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[ by Charles Cameron — the worlds within this world are to be found in the workshops of Anselm Kiefer and William Vollmann ]
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Artist one of two: Anselm Kiefer:

Kiefer devoted himself to investigating the interwoven patterns of German mythology and history and the way they contributed to the rise of Fascism. He confronted these issues by violating aesthetic taboos and resurrecting sublimated icons. For example, in his 1969 Occupations series, Kiefer photographed himself striking the “Sieg Heil” pose. Subsequent paintings—immense landscapes and architectural interiors, often encrusted with sand and straw—invoke Germany’s literary and political heritage. References abound to the Nibelungen and Wagner, Albert Speer’s architecture, and Adolf Hitler.

Interwoven patterns? The Nibelungen? Albert Speer?

Seraphim? Jacob’s ladder, on which angels travel up and down? And in this time of nuclear and gas chamber holocausts, have they abandoned the ladder?

Seraphim is part of Kiefer’s Angel series, which treats the theme of spiritual salvation by fire, an ancient belief perverted by the Nazis in their quest for an exclusively Aryan nation.

Spiritual salvation by fire?

Okay, This fellow has the kind of dark mythological intensity that interests me. Let’s take a stroll through this man’s world — a deeper dive into his studio.

In we go:–

It was like a world inside the world. Huge metal slabs were leaning against the walls. Helter-skelter around them, on racks with wheels, stood large paintings of oceans and beaches, rivers and meadows, mountains and forests, some covered with corroded ravines of lead. Vitrines in every size were standing everywhere, filled with the strangest things: the roots of trees, rusty hammers, little clay pigs. Shelves that ran the length of the hall were stacked with balance scales, hooks, rifles, stoves, snakes, torpedoes, piles of bricks, heaps of dried flowers, even whole trees. There were more full-size fighter jets and a cage that was maybe 300 square feet that was filled with golden wheat and what appeared to be the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant with a bicycle dangling down the side.

Torpedoes! Whole fighter jets! Whole trees!

Kiefer‘s paintings, we learn, are overwhelming, dark and vast — Seraphim‘s a good example — enforcing silence before their enormous intensity. And then, suddenly — watercolors, “brimming with color — sparkling blues and brilliant reds” as bright as the moments of a life, and thus as intensely personal as the dark vast paintings had been impersonal and overbearing — as is, one is forced to admit, our century.

He’s an artist — exhibit number one.

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Here’s exhibit number two: the mind of William Vollmann..

Deep dive number two:

Bill greeted me warmly and showed me around the art-making area of his bunker, where he has a power engraver—he was working on a suite of Norse block prints when I visited—and where he prints his Dolores photographs using an arcane 19th century method called gum bichromate, which takes up to 28 days to produce a single print. Then he led me to the walk-in.

What’s in here?

This is the meat locker, where Dolores’s parts are. When the electrician wired it up, he asked, “What do you use this for?” I said, “Oh, that’s just where I keep my victims.” There was a long silence….She’s got her dresses here and I have my bulletproof helmet and various stuff from my journalism in there

Lecter, Hannibal? “That’s just where I keep my victims”?

Vollmann, like Kiefer, is possessed of a world both dark and sparkling bright. The sheer extent of his variety, too, is impressive, overwhelming.

I have in my room at the Pine Creek Care Center only two smallish bookshelves, and in them one book of Vollmann‘s: Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater. I mean, how not?

Kissing the Mask is so packed with beauty, understatement — erotics, Japan, Noh, Vollmann himself, Noh backstage, behind-the-scenes, photographs — ” a string ball of thoughts” — I’d like to say “torpedoes .. even whole trees” but Vollmann‘s world within the world is other than Kiefer’s, as though there were room for two worlds within our world — three perhaps — though I’ve yet to encounter the third — “with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses. porn queens, poets, housewives, makeup artists, geishas, valkyries, and Venus figurines” Vollmann addsall this in small print at the bottom of the book’s cover.

And Valkyries!

It takes my reading glasses and a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass to read these days, and my copy of the abridged, one-volume Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means is in storage — a book fate which I both mourn and feel intense gratitude for.

When Vollmann turns to consider violence — “to establish a moral calculus to consider the causes, effects, and ethics of violence” as Wikipedia has it — he spends twenty and more years on the task.

The abridgment, Vollmann says, he made in half an hour, for the money. Truth to the work’s title is to be found in the $700, seven-volume original set, 3,500 copies. Even with dollar-store glasses and Holmes’ magnifying glass — enhanced with the option of bright light the better to read by — seven volumes is beyond me, as 700 pages of the condensed would be.

And there are yet other Vollmanns, with other worlds..

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Oh but let Van Gogh have the last word, eh, Vollmann?

Vincent Van Gogh, Japonoiserie, The Courtesan

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Sources

Guggenheim, Kiefer, Seraphim

NYT, Into the Black Forest With the Greatest Living Artist

3 am, becoming dolores: william t. vollmann exposes his female alter ego

Wikipedia, William T. Vollmann

Metropolitan Publications, Van Gogh in Arles

[ by Charles Cameron — on excellence in writing with insight — Katy Waldman ]
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If you were reading the New Yorker after the Dem debate, you might have read [a], with [b] as a chaser, then worried that [c] —

John Cassidy, Joe Biden’s Faltering Debate Performance Raises Big Doubts

Jelani Cobb, Democratic Debate 2019: Kamala Harris Exposed the Biden Weaknesses

Susan Glasser, Kamala Harris Won in Miami, but Vladimir Putin Won in Osaka

But I hope you’ll conclude with [d], because I think it gets to the heart of the matter:

