When everything else gets all squared away, I'd like to also have a society-wide shunning and damaging fine for putting a siren sound inside a piece of music.

If there's one thing I'm asking of my friends these days, it's to recognize that we are in a new era & that the old assumptions and instrumentation are obsolete.

That's true of climate, it's true of government & the world order, & it's true of technology. Let's not be those generals rushing into WW1 with swords in plumed helmets. Let's be smart, because circumstances have changed since we formed our first ideas about the world. We can't get to work until we let go of our continuity bias.

Albania is taking July 4th 250 more seriously than the USA. This livestream has been going on for hours. They keep singing Happy Birthday because everyone knows it and it's an anniversary of democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/live/LPBjPPJiU6w

Giulio Aristide Sartorio. The Precursor, 1927-8.

I got a slap yesterday from an art critic who pointed out that we celebrate the artistic innovators of each era who were in fact the outliers of their time. Their supposed greatness and influence was per force not recognized until later, with hindsight. That is the nature of avant-garde! This type of art is ignored now but was much more common in the 1920s than futurism, purism or art deco, which have become shorthand for that age.

#Painting

Re the 55pg report put together by the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee: Lol.

"What Americans are being asked to accept"? It seems long after the fact. I say again the conversation inside the USA looks like pitiful denial to the rest of the world. It's very confusing from outside. It's like a person in a building that's already fully burned down trying to renegotiate a singed insurance policy they found in the wreckage. One they never even signed.

Deserted city under the broiler.

We haven't seen anything like this since covid began.

I don't know about y'all but it seems like I'm living in a world where most people and companies are not doing the job I pay them to do.

So god bless the barber who just cuts hair, without delay, app, upsell, AI, IPO, lack of skill, substitution, franchising, tracking, loyalty card, conversation, updates to terms & conditions, or scheduling/staffing errors. That ol' geezer is going to get my business til he's dead.

How perfect is this water on the plumbago today!?

Howard Hodgkin. Dark Evening, 2011.

Each artist creates a visual language, of color/form/pattern/sign/themes, and to fully read what they present to us we have to speak it with them. Most times that means we have to learn a new style. In a first encounter Hodgkin can seem simplistic and naive to the point of childhood fingerpainting. But if we look back at his oeuvre, work after work through decades, his language starts to be more legible and we glimpse beyond that first impression.

#Painting

Just chiming in with my 2-cents on the larger discussion I'm seeing here of electric ranges versus gas stoves:

I no longer see ANY upside to gas, and I was a hardcore gas-stove devotee. The new ranges ROCK, with faster heating, more precision, easier cleaning, more efficient of course, less dangerous, and yes even cast-iron compatible.

Following some helpful feedback, I'm going to post more people-pleasing and edifying pictures with less tortured political innuendo. Beauty may not save the world, but it certainly helps the medicine go down.

Egon Schiele. Harbor of Trieste, 1907.

I like his landscape work even better than his more famous human figures, though they're not so far apart. Also, I'm always surprised how he, Kirchner, Gauguin and the like (there's a list) have escaped broader censure in our age of MeToo.

#Painting

Does anyone know what this medieval rainbow-like pixelated motif is called? It occurs in both mosaic and paint around the 12th c.