Brainpickings, the beautifully intense mind sprout by Maria Popova. She write about books, philosophy, writers, thinking, tenderness, music, art, love, the beauty of life, and more I can safely say.
All these beautiful essays…
Started as a simple email list, the site has grown into a monumental achievement showcasing the richness of what the Internet can bring humanity.
In the format of a semi-dialog, David Hockney and Martin Gayford in A History of Pictures discuss the history and various aspects of picture-making.
Beautifully illustrated.
The most interesting thing is that Hockney seems not to have a very high regard for photography.
“… I question photography. A lot of people don’t, they accept the world looks like a photograph.
“But colour photography couldn’t get tones like those [Vermeer] as is has to rely on the dyes or printing ink. Those aren’t like paint, and never will be.”
“… I don’t know whether photography is an art. Some photographers considered themselves artists, and some didn’t
… Good photography does require intelligence and imagination but aa lot of it is very mechanical.”
Vermeer, Caravaggio, Degas, Delacrois, a few of the painters mentioned in the book that used photographic techniques for their paintings.
“Photography came out of painting and as far as I can see that’s where it is returning.”
Panoramas of death. Strange coffins with almost dead bodies. Grandchildren stand mourning alienated next to the coffin. A dog too. In the film, a cat in the polder that doesn’t seem to want to be photographed and disappears from view. The panorama that does not want to be a panorama because it is upright. A dress blows in front of the coffin, which has been placed on a touching pair of yellow bricks so that it stays upright.
Surely the best is the image of nothing, or of what was.
In the other half of Huis Marseille show Koos Breukels photographs of his son. Can’t stop thinking: what a brat.
Maria Popova announced her book, Figuring. First time in my life I have pre-ordered a book. It is arriving in February 2019. Maria Popova is the creator of one of the world’s best blogs: Brain Pickings.
The Dutch subtitle of Bill Bryson’s book Shakespeare is “Een biografie” (A Biography). I read the book and found this subtitle misplaced.
The subtitle of the english original is “The World as a Stage”. How does that translate to “Een biografie”?
Bryson writes right in the beginning of the book that very little is known about Shakespeare. So little, that you realistically can not expect more from a book about Shakespeare than the description of a handful of meagre facts, augmented with assumptions, phantasies and preliminary conclusions about the life and times Shakespeare.
Bryson even admits this is the reason the book has such a modest modest size.
Some time ago now, I visited the Prado in Madrid.
There was a special exhibition on Van Dijck, called El Joven Van Dijck – The Young Van Dijck.
An incredible assembly of masterpieces. The 2 hours I had in between other activities was massively insufficient.
My winner is The Lamentation over the Dead Christ is my winner. Blood drips from the canvas. The reflection of the light on the skin. 
It is full of Habsburg Jaws. In the paintings, in the sculptures. After a while this becomes corny and funny. All of these great emporers with these
massive chins express an sickly absence of joy and compassion. If there is an emotion they express, it is one of detachment and ruthlessness.
El Greco shows he is an expressionist avant la lettre.
Velazquez is also greatly present. His monstrously large horses and people with far too small heads seems to be taken from the perspective of a child or a dwarf.
