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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Puvis’s “Study for Summer,” circa 1890-91, pencil on paper. Credit via Michael Werner Gallery.
He was especially admired by Seurat and Gauguin, and also Cézanne, and later, Matisse and Picasso as well as the perennially underestimated American Maurice Prendergast. In their works and that of many others, you’ll find different combinations of Puvis’s carefully calibrated compositions; flat, unmodeled figures and restrained poses; shallow landscape space; chalky unified color; and unshowy yet remarkably lively brushwork. Van Gogh called him “the master of all of us.” Unsurprisingly, Puvis’s reputation was at its height at the time of his death, in 1898.
(Roberta Smith, “A French Painter, Fallen From Fame, Gains Historical Weight,” NYTimes, 1-31-19)
(c) 2019 JMN.
“The Artist’s Way”
Under the pines. Credit Ramsay de Give for The New York Times.
With “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate the creative soul…
She will tell you that she has good boundaries. But like many successful women, she brushes off her achievements, attributing her unlooked-for wins to luck.
“If you have to learn how to do a movie, you might learn from Martin Scorsese. If you have to learn about entrepreneurship, you might learn from Mark” — her second husband. “So I’m very lucky,” she said. “If I have a hard time blowing my own horn, I’ve been attracted to people who blew it for me.”
(Penelope Green, “Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages,” NYTimes, 2-2-19)
(c) 2019 JMN.
Fretwork
Detail from a painting by JMN.
I’ve been introduced by a friend to two good bands.
One is the Wave Pictures from Wymeswold, England near Loughborough in Leicestershire. For persons unfamiliar with Anglo-Celtic phonetic toponymy, Wymeswold is pronounced Maudlin, Loughborough is pronounced Chumley, and Leicestershire is pronounced Leicestershire.
I’m kidding.
The other is the Sleaford Mods from Nottingham. A Wiki-dip says the Mods are known for their abrasive, minimalist musical style and embittered explorations of austerity-era Britain, culture, and working class life, delivered in [Jason] Williamson’s thick East
Midlands accent. That works for me. I can’t get enough of accents, and I’m serious.
The appeal for me of these two bands is that they make music that doesn’t sound like it’s been heard before. They stretch me in a good way.
Music is on my mind. Frets are the slivers of metal on a guitar’s neck. Fretwork is how to finger notes on the slivers and grip chords on the neck. I’m afraid I’ll have more to say on this subject.
For now I’m enjoying the bands.
(c) 2019 JMN.
A Copy Editor’s Quibbles
And there are the words Dreyer currently dislikes most, even more than he dislikes “munch” and “nosh” and other distasteful eating-adjacent terms. Sitting recently in his book-crammed office at Penguin Random House, where he is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief for Random House — a division within the larger company — Dreyer scribbled “smelly” and “stinky” on a card and slid it speedily across the desk, as if the card itself was emitting a foul stench. “I can’t say them out loud,” he said.
(c) 2019 JMN.
Tono Romo, Ex-Quarterback
“I just want to leave you with something I’ve learned in this process,” he said, referring to his quarterbacking years. “I feel like we all have two battles or two enemies going on. One with the man across from you. The second is with the man inside of you. I think once you control the one inside of you, the one across from you really doesn’t matter.”
(c) 2019 JMN.
I Can Just Hear Those Hands
“[***’s] just out making noise, ringing his hands and pouting in a corner,” Aguilar said Friday.
(Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle, “Congress tunes out ***’s border wall threats,” Politico, 2-1-19)
(c) 2019 JMN.
An Interesting Painting
“Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair,” 1940, oil on canvas. Credit Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.
This painting by Frida Kahlo appears in the article by Rebecca Kleinman, “Frida Kahlo Was a Painter, a Brand Builder, a Survivor. And So Much More,” NYTimes, 1-31-19. It’s interesting on many levels, not least for its depiction of the locks of shorn hair strewn about. What particularly got my attention was how it incorporates writing and a staff of music in D Major. (I may learn more about the music when I play it on guitar.) The writing, in Spanish, says the following:
Look, if I loved you it was because of the hair; now that you’re hairless I don’t love you any more.
Cruel words.
(c) 2019 JMN.
Remarkable Insights from Working with Translators
A connection between languages
A connection between languages
On this day in 1786, a Briton living in India delivered a discourse on a little-known proposition: that Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, Greek and other languages might have a common source.
The commentary set off the field of comparative linguistics. Its fruits are known today as the concept of Proto-Indo-European, a mother language for dozens of tongues. The idea revolutionized not only the study of language, but also the sense of human history.
(NYTimes, 2-1-19)
(c) 2019 JMN.
EthicalDative 
The Staff of Life. And Caviar.
[Photo by JMN — Reus, Catalonia]
From a piece a while back in the NYTimes on how to make good caviar sandwiches. I’ve lost the reference, but I saved the above quote because I want to try this Pepperidge Farm bread, though in general I favor whole wheat bread. I’ve tried baking my own bread, but it’s too much trouble. So I’m on the lookout for commercial brands that aren’t lurkingly sweet. I’ve just returned from a lengthy stay in Spain, and can never figure out why excellent, fresh-baked bread is so available there and not here. I doubt, by the way, that I’ll ever make a caviar sandwich. I’d rather eat it straight out of the jar.
(c) 2019 JMN.