Katy Waldman, Democratic Debate 2019: Kamala Harris Is the Best Storyteller

It’s a much smaller piece, but right on the money. Consider:

Onstage, Harris, the former prosecutor, distinguishes herself as a storyteller, who conjures up images as well as arguments in ways the other contenders do not. Answering a question about health care, she spoke of parents looking through the glass door of the hospital as they calculated the costs of treating their sick child. Answering a question about detainment camps for undocumented immigrants, she hypothesized about a mother enlisting the services of a coyote, desperate to secure a better chance for her kid. “We need to think about this situation in terms of real people,” Harris insisted. She certainly demonstrated her ability to do so—to imagine policy as embodied in actual American lives. That narrative instinct framed the most powerful moment of the debate. Criticizing Biden for his past lack of support for busing, Harris began telling another story. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public school, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

The New Yorker is celebrated for excellent writing with insight: Katy Waldman has insight — nicely done!

{ by Charles Cameron — the embodiment of the word in script affords calligraphers of all religious beliefs the opportunity to illuminate the written script with beauty }
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And the Word was made Script and dwelt among us…

This would describe the indwelling of the numinous presence within scriptures, a doctrine found in the Christian usage that terms the Bible the Word of God, and even more explicitly in the Islamic doctrine that the Qu’ran is the Word of God in a manner equivalent to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation — that is to say, Christians teach that Jesus is the Word of God, Muslims that the Qu’ran is.

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Incunabula had tweeted:

Exquisite Tibetan calligraphy: The Perfection of Wisdom in 100,000 Verses, 13th – 15th century. This contains the first 3 sections, around 10,000 lines. Written entirely in gold and silver ink on heavy, multi-layered paper, stained black and then varnished on the writing space. pic.twitter.com/MFXUlvim0V

— Incunabula (@incunabula) June 7, 2019

The historian Tom Holland picked up on this, and commented:

How incredibly beautiful. It looks like something out of Rivendell.

H’e not the only one thinking along similar lines — there’s a Reddit that’s relevant here: The Tibetan Script looks much like Tengwar to me…could it have been Tolkien’s inspiration for written Elvish?. So let’s take a quick look:

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Let’s take a look: DoubleQuote:

Above, Tolkien’s Quenya script from the inside front leaf, lower border, of the first edition Lord of the Rings, in comparison with the silver Tibetan calligraphy of the interior of Incunabula’s Perfection of Wisdom in 100,000 Verses.

To be fair, Incunabula’s 13th-15th century work in gold and silver ink is a remarkable work of art, and it may be fair to compare it also —

—with the 9th century illuminated gospels of the Irish Book of Kells.

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Beauty, anyway — the word becoming scripture in script offers us a manner in which some glimpses of beauty — transcendent sister of goodness and truth — beauty become word..

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

As a form of amusement and also a bit of self-improvement, I decided to subscribe to a site, MasterClass.

In essence, Masterclass is an edutainment portal where celebrity practitioners in some field teach an online course and there’s downloadable materials and discussion forums – and in some instances, office hours – for those wanteing more connection or feeling of community. So you can learn chess from Gary Kasparov, politics from David Axelrod and Karl Rove, photography from Ann Liebovitz and so on in many different kinds of subjects. While some of these instructors may also be university professors, most are not so what you get is largely an idiosyncratic take on tips, techniques and procedures from some very accomplished person; some will dive deep into a meaningful level of their creative process for you while others will not, keeping it as a how-to for novices or interested amateurs. My primary interest in trying Masterclass was in writing and there are a large number and kinds of writers from which to choose. I decided to begin with the course by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell, who is one of the most successful non-fiction authors of the past 10-15 years with such books as Outliers, Blink and David and Goliath all of which made the bestseller lists for long periods of time and remain regular sellers.  Sometimes, Gladwell, a journalist, is bashed by academics and scientists as a synthesizer and popularizer, an argument that echoes the familiar complaint from academic historians griping about the success and technical errors found in popular histories preferred by the reading public. I’m not at all troubled by synthesizers, synthesis being a critical intellectual tool nor do I expect the average layman to start reading dry, usually exceptionally narrowly focused jargon-laden papers published in academic journals (in fact, almost no one is reading them). Gladwell’s style of writing and research interests, it must be said, have very little in common with mine but that was the point in taking his course: to learn something new.

One of the things that has struck me is the extent to which writing is really a reflection of individual thinking. Gladwell breaks some of the “rules” which we are all taught or have drilled into us by editors or as kids by English teachers. He prioritizes being interesting (the real strategic goal if you want to be read) over constructing a conventionally perfect narrative or even proving one’s argumentative point. Secondly, Gladwell emphasizes again and again following curiosity over a systematic research or a writing objective. Curiosity is really, Gladwell’s epistemological theme or driver.

Gladwell also has had in his lecture series some useful insights. I liked this one, when opining on the reasons why libraries are more useful than Google in doing research, best:

“The physical construction [and organization of books on] of a library shelf teaches you how to think“

Which implies many things and tools we are using in the digital age are teaching us not to think as well as extending our capacity to think.

We are what we write. We are how we write

[ by Charles Cameron — one from Mueller, one from Parkland ]
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Here’s one of those tiny little heart-shaped candies — its image enlarged, so you can read the message on it:

Courtesy of Meet the Press yesterday..

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And let’s not forget that a year ago, Valentine’s Day was shattered for the students, teachers, staff and neighbors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida:

Each in our measure, the rest of us mourned with them.