Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

W. S. Merwin (1927-2019)

Posted on March 24, 2019 by JMN

This tribute to W. S. Merwin is by Dr. A. Hope Jahren, a geobiologist who is author of the memoir “Lab Girl” and a professor at the University of Oslo. My own experience of Merwin has been mostly through his … Continue reading →

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“Aroha, Manaakitanga”

Posted on March 24, 2019 by JMN

Masha Gessen’s article is unusually affecting for me at a time when I feel enervated by tinyness in my own country. The article is a sensible and sensitive appreciation of conduct that betokens great — I would say towering — … Continue reading →

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“Ars longa, vittles brevis”

Posted on March 24, 2019 by JMN

  “My goal is to keep drawing forever, to get to all the restaurants in New York,” [John Donohue] said. It’s a silly goal, perhaps, but what goal isn’t? It’s cheap, it gets him outside (as opposed to eating in … Continue reading →

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Embrace-Aversive

Posted on March 21, 2019 by JMN

Do I love this painting? Love is not a word I would use to describe my regard for Warhol, which is high. He and his art are too trouble-makingly elusive and embrace-aversive for that. But this is true of some … Continue reading →

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“That’s not quite right”: Sociodicy

Posted on March 21, 2019 by JMN

How a target of students’ ire came to write a book about humanity’s transcendent goodness. To accept this belief that human beings are evil or violent or selfish or overly tribal is a kind of moral and intellectual laziness,” [Nicholas … Continue reading →

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“Something You Did in Latin”

Posted on March 21, 2019 by JMN

Carol Gilligan is the author of “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development,” published in 1982. The widely disseminated book “made her an academic celebrity.” She and Naomi Snider have recently co-authored “Why Does Patriarchy Persist?” The quotations … Continue reading →

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Overseas Research

Posted on March 20, 2019 by JMN

There’s a fun flub in the paragraph quoted below. A spellchecker would not have caught it, of course. Syntax-monitoring software might have. I’m not sure software that capable exists, however. It’s a reminder that good journalism is produced by humans. … Continue reading →

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Vivian Browne

Posted on March 18, 2019 by JMN

In 1965, the artist, educator, and activist Vivian Browne (1929-1993) began a series titled Little Men. Considered her first major body of work, it consists of oil and acrylic paintings of white-collar middle-aged white men… They’re dressed in button-down shirts … Continue reading →

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Yes, It’s in Focus, I Think

Posted on March 18, 2019 by JMN

Suh Seung Won, a pioneer of the process-based Korean painting movement known as Dansaekhwa, or monochrome, started out with hard-edge, translucent rhombuses that evoke unreal architectural spaces. In the large-scale recent canvases comprising most of “Suh Seung Won: Simultaneity” at … Continue reading →

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“The Birth of the World”

Posted on March 17, 2019 by JMN

The artist André Masson once likened this large (8-by-6½ feet) canvas [“The Birth of the World” by Joan Miró] in its radicalness to Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” of 1907. It is still startling that the two are only 18 years … Continue reading →

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