The Mavi Contemporary Art Gallery holds this piece by Engelina Zandstra, here nodding towards geometries that color themselves when lines align but risk breakage, when lines drift apart or intersect with an other, to blue and grey tones
Images themselves are always in motion with the eye, but abstraction in motion with itself? Dynamism, say, sans dog.
*This week, I was disappointed to see the discontinuation of Mark Bittman’s “The Minimalist” series for The New York Times. For years, Bittman has been showing readers how to create meals that minimize ingredients and fuss while maximizing taste and enjoyment. Nytimes.com has a list of the most viewed columns and videos here. Funny… the most viewed ones tend to be the most recent.
*But beyond “Godot” and minimalism, the week’s been wrapped up in Cairo:
Christina Maria Cesario Santana died in a mudslide in Brazil, and her dog won't leave her side.
*Rethinking Advanced Placement, by Christopher Drew
Such honing is comforting, for sure, although I’m still hesitant about offering students college credit for a course they take in high school. In fact, many college refuse to recognize high scores on the AP test. If the AP transitions into a more skill-intensive (as opposed to knowledge-intensive) model, I wonder if we can move away from AP classes and towards AP assignments in traditional classes (“your essay must be 20% more developed than everyone else’s–here’s the AP rubric.”).
*More on Vivian Maier. Murder Mile posted this wonderful shot of hers.
*“Literature and Exile”, by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Natasha Wimmer)
“…because it occurs to me that when Trakl gave up his studies and went to work as a druggist’s apprentice, at the tender but no longer innocent age of 21, he was also choosing exile—and choosing it in a natural way—because going to work for a druggist is a form of exile, just as drug addiction is a form of exile, and incest another, as the Ancient Greeks knew very well.”
To think, exile as a borderless choice, yet a choice that is made due to a set of social, national, or physical restrictions.
“Sustainable Love: The Happy Marriage is the ‘Me’ Marriage,” by Tara Parker-Pope
The clear expression of what I’ve been thinking through these few months is both comforting and interesting. Just think: what time period is your relationship living in? How might cities help maintain (or disrupt) sustainable relationships? As an astute commenter points out, where’s the discussion of children, and how might they fit into this?
“It was Raining in Delft,” by Peter Gizzi
“I’ve been walking / for 7 hours on yr name day.” & “Things that have been already said many times: /
leaf, zipper, sparrow, lintel, scarf, window shade.”
Intel Visual Life’s look at the Sartorialist:
To spend such days people watching in the city!
“For Tolstoy and Russia, Still No Happy Ending,” byEllen Barry and Sophia Kishkovsky
While not specifically on Anna Karenina, my current read, any information on the reception of Tolstoy, his aesthetic, and his political beliefs provides a nice backdrop to the novel.
from “A Secret Matter of Grave Importance,” by Dara Wier
“We’ll make an endless show of the outright / clanking, irregular beating of our acrobatic hearts.”
Vivian Maier, a prolific (and formerly undiscovered) street photographer:
cnsnnt.wordpress.com 