-
Recent Posts
Archives
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
Categories
Meta
Twitter
Error: Please make sure the Twitter account is public.
Tag Archives: style
Be Paint
… [Clement] Greenberg’s organizing idea was surprisingly simple: modern painting, having ceased to be illustrative, ought to be decorative. Once all the old jobs of painting—portraying the bank president, showing off the manor house, imagining the big battle—had been turned … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged art, criticism, film, language, painting, photography, rhetoric, society, style
Leave a comment
But Also Thank the Devil
The worst way to defeat a social or cultural ill is to declare war on it. The U.S. declares war on problems it can’t or won’t solve. The worst way to foster a social or cultural good is to declare … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged language, personal, poetry, rhetoric, society, style, writing
Leave a comment
Wide Load
Jason Farrago lavishes a container shipload of exegetical rumination on Julie Mehretu’s paintings. Lines accreted in an essentially radial configuration, with large arcs orbiting an absent central axis, and orthogonal spokes sprouting from the core. (The Mehretu black line is … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged art, criticism, drawing, galleries, journalism, language, painting, rhetoric, style
7 Comments
The Humble Art
I support the premise, aspirationally, that translation “involves being a writer,” to quote this article. The premise piggybacks on something I took on board long ago — that the first asset of a capable translator is to write well in … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged culture, language, literature, pandemic, poetry, style, translation, writing
Leave a comment
‘Ethics of Translation’ (?)
As a presumptive translator I’m nagged by a sense of straying where I don’t belong. Where is my writ to translate into a non-native language, for example? I didn’t suck Spanish from mother’s teat. How can I possibly match what … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged culture, English-Spanish, language, personal, poetry, Spanish-English, style, translation, writing
4 Comments
‘Bad Boy’ Harpsichordist
Scott Ross moved to France when he was 12 years old. He studied harpsichord and organ at the Paris and Nice Conservatories, and in 1971 won the Bruges International Competition, in Belgium. Five years before dying of AIDS in 1982 … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged harpsichord, music, pedagogy, Scarlatti, Scott Ross, style
Leave a comment
Cambiando la perspectiva.
Imaginando. Cambiando la perspectiva. A mi colega que estudia español en Gran Bretaña: te va a gustar esta foto de iglesia con su ángulo dinámico.
Shiny Objects and Hot Takes
When I re-read my EthicalDative posts at a later date they often seem overly arch or frivolous — less trenchant and cleansing than they felt at the moment of posting. “Stale” is the word to describe them, I suppose, with … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged blogging, journalism, language, personal, rhetoric, style, writing
Leave a comment
‘Certitudes’
This is the Cubist revolution: Here, for the first time in Western art since the Renaissance, the world as we see it no longer has primacy. The picture is no longer an act of perception. It’s an act of imagination, … Continue reading
Posted in Commentary, Quotations
Tagged art, criticism, Cubism, drawing, Juan Gris, language, painting, style
Leave a comment
‘Cry of Pain’
Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” ruefully ironizes over a lad clever enough to “slip betimes away / From fields where glory does not stay.” Novelists, though, get more mileage out of superannuated jocks — Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom, Malamud’s Roy … Continue reading →