Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944)

The idea that a woman got there first, and with such style, is beyond thrilling. Yes, I know art is not a competition; every artist’s “there” is a different place. Abstraction is a pre-existing condition, found in all cultures. But … Continue reading

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“Whereabouts”

Quite a few readers wrote to us last week to take issue with this sentence at the end of a briefing: “His whereabouts is unknown.” Surely, they wrote, it should be “whereabouts are.” Well, yes and no. Times editors consult … Continue reading

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Barbara Kingsolver

“I’m in a really unusual position,” she says, “because I work as a literary writer. I work at the level of the sentence, at the level of the image, the metaphor, the theme, but I also have this commitment to … Continue reading

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Julia Dixit

Our project must be serious. This is not for fluffies! — Julia Child (Dorie Greenspan, “A Cake Fit for Julia Child,” NYTimes, 10-10-18) (c) 2018 JMN.

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“A Weaver Who Changed Art”

“[Anni Albers] could’ve done painting later on, but she immersed herself in thread: Anni was a great person for working with limitations,” [Nicholas Fox] Weber said. “She used thread to make abstract art. Her best wall hangings from the Bauhaus … Continue reading

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Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)

The exhibition’s principal curator, Francesca Cappelletti, said her aim was to demonstrate “what Caravaggio’s intellectual legacy was, not only as a painter but as an inventor.” He found new ways of depicting age-old subjects, be they mythological or biblical, and … Continue reading

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Julian Schnabel: Rudimentary Concerns

“What the surface of a painting can be is an obsession of mine,” Mr. Schnabel said. “If you see how the plate paintings function, it’s very three-dimensional, both physically and spatially. I like dealing with physical problems and rudimentary concerns … Continue reading

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Dystopia Myopia

Quotation of the Day One of the things about looking at the world through a feminist lens is that we are already in a dystopia. — Leni Zumas, author of “Red Clocks,” part of a growing canon of female-written dystopian … Continue reading

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Leonardo’s Weird Faces

[All images are from Frank Zöllner, “Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings,” Taschen] [Leonardo’s] drawings often of men and women with strangely deformed or exaggerated features — which he called “visi mostruosi,” or “monstrous faces,” and which scholars … Continue reading

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The Scream

There was a time I literally screamed in my own dining room, about something that didn’t warrant such a scream… It was so — to use a word I use a lot in my first book — *inappropriate*. There were … Continue reading

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