Miniature Art Quotes

Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.

To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.

A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods.

Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

and addressed them thus: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardour will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way. On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your allies.

There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.

You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.You can ensure the safety of your defence if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.

Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.

These are: (1) the Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) the Commander; (5) method and discipline.

Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.

But most of the time, we keep memories packed away. I sometimes liken that moment of sudden unpacking to circus clowns pouring out of a miniature car trunk—how did so much fit into such a small space?

Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.

concubines

The divine does not like to be shut up in a building. The divine likes to be out in the open. It is right here in this very body. Each one of us is a miniature universe, a living shrine.

choleric

Hence

The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.

The consummate leader cultivates the Moral Law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success.

By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.

You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.

In respect of military method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory.

For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

NEXT LIFE. My embroidery studio on the main street of Bayeux will be just one part of my Institute of Slow Information. I will also teach letter writing, listening, miniature portrait painting, and the art of doing one thing at a time.

to blame.

Hence

Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.

practise

Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, “Well done!

The answer was again in the affirmative, so arrangements were made to bring 180 ladies out of the Palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two companies, and placed one of the King's favourite concubines at the head of each. He then bade them all take spears in their hands, and addressed them thus: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right hand and left hand?

The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.

bestowed

Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may prevent him from fighting. Scheme so as to discover his plans and the likelihood of their success.

Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand Li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armour, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature.

Chapter1 Laying Plans

motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.

The divine does not like to be shut up in a building. The divine likes to be out in the open. It is right here in this very body. Each one of us is a miniature universe, a living shrine

but what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers?

When I scanned the room, I saw five or six swaddled newborns and one miniature 1920s actress. Bibi had round eyes the size of saucers, chalky white skin, and dainty fingers that seemed already capable of needlepoint.

Meg made many moral rules, and tried to keep them, but what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers?

Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale (“The Man Who Made Wax Heads”) the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators and victims in a sticky web of perverse delights, in which exploitation becomes collusion, the ripples of guilt spread outward, and the real criminal slips away. In the end, responsibility is lodged firmly with the consumer, forced – he must confess – by his own perverse desires, to buy into the values of this particularly black market.

Yet it is worth noting that in this example we never witness a complete desacralization of the world, for in the Far East what is called the "esthetic emotion" still retains a religious dimension, even among intellectuals. But the example of the miniature gardens shows us in what direction and by what means the desacralization of the world is accomplished. We need only imagine what an esthetic emotion of this sort could become in a modern society, and we shall understand how the experience of cosmic sanctity can be rarefied and transformed until it becomes a purely human emotion—that, for example, of art for art's sake.

As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day.

He evoked a Russia which was long dead and gone, lacked the range and urgency of his successors and, unlike these preachers, he was thought of - quite wrongly - as a painter of miniatures and, unfashionably, the pure artist. Yet like Dostoyevsky he believed that 'art must not be burdened with all kinds of aims', that 'without art men might not wish to live on earth', and that 'art will always live man's real life with him'.

A prisoner paints a landscape on the wall of his cell showing a miniature train entering a tunnel. When his jailers come to get him, he asks them politely to 'wait a moment, to allow me to verify something in the little train in my picture. As usual, they started to laugh, because they considered me to be weak-minded...I made myself very tiny, entered into my picture and climbed into the little train, which started moving, then disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. For a few seconds longer, a bit of flaky smoke could be seen coming out of the round hole. Then this smoke blew away, and with it the picture, and with the picture, my person ...' How many times poet-painters, in their prisons, have broken through walls, by way of a tunnel! How many times, as they painted their dreams, they have escaped through a crack in the wall! And to get out of prison all means are good ones. If need be, mere absurdity can be a source of freedom.

A woman was bargaining with the gardener for a piece of vine, half as big as her finger, for her miniature Japanese garden. It was just what she wanted to climb up the stone in her dish. I looked with wonder on the Japanese appreciation of all small things in nature. Is it because their country, beautifully and theatrically mountainous, hardly ever allows a long vista, letting them always see things at close range? Or have her strange and lovely mists some part in teaching them to see, falling often like a backdrop behind a single pine, separating it from the rest of the world? Or have the Japanese, from generations spent in one-story paper houses, learned a language, an alphabet of beauty in nature, that we, in our houses of brick and stone, have shut out? Or is it, again, only because they are always artists and see more than we do? If only I could stay here long enough, I would learn to see too. And after minutely watching the surface of things I would learn to see below the surface. I would see the essence of a thing.

