Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986). “The ZYX takes off… Piroux, Zissou, Georges Louis and Dédé try to fly, too, Rouzat, September 1910.” Silver gelatine print, around 1965, 60,1 x 74 cm. (Via Galerie Berinson)
Archives for July 2012
Orwell: Good Bad Books
The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.
Read the whole essay here. See also: Orwell on Why I Write.
Whale and Calf
“Whale and Calf,” artist unknown, ca. 1830.
“What it shows is a whale calf in the mouth of its mother. She is not, of course, eating it. (Those teeth are useless.) She is trying to rescue it. And that, my friends, was all part of the whalers’ fiendish plan. If whalers — big drivers of the economy in early industrial America — could get their harpoons into a whale calf they never missed their chance, because harpooning the baby was a perfect way to lure in the adult. The bigger the whale, the more oil.” More on this painting here.