Explosive Inheritance

by Christopher Benfey

New York Times
July 30, 2010

The tale that Lyndall Gordon unveils in “Lives Like Loaded Guns” is so lurid, so fraught with forbidden passions, that readers may be disappointed to find that no actual gun goes off in this feverish account of the Dickinson family “feuds.” There are metaphorical guns galore, including Dickinson’s self-portrait as lethal wallflower: “My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun — / In Corners — till a Day / The Owner passed — identified — / And carried Me away.” Gordon, who has written highly regarded biographies of Charlotte Brontë, T. S. Eliot and Mary Wollstonecraft, detects two patterns of “explosive inheritance” in Dickinson, who happened to have a grandmother named Gunn: eruptions in the lives and in the poems.

Dickinson’s Amherst, as Gordon sees it, was built on Puritanical propriety, where the “elect” attended church and eccentricity was hidden. The Dickinsons were the “first family.” The poet’s grandfather was a founder of Amherst College; her father, Edward, and her older brother, Austin, both lawyers, served in turn as its treas­urer. Edward, elected to a term in Congress, showed off his marriageable daughters, Emily and Lavinia, on a tour of Washington. On their return, in 1855, he purchased the imposing brick Homestead on Main Street, and planned a showy residence next door for Austin’s family.

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Picasso vs. Degas

by Christopher Benfey

Slate
June 16, 2010

Two giants of Modern painting face off at the Clark Art Institute.

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room (The Tub), 1901. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Edgar Degas, In a Café (L'Absinthe), 1875-76. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal, 1903. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

(Left) Edgar Degas, Woman Ironing, 1876-87. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
(Right) Pablo Picasso, Woman Ironing, 1904. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1879-81. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.

Pablo Picasso, Standing Nude, 1907. Museo del Novecento, Milan.

Pablo Picasso, Degas Among the Prostitutes. First Appearance of Degas, 1971

 

Edgar Degas, Combing the Hair (La Coiffure), circa 1896. The National Gallery, London.

Pablo Picasso, Nude Wringing Her Hair, 1952. Private Collection.

Was Hypatia of Alexandria a Scientist?

a film review by S. James Killings

eSKEPTIC
July 28, 2010

The film Agora, released in theatres in late 2009 in Spain and this summer in the United States, portrays an unlikely heroine for the popular American audience — the ancient mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, played by Rachel Weisz. Although renowned as a Neo-Platonic philosopher during her lifetime, she is remembered more often for her death than for her life. In 415 AD the pagan Hypatia was caught up in the political and religious violence that routinely swept Alexandria and murdered by a group of fanatical Christian monks who were intent on making an example of her. One of her colleagues, the Syrian Damascius, placed the blame squarely on the Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria and his Christian followers.

In the 18th century, the Enlightenment thinkers John Toland and particularly Voltaire seized on Damascius’ story of Hypatia’s death as symbolic of the antagonistic nature the Christian religion had toward the freedom of inquiry. They imagined her as a martyred symbol of free thought who was destroyed by the irrational dogmas of the growing ecclesiastical patriarchy. Her death, according to her blossoming legend, set back free inquiry a thousand years and ended the scientific hopes of the Hellenistic Age. This image of Hypatia as an Enlightenment symbol was to have far-reaching influence well into the 20th century, as Maria Dzielska explains in her book, Hypatia of Alexandria, so much so that it has become difficult now to untangle the historical Hypatia from her literary legend. Amenábar’s Hypatia, also apparently influenced by Carl Sagan’s portrayal of her in his documentary film Cosmos, appears to be another cultural product of this Enlightenment legend.

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More about the film

Roger Ebert's Review

Possente, Possente Ftha (Toscanini on Verdi)

Arturo Toscanini conducts a concert performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida for a live NBC telecast. The complete opera was conducted in a two-part concert performance at the Studio 8-H of NBC in New York City. In this clip Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on March 26, 1949 and the soprano singing the High Priestress is Teresa Stich-Randall, an amazing artist discovered by Toscanini who called her "the find of the century" and engaged her to sing the High Priestress and Nannetta in his NBC recordings of Aida and Falstaff.

