Art Culture Politics
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A City Park in Bloom
Something for winter-winter: A City Park, by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), c. 1887. This was originally thought to be painted in Prospect Park, but it is now believed that Chase was in Tompkins Park, around the corner from where his father lived. Chase was an advocate of en plein-air painting — it shows the distance…
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The Age of Wonder Is Perpetual
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, by Joseph Wright “of Derby,” 1768. The painting is in the National Gallery, London, where I saw it in the oil this summer. Dramatically lit by a single candle, this tableau shows a scientist conducting the eponymous experiment and freaking out the children. Actually, in 1768,…
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A Parliament of Owls
York Street mural by Craig Anthony Miller (“CAM”), who wisely uses a gas mask when working with his medium.
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The Earth Abides
At the end of Emile Zola’s 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine, a train full of soldiers hurls along the rails into Paris. There’s no one is control of the thing, for, after much madness and jealousy, the engineer and the fireman have killed each other. The doomed train is Zola’s vision of technology going berserk.…
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The Blogger’s Eye
At the Met recently. A nice little detail of a woodblock print by Lucas Cranac the Elder (1472-1553): his emblem was a dragon with a ring in its mouth, looking here like a lip piercing. Tiny. The motif was part of his coat-of-arms. While enjoying the exuberance of Jacob Vosmaer’s c. 1613 “Vase of Flowers,”…
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Golden Frog
Found dangling in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The helpful tag led me to @seemetellme, an artist who gifts small objects around the city, and, indeed, other parts of world. A sucker for animal art, I took this but left another, non-animal, elsewhere in the park. For someone else’s accidental discovery. (Through the magic of the interwebs,…
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Where have all the Monarchs gone?
Did you notice that there were fewer Monarch Butterflies this year? I only saw a few here and there. They were notable for their rarity. Others I know reported the same situation. The word spread. Of course, this was all anecdotal, as the publicists and lawyers, who one supposes have to feed their children with…
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1000 Urban Miles, Part I
Or six and a half miles to start with… I walked down Clinton Street, still fairly leafy, with yellowing Ginkgo in particular still hanging on, but no female trees along this stretch; their tell-tale fruit, crushed upon the sidewalk, did stench up other sections of my route. The fig growing on a side street is…
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Put A Fish On It
Seen within a couple blocks of each other recently on Centre St. in the Inner Borough. Above, business card on the street. Below: throw pillow through a window (…it would be a serious pillow to be able to break the glass).Now, you may protest that a whale is not a fish, as do I. A…
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Little Pigs
Or boars to be more exact. This is an early 14th Century coat of arms from the Porcelet family of Provence. The family Piglet! I would guess they changed their name and emblem by the time the Renaissance showed up in the form of Caterina de Medici, who brought the fork, for sticking into Huguenots,…
Backyard and Beyond 