For, when what he knows as art is relegated to the museum and gallery, the unconquerable impulse towards experiences enjoyable in themselves finds such outlet as the daily environment provides.
- John Dewey, Art as Experience
Love like the horse chestnut loves carbon,
like the sun isn’t millions of miles away
or doomed. Love like a blue fir amongst white pines,
like a wide shovel opening the earth. Rewind
your favorite moments over early dinners:
the correct identification of an olive tree, climbing
65 feet up a fat trunk, turning backpack pockets
into houses for leaves. Love as eagerly as sprouting seeds,
as hungry as a goat up an argan tree. Love like you are
spotting a red squirrel for the first time. Relish in your blooming
knowledge of Latin, wood chopping, propagation. Love as easy as
hibiscus roots drink rain. Breathe in the smell
of earth-drenched boots. Savor the quick-flowing photos of pheasants and hedgehogs and newts.
Live like a pioneer species. Love like sempervirents: evergreen.
Love like every green thing ever planted
will live long and never burn
- Christina Thatcher, How to Love a Gardener
Portrait Bust of a Woman (detail), Roman, Antonine Period, 140-150 AD
Photo by Erika Dufour
17th century astronomical art of Maria Clara Eimmart; celestial splendor from a forgotten woman who broke the bounds of her time.
(brainpickings.org)
Anne Boleyn’s Tiny Golden Psalm Book - she’s said to have handed it to one of her Maid’s of Honour moments before she was executed in 1536.
The pictures show a miniature of Henry Vlll on the left, with gothic cursive script on the facing page, and the gold tracery covers.
Detail - Angels “Ghent Altarpiece” finished 1432, Jan van Eyck.
Remains of colour on temple columns.
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token.
Mark Rothko, Statement
I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one’s arms again.
Mark Rothko, The Romantics Were Prompted...
I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add me to the sum of her.
Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or 'life,' we are making it out of ourselves
Barnett Newman, The Sublime is Now
Dip your hands into that dark and believe whatever you touch.
Garous Abdolmalekian, The Bird of Reconciliation tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
let yourself be a living part of death
Garous Abdolmalekian, Forest tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
Death wanted to be this beautiful but we buried it
Garous Abdolmalekian, Sea tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
and the moon is the mouth of a lover
Garous Abdolmalekian, Acquiescence tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
Tomorrow either I will murder you or you will rinse the knife in water
Garous Abdolmalekian, Flashback tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
Of the moon all that's left is a stain upon the window.
Garous Abdolmalekian, Necklace tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
he does not understand the reason for the moon
Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
Does the earth fill the mouths of the dead to stop them from describing what they've seen?
Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
A bird pecks at the corroded corner of the sky
Garous Abdolmalekian, Long Poem of Loneliness tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
We are the repetitions of the pieces of each other
Garous Abdolmalekian, Game tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
The rain hovering over the city for days finally fell. You were arriving after years...
Garous Abdolmalekian, Meeting tr. Ahmed Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
tragedy is thinking in action, thinking upon action, for the sake of action
- Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
The overwhelming experience of tragedy is a disorientation expressed in one bewildered and frequently repeated question: What shall I do?
- Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
The first rule of war is sympathy with the enemy.
Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
The world is slow to dissolve and leave us.
Matthea Harvey, Sad Little Breathing Machine
Make much of me why don't you.
Matthea Harvery, Not So Much Miniature As Far Away