Subject: Some boat Alex, I know Fox Mulder. My mom watched The X-Files. She says it was because she liked the creepy store lines. I think she liked David Duchovny. She tried Californication, but I don't think her heart was in it. I think she was just sticking it to my grandmother, who has decided it's the work of the devil. She says that about most current music,too, but God help anyone who gets between her and American Idol. The fuzzy whale was very nice, it a little hard to identify. The profile of the guy between you and the whale in the third pic was very familiar, if a little fuzzy. I won't ask. No,no. I have to ask. I won't ask. My mother loves his wife's suits. I Googled. There are sharks off the coast of the Vineyard. Great big white ones. I believe you about the turtle. Did I mention that there are sharks there? I go to Surf City for a week every summer with my cousins. I eat too much ice cream. I play miniature golf-badly. I don't complain about sand in my hot dog buns or sheets. I even spend enough time on the beach to get sand in more uncomfortable places. I do not swim. I mean, I could if I wanted to but I figure that if we were meant to share the water with sharks, we would have a few extra rows of teeth, too. I'll save you some cannoli. -Ella Subject: Shh Fiorella, Yes,Fiorella. I looked it up. It means Flower. Which, when paired with MArino, means Flower of the Sea. What shark would dare to touch you? I won't touch the uncomfortable sand mention, hard as it is to resist. I also will not think of you in a bikini (Note to self: Do not think of Ella in a bikini under any circumstanes. Note from self: Are you f-ing kidding me?). Okay. Two pieces of info for you. One: Our host has an excellent wine cellar and my mother is European. Meaning she doesn't begrudge me the occasional glass. Or four. Two: Our hostess says to thank yur mother very much. Most people say nasty things about her suits. Three: We have a house kinda near Surf City. Maybe I'll be there when your there. You'd better burn this after reading. -Alexai Subect: Happy Thanksgiving Alexei, Consider it burned. Don't worry. I'm not showing your e-mails to anybody. Matter of national security, of course. Well,I got to sit at the adult table. In between my great-great-aunt Jo, who is ninety-three and deaf, and her daughter, JoJo, who had to repeat everyone's conversations across me. Loudly. The food was great,even my uncle Ricky's cranberry lasagna. In fact, it would have been a perfectly good TG if the Eagles han't been playing the Jets.My cousin Joey (other side of the family) lives in Hoboken. His sister married a Philly guy. It started out as a lively across-the-table debate: Jets v. Iggles. It ended up with Joey flinging himself across the table at his brother-in-law and my grandmother saying loud prayers to Saint Bridget. At least I think it was Saint Bridget. Hard to tell. She was speaking Italian. She caught me trying to freeze a half-dozen cannoli. She yelled at me. Apparently, the shells get really soggy when they defrost. I guess you'll have to come have a fresh one when you get back. -F/E

I don't like this," he complained. He'd been complaining since I'd scooted off the chaise ten minutes earlier, leaving him on it. "Just a little longer.I know it's not your sofa, but it's not that bad." He grimaced. "It smells like wet dog. But what I meant was that I don't think I like posing. How do I know you're not going to give me a beer gut or a third eye?" "I've always thought a third eye would be pretty useful." I pictured the Indian miniature art Cat Vernon had introduced me to and imagined Alex blue, with multiple arms. It was, probably, just what he expected. "And in what universe would there be an even remotely compelling reason for me to give you any sort of gut whatsoever? You're gonna have to trust me, Sushi Boy.

What happens when we've long admired someone for their talent and then find out that despite the fact they excel at darts, they're socially conservative? How can we go on enjoying the way a person throws miniature arrows at some circular cork now that we diverge politically? And what if we find that people who make art can be terrible, perhaps even criminal? How do we get back the time we wasted enjoying their work before we knew that we wouldn't have enjoyed it if we'd known? Can we not get some kind of certification of sanctity before we allow ourselves to be moved? Because to be moved by something made by someone who has done something bad would mean that a bad person possesses the capacity to connect to us; that they haven't, somehow, forfeited their humanity.

