Battista Lorenzi, active in the second half of the 16th century, was commissioned to carve this symplegma, which once lived above a fountain in the Villa Il Paradiso near Florence, and currently resides in the Spanish Patio at the Met.
CXXXIX
Ah, Bartleby. Ah, baloney – in this case a compound of spectacular infestivities: Disegni del convito (Drawings of the Feast), a 1693 volume published in Bologna and described in a recently-published antiquarian bookseller’s catalogue as: “an extremely rare Italian festival book, [an] astonishing example of baroque creativity.” Said festival, held in the great hall of the Palazzo Vizziani, commemorated – and the subsequent profusely illustrated book documented – the feast in honor of a certain Francesco Ratta on the occasion of the expiration of his term as gonfalionere – literally keeper of the banner [of the communal state or prince]. The illustrations “give prominence to the temporary decorations and apparati. Other plates show the gorgeous loggia and wonderful sugar sculptures.
“The text describes the decorations at the banquet… [including] a circular banquet table [around which sat the sixty-six guests]…displaying wonders of nature and art…a kind of Wunderkammer…the central table piece, a large sculpture with four river gods, its general design inspired by Bernini’s Fountain of the Four rivers in the Piazza Navona…the edible features are clustered within the reach of the guests, around the base of the sculpture where smaller tables hold more than 50 silver plates filled to the brim with sweetmeats and candies… Toward the center of the table are 24 large leafy and figural sculptures. Standing at the heights of two to six feet, these trumps [sic] are made of sugar paste in mimicry of cast metal sculptures. Above these are 96 gilt figures with crowns of laurel, olive, oak and rose branches that recall the protective powers of the gods.
Among the trifoni [triptychs?] are sugar-paste basins surrounded by sugar laid down in patterns, like fine stonework in gardens. There was a golden figure intended as a gift for each guest… Within this ornate scheme the artwork proper, the gallery of paintings above, the silver and glassware…fold together themes of wealth and power. The [volume’s master] engraving presents the banquet as theater, seen in a fish-eye vies, like a vue d’optique.”
Ah, Bartleby. Ah, baloney.
Waiting for Bardot
Illusions of depth
An empathic Hamlet: I feel ya, Ophelia
Just cut to the packaging
Back to “Pergamon” at the Met to photograph the satyr-hermaphrodite symplegma and read the title card, whereby you learn that it is a 1st century Roman marble copy of what was likely a 2nd century Greek bronze. The patrician who owned or commissioned the piece did not, it seems, get to enjoy it for long, since the villa it graced was buried under Vesuvian ash in A.D. 79. When the villa was excavated in 1977, the archaeologists found that SheHe&It had been positioned at the end of a long reflecting pool thereby privileging one particular perspective. Though the title card doesn’t say which side was “front,” it isn’t hard to make a reasonable guess. When you download your photos, however, you see that your four shots are all oblique – hence none represents the primary sightline. Nonetheless, the drama inheres, albeit in a distinct way, in each view, and is even perhaps enhanced by the off-angle.
In discussing the abstract section of his senior thesis, one of your students occasionally refers to it as the abject. Him not being a particularly tongue-in-cheeky-wordplay kind of guy, you’re pretty sure he has no idea what abject means, but doubtless he heard it somewhere and it sounds enough like… to be…
Of course you offer no abjections to his usage…
O Lord, thank you – I once was raw, but now I’m cooked
On busy days at the Trader Joe’s in Chelsea, the checkout line snakes through the parallel aisles until, reaching a broader area toward the back of the store, it splits in two. Running parallel, these bend round again past an open freezer, meats, bread and beer. About thirty feet from the checkout area, the lines are physically separated by a barrier of snacks and prepared foods. A wall rears up on the right.
When you reach the head of your line, you must halt momentarily before being directed to a cashier in the large rectangular area just ahead. Physically, then, the space around you widens, but your focus narrows and you navigate as directly as possible to your clerk’s station.
What does this experience remind you of, and why does it induce a nascent anxiety every time you negotiate this environment? There is nothing in the process that resonates with any previous “negative” inputs. But you have read about and seen a design very like this in movies, and it is through these images that the feeling becomes viscerally threatening: that no-going-back threshold where the head of the line gates into the end of the line, where the nose-to-tail corridor opens out into the killing floor.
