[Alternative Muses] Coming and Going: T.S. Eliot/Edgar Degas Mashup

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.”-T.S. Eliot (born on 9/26/1888)

The Millinery Shop, Edgar Degas, 1879/86. Art Institute of Chicago.

Edgar Degas (died on 9/27/1917): The Millinery Shop, 1879/86. Art Institute of Chicago.

A Selection of Quotes from Frequently Banned Books, Part Two

  • “A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.”-Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
  • “I have found God, but he is insufficient.”-Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  • “Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.”-Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

A Brief Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald on His Birthday

Dear Scott,

Another year has gone by, and I still find you as enigmatic and problematic as ever. You, who could write such beautiful words, ruffle my feathers like few others. You, who squandered such exemplary gifts, frustrate me to the point of madness. Although I’ve never loved you, not even a bit, I have spent some wonderful time in your company. At this point in the game, I realize that I will never stop questioning you and, in questioning you, relentlessly, learn more about myself than I ever cared to know. Happy birthday, you beautiful bastard.

Yours (but not really),

Maedez

F. Scott Fitzgerald by Gordon Bryant. Shadowland, 1921.

F. Scott Fitzgerald by Gordon Bryant. Shadowland, 1921.

“I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”-This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Daily Diversion #161: Reading with George

George Bellows Bookmark

Bookmark: Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909, by George Bellows Book: STILL, by David S. Shields

“Both of the inventors of the visual glamour, Eickemeyer and Genthe, came from the ranks of the art photographers, that cadre of aesthetically ambitious cameramen and-women who in the 1890s organized into an international community intent on fighting the slapdash amateurism of the mass of Kodak-wielding weekend shutterbugs, the routine posing and eclectic composition of the professional portrait studio, and the condescension of a fine arts critical establishment that denigrated photography as a mechanical craft.”-STILL American Silent Motion Picture Photography, by David S. Shields

A Selection of Quotes from Frequently Banned Books, Part One

  • “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”-Candide, Voltaire
  • “He look’d a little disorder’d, when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at the time, believing as it us’d to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them.”-Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
  • “There ain’t so sin and their ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”-The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Getting Back on Track with George Bellows

My step-dad’s funeral was two days ago. We have to empty out the contents of his apartment by the end of the month, so there is not a lot of time to spare for work or play. Much like life, we have to grab it whilst we can. Yesterday, my mom and I took a much-needed mental health break at the Columbus Museum of Art. The short walk there and back provided us with a liberal dose of sunshine, which was a partial cure in and of itself to the stress of the last two weeks.

A sculpture and its shadow

A sculpture and its shadow in front of the museum.

I was super excited to see the George Bellows exhibit, and it did not disappoint. Four large rooms are given over to the show, which runs until January 4, 2014. To read more about it, go here. Although his work encompassed so much more than the famous boxing images, standing in front of a few of those legendary canvases was extraordinary. I was also delighted to see a few copies of The Masses, for which Bellows supplied artwork, on display underneath a glass case. What an unexpected highlight!

Then, there was this:

Bathsheba, by Artemisia Gentileschi. Circa 1636.

Bathsheba, by Artemisia Gentileschi. Circa 1636.

Absolutely awe-inspiring in person!

An afternoon at the museum was a great reminder that art is good for the soul, and a further indication that life is slowly returning to normal.

“Try everything that can be done…Learn your own possibilities.”-George Bellows