Now,standing under our beautiful monstrosity, I couldn't help thinking that if Alex were to kiss me, it would look like that: me small and blissful and clinging, him so much taller, completely enfolding me. I averted my red dace as I headed down the hall. My room is a quarter the size of his. It felt even smaller with him in it. "Make yourself at-" He'd plunked the snack on my desk, depositied his coat on my chair, and was already roaming the room, looking at the door knockers made to look like hands. "Cool.You are seriously good." He stared for a long time at the single study I'd put up from the Willing Romance Languages Room door: the leering devil. "I would put that on my wall," he said. I hadn't said anything while he browsed, swallowing all the automatic denials of my abilities. He turned and grinned at me, looking exactly like the little demon. No surprise, since it was essentially his face in miniature. "This is the part where you remove that tack and give me the picture.For keeps." "Are you serious?" I wasn't sure. "Yes,Ella.I am serious." So I removed the tack and handed him the picture. He rolled it up very gently and put it in his coat pocket.

If a fountain could jet bouquets of chrome yellow in dazzling arches of chrysanthemum fireworks, that would be Canada Goldenrod. Each three-foot stem is a geyser of tiny gold daisies, ladylike in miniature, exuberant en masse. Where the soil is damp enough, they stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full-on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden-orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical superlative. Together, the visual effect is stunning. Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. I just wanted to know why. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. In an 1890 treatise on color perception, Goethe, who was both a scientist and a poet, wrote that “the colors diametrically opposed to each other . . . are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.” Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty. Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously material and spiritual, for which we need all wavelengths, for which we need depth perception. When I stare too long at the world with science eyes, I see an afterimage of traditional knowledge. Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? We see the world more fully when we use both. The question of goldenrod and asters was of course just emblematic of what I really wanted to know. It was an architecture of relationships, of connections that I yearned to understand. I wanted to see the shimmering threads that hold it all together. And I wanted to know why we love the world, why the most ordinary scrap of meadow can rock us back on our heels in awe.

The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire. ...Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700")... It was joined by a half-suit, a North Italian Morion of "Spanish" form, circa 1570-80, and a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads... There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. ... Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mache and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough." said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone - a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another. In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table - "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.)...

The concentrated structure of musical form, based on dramatic climaxes, gradually breaks up in romanticism and gives way again to the cumulative composition of the older music. Sonata form falls to pieces and is replaced more and more often by other, less severe and less schematically moulded forms—by small-scale lyrical and descriptive genres, such as the Fantasy and the Rhapsody, the Arabesque and the Étude, the Intermezzo and the Impromptu, the Improvisation and the Variation. Even extensive works are often made up of such miniature forms, which no longer constitute, from the structural point of view, the acts of a drama, but the scenes of a revue. A classical sonata or symphony was the world in parvo: a microcosm. A succession of musical pictures, such as Schumann’s Carnaval or Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage, is like a painter’s sketch-book; it may contain magnificent lyrical-impressionistic details, but it abandons the attempt to create a total impression and an organic unity from the very beginning. [...] This change of form is accompanied by the literary inclinations of the composers and their bias towards programme music. The intermingling of forms also makes itself felt in music and is expressed most conspicuously in the fact that the romantic composers are often very gifted and important writers. In the painting and poetry of the period the disintegration of form does not proceed anything like so quickly, nor is it so far-reaching as in music. The explanation of the difference is partly that the cyclical ‘medieval’ structure had long since been overcome in the other arts, whereas it remained predominant in music until the middle of the eighteenth century, and only began to yield to formal unity after the death of Bach. In music it was therefore much easier to revert to it than, for example, in painting where it was completely out of date. The romantics’ historical interest in old music and the revival of Bach’s prestige had, however, only a subordinate part in the dissolution of strict sonata form, the real reason is to be sought in a change of taste which was in essentials sociologically conditioned.

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.

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is Art. The production of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all,—that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms,—the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty "il piu nell' uno." Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works.

D'une manière générale, la miniature persane - nous l'envisageons ici dans ses meilleures phases - ne cherche pas à représenter le monde extérieur tel qu'il s'offre communément aux sens, avec toutes ses dissonances et accidences. Ce qu'elle décrit indirectement ce sont les « essences immuables » (al-'ayân ath-thâbita) des choses qui font qu'un cheval ne représente pas seulement tel individu de son espèce mais le cheval par excellence, et de même par tout. C'est la qualité typique que l'art de la miniature cherche à capter. Si les « essences immuables », les archétypes des choses, ne peuvent pas être appréhender parce qu'elles sont supra-formelles, elles ne se reflètent pas moins dans l'imagination contemplative. D'où le caractère de songe - non de rêverie - propre aux plus belles miniatures : c'est un songe clair et transparent et comme illuminé de l'intérieur.

