The entirety of his life was devoted to the hope that someday he would create a sculpture so perfectly carved and balanced, set in just the right place among the trees, that it would be capable of reflecting this light. He had seen it in the works of others, yet he believed he had failed in his own. I wish he could have known the truth. Just weeks after he died, I went to see the bear. It was the end of an autumn day, and as I stepped into the meadow, the light of the setting sun was cooling from oranges and reds to the bluer shades. He had never looked so alive; shadows dipped and curved along his outstretched claws, his fur and muscles seemed poised for life, and for a moment, the sun just touching the horizon, the marble seemed to be formed of translucent light itself. I had no doubt of what I was witnessing—this was not simply a flattering cast of sunset; this was the light Father had sought his entire life. The nearest I can describe is when Father took the back off a piano and showed me how a strong, clear note could cause other strings to vibrate without ever setting finger to them. He said the strings were

The theme of this exhibition is folk art, and the building, which is usually a typical white-cube space, has been dressed up to look like a circus. The walls are covered in strange murals; level with my head are alligators eating trapeze artists who are, in turn, eating small alligators. In large display cases are arrangements by the famous Victorian taxidermist and artist, Walter Potter. There's a feast being had by little ginger kittens that look like they were once---before dying and being stuffed with hay and then seated on miniature dining chairs and put in front of tiny cakes, pots of tea, and samovars---from the same litter. Their eyes are beautiful, black, glistening marbles. Next to the cat feast is another Walter Potter---rabbits diligently working at desks in a miniature classroom. It's thrilling seeing these works. I've known them for years; I studied them for my A-levels. In photographs, they seem clean and unreal. Up close, I can see the little dimples in the animals' skin where their muscles used to attach; I can smell the tiny, microscopic traces of hundred-year-old-blood inside them.

The first time the power of art pulled the rug out from under me, I was nineteen years old. It was the early 1970s. I was in Europe for the first time, on my way through Paris to Warsaw with my Polish girlfriend, on a bizarre quest to sell blue jeans behind the Iron Curtain. On that day, during my first pilgrimage to the Louvre, I laid eyes on a painting that seemed the sum of all things. It was a cosmographic perpetual motion machine, a purgatorial charnel house—as far from the warmth of any human sun as anything I’d ever beheld. The moment I saw it, something like Krakatoa went off within me. That painting was Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Standing before it, I felt the gravitational field of my life shift forever. The Raft of the Medusa is massive in scale, yet its subject matter is as simple as cows in a field, bathers by a river, or a birth in a manger. We see a large raft bearing a crowd of male figures, at the mercy of heaving seas. Their poses suggest a classical frieze, like Elgin marbles from hell—a collective ash heap of individually vivisected souls stripped bare of humanity. Each of the men is marked by a distinct, unforgettable gesture. Some are reckoning with their wounds; others seem to be coming to terms with death; some seem closer to damnation than to life. Every one of them appears hopeless. Our eyes are compelled by shafts of flickering phosphorescent light that rake at angles across the figures in the painting’s foreground, tracing its dark pyramidal structure. It’s a vision of jagged complexity and somehow also of profound grandeur.