Artistic Self-service

11/08/2014

Every portrait that is captured with feeling is a portrait of the photographer, not of the sitter...

11/08/2014

Whatever exists is far off and most profound - who can discover it?
Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it...

'Rembrandt: The Late Works' has arrived. Book your place now: http://ow.ly/CUd9k

The exhibition features many of Rembrandt’s self-portraits, including this ‘Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul’, the only painting in which Rembrandt depicted himself assuming the role of a biblical figure.

09/24/2014

What is seen was not made out of what was visible. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal...

08/27/2014

ABOVE ALL: "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for" (Ernest Hemingway).

08/27/2014

For memory: "History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies" (Alexis de Tocqueville).

08/06/2014

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Human beings must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

"Oh! Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it."
--Lady Windermere from "Lady Windermere's Fan"

07/02/2014

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
The difficulties of life are intended to make us better – not bitter.

"She dreams of him that has forgot her love;
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
'Tis pity love should be so contrary;
And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!”
--Julia from "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"

06/27/2014

Good to remember...
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."
--Helena from "All's Well That Ends Well" (1.1.233)

03/27/2014

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.

"I have no other but a woman's reason;
I think him so, because I think him so."
--Lucetta from "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (1.2)

03/27/2014

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
Only things that reveal an unknown fragment of human existence have a reason for being.

"Love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit."
--Jessica from (2.6.38), "The Merchant of Venice"

03/14/2014

What transforms this world is knowledge. Consequently, nothing else can change anything in this world.
Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

At her Harvard commencement speech, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earned."

03/08/2014

The word "love" has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.
Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?;
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she."

--Romeo from "Romeo and Juliet" Act 2, scene 2, 2–6