When questions requiring reasoned judgment are reduced to matters of subjective preference, counterfeit critical thinking occurs. Some people, then, come to uncritically assume that everyone’s “opinion” is of equal value.

GROUP FIFTEEN had its own private medical facilities attached to a well-known London teaching hospital. State-of-the-art facilities, the best doctors in the country, absolute discretion. Control watched through the window as the surgeon bent low to examine the damage that had been done to Twelve’s knee. The man—and his three colleagues—were wearing green smocks, their faces covered by surgical masks and latex gloves over their hands. Twelve had been anaesthetised and was laid out on the operating table, covered by a sheet with a long vertical slit that allowed easy access to his right leg. The surgeon had already sliced open his knee, a neat incision that began just below the quadriceps and curved around the line of his leg. The opening was held open by medical clips, and a miniature camera on an articulated arm had been positioned overhead, its feed visible on the large screen that was fixed to the wall in the observation suite.

The book of Psalms was the ancient hymnal of the Jewish people. Most of the psalms were probably written for use in worship; one finds among them songs of praise, thanksgiving, adoration, devotion, doubt, and complaint. Martin Luther called the Psalter “a Bible in miniature.” Psalm 23, a hymn of trust in God, is probably the most widely loved. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The short story is not the miniature form of the novel. The art of the short story is entirely independent. In that same vein, there is no novel-writing tradition that especially governs the short story.

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.

Directed dabbling is what led me to Bre Pettis, a former art teacher from Seattle who started NYC Resistor, a Brooklyn maker space, and also launched the 3-D printing company MakerBot next door. I had been tracking Bre as part of our digital development effort. I e-mailed Bre to ask if I could simply hang out and watch what he was doing: “I want to understand the new wave of micro-manufacturing, and especially what you are doing with 3-D printing.” Resistor was a higgledy-piggledy series of rooms on the fourth floor of a run-down factory. There Bre introduced me to his “makers” as we walked between workbenches covered with bits of sheet metal and wires and boxes of odds and ends. I saw people making a miniature wind turbine and a portable water purification system. That is, GE kinds of things. One guy was building his own miniature gas turbine, because, well, he could. “Why not?” he said. “People want to live off the grid.” “We could use this ingenuity inside GE,” I said out loud. After NYC Resistor and MakerBot, I met with Shapeways, in Queens, an advanced contract manufacturer where people submitted designs to be 3-D printed for a fee. As we toured the space and talked about the jewelry they made, I

people of Wales gave Princess Elizabeth a child-sized, two-storey thatched cottage for her sixth birthday. Called ‘Y Bwthyn Bach’, this was no mere Wendy house, but a work of art as remarkable as Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House.IV With electricity and plumbing, it included a working wireless, the complete works of Beatrix Potter in miniature, an oil painting of the Duchess, personalized bed linen, a ship with Elizabeth’s crest on the vellum sail and a Lilliputian deed of gift from the Lord Mayor of Cardiff to ‘HRH Princess Elizabeth of York, hereinafter called the donee…’31

These were often tangible arts like miniature landscape gardening, Zen gardens

Don’t mistake Swarthmore for a miniature version of an Ivy League school. Swat is more intellectual (and liberal) than its counterparts in Cambridge and New Haven. The college’s honors program gives hardy souls a taste of graduate school, where most Swatties invariably end up. (The Elite Liberal Arts Colleges - Swarthmore College)

Find one thing you can actively complete and give yourself over to it, even if it is of no immediate benefit to anybody but yourself. Maybe you spend an afternoon wallpapering your bathroom, or baking bread, or doing nail art, or making jewelry. It could be two hours spent meticulously producing your mom’s fried chicken recipe, or ten hours building a miniature replica of Notre Dame Cathedral in your basement. Allow yourself the gift of absorption.

Not even the stretto fugues of The Art of Fugue are as single-minded as the Fugue in C Major, whose twenty-seven bars include no episodes and, apart from subject entries, no more than a total of two bars of transitional music preparing the fugue’s three cadences . . . plus a miniature peroration in which the whole thing gently goes up in smoke, up to a high C we have never heard before.

