open eyes
“Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights, 1833.
No. 5
Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948.
ARTNET, Nov. 3, 2006. Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948, for some $140 million to David Martinez, 48, the Mexico-born founder of the London-based Fintech Advisory Ltd. The price is said to be the highest ever for a contemporary painting. . . .
Formerly owned by S.I. Newhouse, the 4 x 8 ft. work was included in the 1998 Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Speculation has Geffen, who last month reportedly sold two other blue-chip contemporary works for a total of $145.3 million, raising funds to make a bid for the Los Angeles Times.
moonlit lagoons
“Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
four plain white walls
“I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bedchamber, and hailed their familair unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
A comma
“A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it.”
–Gertrude Stein, quoted in footnote to The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
that mystic star
“I watch the glitter of that mystic star
Whose shifting tint
Matches the misty color of your eyes”
—Guillaume Apollinaire, from his Calligrammes, 1918. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
Gigantic shadows
“The sky was full of feces and onions. I cursed the unworthy stars whose light flowed out over the earth. . . . Ships of gold, unmanned, crossed the horizon. Gigantic shadows passed across the distant sails. Several centuries separated me from these shadows. I despaired.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire, Onirocritique, 1908. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
a red thread
“[H]e had read in a Chinese book about the customs of a foreign people whose heads could fly up to the trees to seize their prey, always attached by a red thread, and afterward returned to fit themselves into the bloody collar. But if a certain wind blew the thread would break and the head would fly away beyond the seas.”
—Alfred Jarry, Les jours et les nuits, 1897. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885–1918, by Roger Shattuck.
far beyond
“The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness: they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her; they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world. . . .”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
like wine through water
“‘I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.’”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.