New York State of Mind

by Elizabeth Hawes

New York Times
July 26, 2010

I have lived in New York for 32 years, but it was only in 2000, when I moved downtown, that I finally felt settled in the city.

I feel a calm and security that I did not experience in my decades of residence on the Upper East and Upper West sides. This is not to say I was unhappy or discontent with earlier digs or did not consider the first brownstone apartments and the later and progressively larger prewar spreads as homes – because I did, ever more intensely so as they began to fill with children, animals and the pieces of furniture, like a dining room table or a grand piano, that are the badges of permanent domesticity. And it is fair to say that my respective neighborhoods, each in turn, provoked my interest and allegiance; when I moved a mere seven blocks down Broadway, it involved considerable shifting of routine and considerable disorientation. I did not know until I came to New York how intimately you can relate to your streetscape and how personal and grounding experiencing architecture can be. But until I moved downtown, I didn’t know the nature of my sense of place in the city.

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The da Vinci method: Shadow strokes

Economist
July 22, 2010

The Mona Lisa’s lure is so strong that Louvre Museum officials find it wise to keep her safely stowed behind bulletproof glass. She is let out of her protective cage once a year, for a whiff of fresh air. And this is when many a researcher would love to get their hands on Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous muse, in order to find out more about how she was painted.

For a long time, scientists and curators have wondered how da Vinci created shadows on her face with seemingly no brushstrokes or contours. Art experts call this shadowing technique sfumato—like the Italian word for smoke, fumo. Experts have long suspected sfumato shadowing has something to do with the glazes that da Vinci used above the paint layer. But proving this has been difficult because snatching a sample of the Mona Lisa’s face for chemical analysis is, unsurprisingly, frowned upon.

Instead, Louvre scientists led by Philippe Walter tried to solve the mystery using a hands-off technique called X-ray fluorescence, which can divulge details about the thickness and chemical composition of a painter’s individual brush strokes without damaging artwork. Focusing X-rays on faces in seven of da Vinci’s masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa, Dr Walter’s team found that the artist would first paint in the basic flesh tones. Then da Vinci applied up to 30 incredibly thin strokes of glaze above the flesh tone—many just a few micrometres thick.

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See also

Nighthawks State of Mind

by Jeremiah Moss

New York Times
July 2, 2010

In 1941, Edward Hopper began what would become his most recognizable work, one that has become an emblem of New York City. “‘Nighthawks,’” Hopper said in an interview later, “was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet.” The location was pinpointed by a Hopper expert, Gail Levin, as the “empty triangular lot” where Greenwich meets 11th Street and Seventh Avenue, otherwise known as Mulry Square. This has become accepted city folklore. Greenwich Village tour guides point to the lot, now owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and tell visitors that Hopper’s diner stood there. But did it?

Not long ago, one of the readers of my blog, Vanishing New York, sent in an old photo of the lot. There was no diner, only an Esso gas station and a White Tower burger joint that looked nothing like the moody, curved, wedge-shaped lunch counter in “Nighthawks.” An urban mystery had just revealed itself: If the diner wasn’t in the empty lot, then where was it?

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More on Hopper

The Economics of ‘Seinfeld’

Wall Street Journal
July 21, 2010

“This is a paper about nothing.”

So begins Princeton economics professor Avinash Dixit’s academic paper “ An Option Value Problem from Seinfeld.”

The paper uses option pricing theory to deconstruct Elaine’s decisions in the “Seinfeld” episode number 119 “ The Sponge.” In it, Elaine’s preferred contraceptive sponge goes off the market, sparking an ultimately fruitless hunt for a greater supply. Her limited supply of contraceptive sponges forces her to reassess their usage, and decide whether a potential partner is “sponge-worthy” or not.

“You are deciding whether or not to make an investment decision,” Prof. Dixit says. “The mathematical techniques are exactly the same as financial options.”