Alors voilà. On faisait des mômes, ils chopaient la rougeole, et tombaient de vélo, avaient les genoux au mercurochrome et récitaient des fables et puis ce corps de sumo miniature qu'on avait baigné dans un lavabo venait à disparaître, l'innocence était si tôt passée, et on n'en avait même pas profité tant que ça. Il restait heureusement des photos, cet air surpris de l'autre côté du temps, et un Babyphone au fond d'un tiroir qu'on ne pouvait se résoudre à jeter. Des jours sans lui, des jours avec, l'amour en courant discontinu. Mais le pire était encore à venir. Car il arrivait cela, qu'une petite brute à laquelle vous supposiez des excuses socioéconomiques et des parents à la main leste s'en prenait à votre gamin. La violence venait d'entrer dans sa vie et on se demandait comment s'y prendre. Car après tout, c'était le jeu. Lui aussi devait apprendre à se défendre. C'était en somme le début d'une longue guerre. On cherchait des solutions, lui enseigner l'art de foutre des coups de pied et prendre rendez-vous avec la maîtresse, pour finalement en arriver là : avoir tout simplement envie de casser la gueule à un enfant dont on ne savait rien sinon qu'il était en CE1 et portait des baskets rouges. [...] Certains dimanches soirs, quand Christophe le laissait devant chez sa mère, et le regardait traverser la rue avec son gros sac sur le dos, il pouvait presque sentir l'accélération jusque dans ses os. En un rien de temps, il aurait dix, douze, seize ans, deviendrait un petit con, un ado, il n'écouterait plus les conseils et ne penserait plus qu'à ses potes, il serait amoureux, il en baverait parce que l'école, les notes, le stress déjà, il le tannerait pour avoir un sac Eastpak, une doudoune qui coûte un bras, un putain de scooter pour se tuer, il fumerait des pet, roulerait des pelles, apprendrait le goût des clopes, de la bière et du whisky, se ferait emmerder par des plus costauds, trouverait d'autres gens pour l'écouter et lui prendre la main, il voudrait découcher, passer des vacances sans ses parents, leur demanderait toujours plus de thune et les verrait de moins en moins. Il faudrait aller le chercher au commissariat ou payer ses amendes, lire dans un carnet de correspondance le portrait d'un total étranger, créature capable de peloter des filles ou d'injurier un CPE, à moins qu'il ne soit effacé, souffre-douleur, totalement transparent, on ne savait quelle calamité craindre le plus. Un jour, avec un peu de chance, à l'occasion d'un trajet en bagnole ou dans une cuisine tard le soir, cet enfant lui raconterait un peu de sa vie. Christophe découvrirait alors qu'il ne le connaissait plus. Qu'il avait fait son chemin et qu'il était désormais plus fort que lui, qu'il comprenait mieux les objets et les usages, et il se moquerait gentiment de l'inadéquation de son père avec l'époque. Christophe découvrirait que le petit le débordait maintenant de toute part et ce serait bien la meilleure nouvelle du monde. Simplement, il n'aurait rien vu passer. Gabriel aurait grandi à demi sans lui. Ce temps serait définitivement perdu.

One of the most pleasant recollections of those busy days was a Babylonian dinner given by Present Morton to the friends of the expedition. The cards at our plates were written in the language of Nebuchadnezzar; the bread was of the shape of Babylonian bricks; the great tray of ice-cream was the colour of the desert sand over which sweet icy camels bore burdens of other sweet ices; and there was a huge cake, like the Tower of Babel; about it wandered miniature Arabs with miniature picks, and concealed within its several stages was an art treasure for each of the guests. Then and there, as the Director of the Expedition, I opened the excavations, and from the ruins of the huge cake I rescued and distributed its buried treasures - antiquities fresh from Tiffany's. Finally the host proposed a toast to the expedition, but it happened by some chance that no glass was at my plate. Imagine my consternation when the guests were raising their glasses and were expressing wishes for my success, and I could not respond! Did it portend failure? Was it destined that success be denied me?

humans have few redeeming qualities, but their fingerprints are miniature works of art.

A good many proverbs prove to be narrative vignettes in which ... the moral calculus of reward for the good and retribution for the wicked is turned into a seesaw of miniature narrative: “The righteous is rescued from straits, / and the wicked man comes in his stead” (11:8).... The two sequenced images, then, that the line evokes are of the good man, first seemingly pinned down and then popped out of the tight squeeze into which he has fallen, and the wicked man slipped into his place. This is very neat, but, we may ask, is that the world is? Obviously not—obvious, I think, not only to us but also to the poet in Proverbs, who has chosen these emblematic images to represent an underlying principle of moral causation that he believes to be present in reality but that he knows would never be so perspicuous in the untidiness of experience outside literature. This for him is precisely the advantage of literary expression, the possibility of understanding made available through “proverb and adage.

