Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

Limits of Art?

Posted on November 1, 2018 by JMN

What kind of change his or any political artist’s work can actually achieve remains an open question. In his book 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, the art critic Ben Davis argues that political art is not a force on … Continue reading →

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Martha Nussbaum, Philosopher

Posted on October 30, 2018 by JMN

She is also known for helping to advance the so-called capabilities approach to economic development, which holds that progress should be measured by things like increases in life expectancy and education, rather than simply by increases in income. Her work, … Continue reading →

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“… Mind of a Genius at Work”

Posted on October 30, 2018 by JMN

One note Leonardo wrote to himself reads, “Make eyeglasses to see the moon larger.” The first known record of a telescope came around a century later. (Elisabetta Povoledo, “In Leonardo da Vinci’s Scientific Notebook, the Mind of a Genius at … Continue reading →

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Subjoins Mons Veneris? Nope

Posted on October 30, 2018 by JMN

This week, the European Space Agency released a picture taken by its Mars Express orbiter that showed what it described as “a curious cloud formation” stretching from east to west near Arsia Mons, the southernmost in a string of three … Continue reading →

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Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1895)

Posted on October 27, 2018 by JMN

She had the loosest, least finished-looking of Impressionist techniques—a trait that helps explain her neglect, versus the more decisively branded manners of the men, but one that also fascinates. Her paintings, indefinite at first glance, are hard to stop contemplating … Continue reading →

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Persuasion

Posted on October 27, 2018 by JMN

“The only way you persuade someone is to listen harder.” [While setting aside the guns?] (John Hickenlooper, quoted by Roger Cohen, “Can Colorado Save America?”, NYTimes, 10-26-18) (c) 2018 JMN.

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Art Embraced

Posted on October 25, 2018 by JMN

[stifled guffaw] “Generally people don’t like to live with complicated subject matter,” Mr. Simons said. “But I have to feel the artwork stands for something that is important to me. I don’t like the idea that it has to fit … Continue reading →

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“Lobotomized by Rage”

Posted on October 25, 2018 by JMN

Maybe it’s always been naïve to think about culture in a moral vacuum. Art comes from someplace and brings with it at least a little of wherever it has come from or whoever has made it. Why not keep those … Continue reading →

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“Free Solo”

Posted on October 25, 2018 by JMN

[Reminds me of my mother — a historian, teacher, librarian, scribbler. (Ahem. I wonder who follows in her wake!) At her funeral I said of her grammarian and authorial chops: “For her, there was a good way and a better … Continue reading →

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Whitman on Abraham Lincoln

Posted on October 25, 2018 by JMN

“None of the artists or pictures have caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man’s [Lincoln’s] face,” he wrote. “They have only caught the surface. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of … Continue reading →

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