Geometry for Jews and other art notes

ART WARS:

Art at the Vanishing Point

Two readings from The New York Times Book Review of Sunday,

March 9,

"...the 'zeros' who inhabit the book... dramatize its speculations about the self.... the spectator who is 'the true vanishing point, the pinprick in the canvas.'''

Here is a canvas by Richard McGuire for April Fools' Day 1995, illustrating such a spectator.

For more on the "vanishing point," or "point at infinity," see

"Midsummer Eve's Dream."

Connoisseurs of ArtSpeak may appreciate Burroway's summary of Hustvedt's prose: "...her real canvas is philosophical, and here she explores the nature of identity in a structure of crystalline complexity."

For another "structure of crystalline
complexity," see my March 6 entry,

"Geometry for Jews."

For a more honest account of the
New York art scene, see Tom Wolfe's
 
The Painted Word.

Symbols —

Broadway:
The Sound of Silence

See also the footnote on the Halmos "tombstone" symbol in the previous entry, the entry "Dustin in Wonderland" of Feb. 24, the film "Marathon Man," and the entry "Geometry for Jews" of March 6.

Lovely, Dark and Deep

On this date in 1923, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, was published.  On this date in 1999, director Stanley Kubrick died.  On this date in 1872, Piet Mondrian was born.

"....mirando il punto
a cui tutti li tempi son presenti"

— Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 17-18 

Chez Mondrian
Kertész, Paris, 1926 

6:23 PM Friday, March 7:

From Measure Theory, by Paul R. Halmos, Van Nostrand, 1950:

"The symbol is used throughout the entire book in place of such phrases as 'Q.E.D.' or 'This completes the proof of the theorem' to signal the end of a proof."

ART WARS:

Geometry for Jews

Today is Michelangelo's birthday.

Those who prefer the Sistine Chapel to the Rothko Chapel may invite their Jewish friends to answer the following essay question:

Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture.  How is this geometry related to the work of Jewish artist Sol LeWitt? How is it related to the work of Aryan artist Ernst Witt?  How is it related to the Griess "Monster" sporadic simple group whose elements number 

808 017 424 794 512 875 886 459 904 961 710 757 005 754 368 000 000 000?

Some background:

• From Nobel Prize Women in Science, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Second Edition (2001), Joseph Henry Press:

  "Storm trooper Ernst Witt, resplendent in the Brownshirt uniform of Hitler's paramilitary, knocked on a Jew's apartment door in 1934.  A short, rotund woman opened the door. Emmy Noether smiled, welcomed the young Nazi into her home, and started her underground math class. The Brownshirt was one of her favorite pupils."

• On this date in 1962, Frank Sinatra recorded "I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues" for Capitol Records. This was his last recording for Capitol. He had already started recording for Reprise Records.

• Related reading:

  • A Beauty Really Bare, by Robert Hughes, and
  • The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe
    
    

Song of Not-Self

A critic on the abstract expressionists:

"...they painted that reality -- that song of self -- with a passion, bravura, and decisiveness unequaled in modern art."

Painter Mark Rothko:

"I don't express myself in painting. 
 I express my not-self."

On this day in 1957, Buddy Holly and his group recorded the hit version of "That'll Be the Day."

On this day in 1970, painter Mark Rothko committed suicide in his New York City studio.

On February 27, 1971, the Rothko Chapel was formally dedicated in Houston, Texas.

On May 26, 1971, Don McLean recorded "American Pie."

Rothko was apparently an alcoholic; whether he spent his last day enacting McLean's lyrics I do not know.

Rothko is said to have written that

"The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give (among others) memory, history or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood."

-- Mark Rothko, The Tiger's Eye, 1, no. 9 (October 1949), p. 114

Whether Holly's concept "the day that I die" is a mere parody of an idea or "an idea in itself," the reader may judge.  The reader may also judge the wisdom of building a chapel to illustrate the clarity of thought processes such as Rothko's in 1949.  I personally feel that someone who can call geometry a "swamp" may not be the best guide to religious meditation.

For another view, see this essay by Erik Anderson Reece.