A good many proverbs prove to be narrative vignettes in which ... the moral calculus of reward for the good and retribution for the wicked is turned into a seesaw of miniature narrative: “The righteous is rescued from straits, / and the wicked man comes in his stead” (11:8).... The two sequenced images, then, that the line evokes are of the good man, first seemingly pinned down and then popped out of the tight squeeze into which he has fallen, and the wicked man slipped into his place. This is very neat, but, we may ask, is that the way the world is? Obviously not—obvious, I think, not only to us but also to the poet in Proverbs, who has chosen these emblematic images to represent an underlying principle of moral causation that he believes to be present in reality but that he knows would never be so perspicuous in the untidiness of experience outside literature. This for him is precisely the advantage of literary expression, the possibility of understanding made available through “proverb and adage.

People you haven’t met are easy to idealise, but people who don’t exist are even better. Once you’ve met someone you’re faced with both the uncomfortable realisation that they’re a person and the exhausting prospect of paying attention to what might be unique about them. Invented idols can be controlled. What happens when we’ve long admired someone for their talent and then find out that despite the fact they excel at darts, they’re socially conservative? How can we go on enjoying the way a person throws miniature arrows at some circular cork now that we diverge politically? And what if we find that people who make art can be terrible, perhaps even criminal? How do we get back the time we wasted enjoying their work before we knew that we wouldn’t have enjoyed it if we’d known? Can we not get some kind of certification of sanctity before we allow ourselves to be moved? Because to be moved by something made by someone who has done something bad would mean that a bad person possesses the capacity to connect to us; that they haven’t, somehow, forfeited their humanity. So we must be on guard against gurus, lest their imperfections infect.

Of all the countries Fairchild had visited, Japan struck him as the most advanced on matters of horticulture. He learned about Japanese miniature gardens, the art of Japanese papermaking, and the superior qualities of Japanese fruits and vegetables that didn't grow anywhere else in the world. Wealthy people introduced him to foods of affluence, like raw fish, seaweed, and a bean cheese they called tofu. He thought it impossible to eat with two narrow sticks held in one hand, but after a few tries, he got the feel for it. It was in Japan that Fairchild picked up a yellow plum known as a loquat and an asparagus-like vegetable called udo. And a so-called puckerless persimmon that turned sweet in sake wine casks. One of the most unrecognized discoveries of Fairchild, a man drawn to edible fruits and vegetables, was zoysia grass, a rich green lawn specimen attractive for the thickness of its blades and its slow growth, which meant it required infrequent cutting. And then there was wasabi, a plant growing along streambeds in the mountains near Osaka. It had edible leaves, but wasabi's stronger quality was its bitter root's uncanny ability to burn one's nose. Wasabi only lasted in America until farmers realized that its close relative the horseradish root grew faster and larger and was more pungent than the delicate wasabi (which tends to stay pungent only fifteen minutes after it's cut). Small American farms still grow Fairchild's wasabi, but most of the accompaniment to modern sushi is in fact horseradish---mashed, colored, and called something it's not.

Letting go of that hope meant letting go of James, which was like letting go of air, toes letting go of nails, and fairly comparable to everyone letting go of electricity in our time. That bad. But in the meantime, this would be a distraction. Purgatory. With drinks and meeting new people, more time to focus on lesson planning and craftwork, art galleries, miniature museums. Anything to keep the thoughts away from drowning the itsy bit of sanity left. She’d even settle for a state of temporary trance.

The interest shown at the beginning of the twentieth century in Parisian and Burgundian court illumination, which seemed the most perfect and significant aspect of this technique, had led historians to neglect northern productions, which seemed somewhat heavy, even rustic, by comparison with the former. Modern sensibility, influenced by expressionist traditions which western countries are beginning to appreciate, is allowing us a better understanding of the true quality of this art. The crudeness is due in part to economic problems: the absence of wealthy patronage and the need for cheapness. But it was also a matter of principle, of preferring the spontaneity of a gesture, the immediacy of an expressive form, to exactness and miniature description.