Anguish as a second languish
I was a vapour from the margin for the FBI
They were sending me to Treblinka, but I Aushwitz’d ‘em
Beauty, in the artistic sense has been extracted, abstracted from the depth of things and processed into rarefied form out of base matter. It is, in Jullien’s term, resultative.
With every breath you give and take, do you feel your connection with the rolling earth? If not, what are you doing here?
I was an isolated eidos for the FBI
That which is liquid in Plato, the Plotinus thickens
Genius. Genus. What a difference an “i” makes.
NYT headline on 4/28: FAILING HOPEFULS REGROUP TO SAVE THEIR CAMPAIGNS
Delouvreance and anti-delouverance
Peter deadpan
Yes and nomad.
I was a failing hopeful for the…
I was an abject receptionist for the…
I, Object!
Icing the body electric
It’s a prairie out there
Of bison men
Just how solid are your Platonics?
“’Compound is currently under control of the TB, so those nine PAX are hostile,’ the air controller said [to the navigator of a U.S. AC-130 gunship hovering over Kunduz, Afghanistan this past October 3] using common military shorthand for ‘Taliban’ and ‘People.’”
The above (and below) from Matthew Rosenberg, “Pentagon Details Chain of Errors In Afghan Strike,” NYT, 4/30/16, p. A1:5.
The gunship proceeded to level the hospital, killing 42 people.
“Even after Doctors Without Borders informed American commanders that a gunship was attacking the hospital, the airstrike was not immediately called off because, it appears, the Americans could not confirm themselves that the hospital was actually free of Taliban…
The Times piece goes on to condense the Pentagon’s three thousand page report into a forensic-sounding micro-narrative: “The AC-130 gunship moves slowly, and it is designed to circle above its target in one-to-two mile loops so it can bring to bear the weaponry mounted on one side of the aircraft, including a 105-milimeter howitzer.
“The targeting instruments aboard the gunship are typically calibrated to pinpoint targets at relatively short distances. The report said that the need to briefly move miles out to avoid ground fire resulted in the crew’s being unable to find the target after it returned to its original position…
“When the crew entered the coordinates of the target provided by Afghan forces… the gunship’s systems instead directed the aircraft to an empty field… the crew members’ only option was to rely on their own eyes.
“The description provided by the American Special Forces on the compound was vague. [It had] ‘an outer perimeter wall with multiple buildings inside of it,’ the aircrew was told in a radio transmission. ‘Also, on the main gate, I don’t know if you will be able to pick this up, but it’s also an arch-shaped gate.’
“This description could have applied to many compounds in almost any Afghan city. It also matched the layout of the hospital, which was about 400 meters… from the correct target…
“The aircrew appeared to be confused by the directions from the Americans ground in the minutes leading up to the attack. At one point, the crew was told it would need to hit a second target after the strike it was about to commence, and ‘we will also be doing the same thing of softening the target for partner forces,’ that is, Afghans.
“’So he wants us to shoot?’ one crew member asked the others aboard the AC-130.
“’Yeah, I’m not positive what softening means,’ the navigator replied.
“’Ask him,’ the pilot added.
“The crew did, and was told the ‘intent is to destroy targets of all opportunity.’
“At one point, a crew member… spotted the correct target and said it fit the description that was relayed by Afghan forces. But after ‘several attempts’ to clarify which building should be struck, the aircraft was directed to the hospital.
“Still, the crew members appeared to have doubts. They were even unclear on what exactly was meant by targets of opportunity. ‘I feel like let’s get on the same page for what target of opportunity means,’ the navigator told his fellow crew members.
“’When I’m hearing targets of opportunity like that,’ another crew member said, ‘I’m thinking you’re going out, you find bad things and you shoot them.’
“The conversation among the crew and the clarifications with the Special Forces on the ground continued until just after 2 a.m. when the AC-30 was given clearance to fire.
“At 2:08 a.m., the navigator radioed, “Rounds away, rounds away, rounds away.”
Two days before Puerto Rico is set to default on the first payment of its $172 billiondebt, the first death from complications of the Zika virus is reported in the presumptive United States, i.e., San Juan.