The purpose of the paper is “to quantify this concept of spongeworthiness,” where the investment is the partner. If sponges were unlimited in supply at a constant price, then Elaine’s decision about whether a partner would be sponge-worthy or not would be yes for any quality greater than zero.

But when stock becomes limited, a “spongeworthiness threshold” is required, dependent on the number of sponges she has left. The fewer the sponges, the higher the threshold for using one.

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You can find the paper here

Read more about "The Sponge" episode

Don't mention the mockingbird!

Daily Mail
June 27, 2010

In the 50 years since Harper Lee published her classic novel that mesmerised 40million readers, she has barely written another word – and turned into an almost total recluse.

So when her friends agreed to give our reporter an introduction, it was on one strict condition...Don’t mention the Mockingbird

Despite the thick, black sunglasses, there is something familiar about the frail 84-year-old woman as she is helped falteringly towards the lake shore.

A delighted smile flickers across her face as ducks and Canada geese flock round to feed on the scraps of bread brought from the care home where she lives in a modest apartment.

Dressed in a clean but faded T-shirt and loosely fitting gingham slacks, she attracts barely a glance from passers-by.

Yet hers is the face which has stared from the cover of a book that has hypnotised more than 40 million readers around the world, one that has frequently been rated as one of the ten most important books published in the past century.

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Uncommon Questions for Uncommon Students

The University of Chicago has long been renowned for its provocative essay questions. We think of them as an opportunity for students to tell us about themselves, their tastes, and their ambitions. They can be approached with utter seriousness, complete fancy, or something in between.

Each year we email newly admitted and current College students and ask them for essay topics. We receive several hundred responses, many of which are eloquent, intriguing, or downright wacky.

As you can see by the attributions, some of the questions below were inspired by submissions by your peers.

This Year's Essay Questions

Essay Option 1

Find x.

Inspired by Benjamin Nuzzo, an admitted student from Eton College, UK

Essay Option 2

Dog and Cat. Coffee and Tea. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. Everyone knows there are two types of people in the world. What are they?

Inspired by an alumna of the Class of 2006

Essay Option 3

Salt, governments, beliefs, and celebrity couples are a few examples of things that can be dissolved. You’ve just been granted the power to dissolve anything: physical, metaphorical, abstract, concrete… you name it. What do you dissolve, and what solvent do you use?

Inspired by Greg Gabrellas, A.B. 2009

Essay Option 4

“Honesty is the best policy, but honesty won’t get your friend free birthday cake at the diner.” - Overheard in the city of Chicago.

Does society require constant honesty? Why is it (or why is it not) problematic to shift the truth in one’s favor, even if the lie is seemingly harmless to others? If we can be “conveniently honest,” what other virtues might we take more lightly?

Inspired by Eleanor Easton, a second-year in the College

Essay Option 5

In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose a question of your own. If your prompt is original and thoughtful then you should have little trouble writing a great essay. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk and have fun.

Some classic questions from previous years…

The Brain on Jazz

UTNE Reader
July-August 2010

Great composers wrote and rewrote their works, but a jazz musician playing a solo passage is engaging in an amazing mental feat of spontaneous creation—and researchers are studying these artistically charged moments for important clues about creativity and learning.

For the March 2010 issue, Urbanite interviewed Charles Limb, an otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins University with a research fellowship to study the brain through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. Limb is also a saxophonist and has always wondered what takes place in the brain when a jazz musician improvises.

To find out, Limb had jazz musicians play memorized music while being monitored by an fMRI machine. He then asked them to start improvising and noticed a shift in neurological activity. Their scans showed less activity in the areas that represent self-censoring and inhibition and more in the area that indicates self-expression. Limb interpreted this shift as a possible sign of “spontaneous creativity.”

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Curator John Elderfield on MoMA’s Blockbuster Matisse Exhibit

Wall Street Journal
July 16, 2010

On Sunday, The Museum of Modern Art in New York will open what promises to be a blockbuster show: “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917.” The exhibit focuses on what was the most creative period of Henri Matisse’s career, and features more than 110 of his artworks.