My task was nothing less than the moulding of the cultural sense of the nation, and it had two main heads. I had to guide taste into the right channels and I had to see that no one else guided it into the wrong. Thus it was just as important to discourage bad influence as to encourage good. To send a promising and impecunious young painter to an Art School with a Government grant was in itself a praiseworthy act ; but it was useless from the national point of view if it was not accompanied by drastic measures to keep the most suggestive sorts of French literature from entering our ports. To help a young genius to Valhalla was one thing. But it was almost as important, from the national point of view, to see that our youth was not brought into contacts with those packets of French postcards which are labelled, “Très rare, très curieux. Discrétion.” I take a good deal of credit to myself—though, of course, Pettinger got the kudos at the time—for tightening up the administration of the Customs so that such authors as Joyce, whose name was either James or John—I forget which—Stein, Baudelaire, Louÿs, Anatole France, Proust, Freud, Jung, Rolland, and others, were intercepted at the ports by the special Pornographie section of the Constabulary which I created with men borrowed from the uniformed branch of the Metropolitan Police. These men, ail of whom could read and write English fluently, performed admirable service in the détection of immoral literature. Art Exhibitions also came within the scope of my department, and I closed at least a dozen objection-able ones which contained nudes and other suggestive subjects. It was always a matter of regret to me that I was unable to take strong action about Epstein’s “Genesis.” But the Marchioness of Risborough—a leader of taste and fashion, who was not only persona gratissima in exalted circles, but also the daughter of a millionaire steelmaker—had publicly declared her admiration of it, and so there was nothing for me to do except to déclaré mine. And now, looking back on it, I realize how right I was to choose Lady Risborough’s opinion rather than the small advantages to be obtained from Epstein’s gratitude. Small tradesmen who tried to sell miniature replicas of the “Genesis” were ruthlessly prosecuted, however, by my department on the charge of exhibiting, or causing to be exhibited, indécent figures.

According to a renowned expert on mourning etiquette, even though attending a play or a dance is out of the question, it’s permissible to go to a concert, museum exhibition, or private art gallery.” Devon proceeded to read aloud from the letter. “This learned lady writes, One fears that the prolonged seclusion of young persons may encourage a lasting melancholy in such malleable natures. While the girls must pay appropriate respect to the memory of the late earl, it would be both wise and kind to allow them a few innocent recreations. I would recommend the same for Lady Trenear, whose lively disposition, in my opinion, will not long tolerate a steady diet of monotony and solitude. Therefore you have my encouragement to--” “Who wrote that?” Kathleen demanded, snatching the letter from his hand. “Who could possibly presume to--” She gasped, her eyes widening as she saw the signature at the conclusion of the letter. “Dear God. You consulted Lady Berwick?” Devon grinned. “I knew you would accept no one’s judgment but hers.” He bounced Kathleen a little on his knee. The slim, supple weight of her was anchored amid the rustling layers of skirts and underskirts, the pretty curves of her body corseted into a narrow column. With every movement she made, little whiffs of soap and roses floated around them. She reminded him of one of those miniature sweet-smelling bundles that women tucked into dressers and wardrobes. “Come,” he said, “London isn’t such an appalling idea, is it? You’ve never stayed at Ravenel House--and it’s in far better condition than this heap of ruins.

Behind the shoulders of the Virgin or some bearded Father of the Church, the Italian painter joyfully depicted a miniature town or a well-cultivated landscape, so small that only from a very short distance could all the details be discerned, the walls, towers, churches, streets, the artisans at work, the ships in the river, the ladies on the balcony, the children, the barking dogs, the gaily coloured clothes drying in the sun, the ploughman and the hunter. Many nordic travellers who lagged behind the times apprehensively thought they detected a slight odour of sulphur and brimstone about art and life in Italy, the ‘odour of unsanctity’. They still detect it today. The country was in fact slowly acquiring that pagan, slightly irreverent, sacrilegious reputation which it was never to lose. The reputation did not repel visitors. In fact, the danger of losing their souls attracted as many of them as the hope of gaining everlasting salvation.

Com as grandes artes também assim acontece; há que as ir roendo a pouco e pouco com os pequenos maxilares, até que se desfaçam e dispensem assim a explicação; passa-se aqui, ainda que em escala miniatural, o mesmo que um milagre. As artes e os milagres não podem permanecer na vida; tornar-se-iam insuportáveis e seriam por fim uma mancha coagulada de um outro mundo nesse mundo, que tudo sufocaria.