The exhibit was curated by John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture at MoMA and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer curator of modern art at The Art Institute of Chicago.

The show employs recent art-history research and fresh methods of scientific investigation to present a new understanding how Matisse’s work evolved.

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‘Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917′ at MoMA

Wall Street Journal
July 16, 2010

Great artists are sometimes able to experience a moment when the muse touches them and they’re able to create work of such startling innovation that the roots of their inspiration remain a mystery even to them.

“Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” seeks to explore Henri Matisse’s moment, a pivotal five-year period in which the artist produced what may have been the most creative and experimental art of his celebrated career.

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Remembering One of Opera's Finest

Wall Street Journal
July 17, 2010

The death on July 5 of the splendid Italian basso, Cesare Siepi, 87, may not have robbed the opera world of a current luminary. Nevertheless, as he was widely hailed as one of the greatest and most popular Italian bassos of the 1950s and '60s—the precursor to such rare and outstanding bassos of our day as the veteran Italian Ferruccio Furlanetto and the German René Pape—Siepi's passing invites us to reflect on the qualities that made him outstanding in his prime.

Tall and strikingly handsome, Siepi was vocally—and physically—the natural heir of Ezio Pinza, the great Italian basso of the previous generation. Pinza's commanding voice and good looks had made him an operatic idol from the '20s through '40s, and these qualities persuaded Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to select him—at 56—to create the role of Emile de Becque in "South Pacific" on Broadway (thereby easing Pinza's retirement from the rigors of full-blown opera to the less vocally demanding world of musical comedy and film).

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Drew Sheneman (July 15, 2010)

Canaletto, Venice

Matisse at MoMA: Carving With Color

by Roberta Smith

New York Times
July 15, 2010

The Museum of Modern Art’s extraordinary “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917” is not your garden-variety Matisse exhibition. It contains few signs of the artist who said a painting should be the equivalent of a soothing armchair. By the end of this show you may wonder if that Matisse ever really existed, despite his much-quoted, overinterpreted words to that effect.

Instead “Matisse: Radical Invention” offers a view of a driven, even tormented Matisse, who second-guessed himself, rethought and reworked his images and often left them looking bracingly fresh and conditional, even unfinished. We see an artist increasingly interested in making clear not just his painting process, but also a kind of emotional concentration that, while hardly Expressionist, did not exactly exemplify the Olympian detachment habitually attributed to him.

With more than 100 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, the Modern’s show, which opens Sunday, offers a close reading of four of the most arduous years of Matisse’s long career, as well as the six or so preceding them. It was organized by John Elderfield, a veteran of several major Matisse exhibitions and the Modern’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, and Stephanie D’Alessandro, curator of modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Made in Germany

by Brian Ladd

New York Times
July 9, 2010

By 1900, nearly everyone agreed that there was something special about the Germans. Their philosophy was more profound — to a fault. So was their music. Their scientists and engineers were clearly the best. Their soldiers were unmatched.

Did this German superiority bode well or ill for the new century? Some foreigners served up dire warnings, but others were rapt admirers. Richard Wagner’s English son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, even wrote a weighty tome arguing that the Germans were the only true heirs of classical Greece and Rome. Many Germans were happy to agree.

After world war broke out in 1914, German intellectuals rallied in indignant defense of a superior culture besieged by barbarians. Thomas Mann, for one, was anything but a flaming nationalist, but he wrote at length about the need to defend Germany’s unique cultural profundity.

Mann came to regret his fulminations long before 1933, when a more noxious band of German chauvinists drove him into exile. And in early 1945, in California, he read Joseph Goebbels’s defiant proclamation that the Germans’ national greatness was the reason an envious world had united against them. Mann was honest enough to confess to his diary that this was “more or less what I wrote 30 years ago.”

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Top Ten Best Seinfeld Moments

Seinfeld and Philosophy

Seinology

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