boygenius - $20
Backyard Garden, Chicago
From Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"
“…Like her son-in-law they misunderstood her: he delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart.”
Patrick Bringley on Loretta Pettway Quilt - "Lazy Gal Bars" (1965)
Loretta Pettway - Lazy Gal Bars
“…I am moved by the quilt’s geometry and also by its imperfections: the slightly wandering lines; the swift, unfussy stitching; the improvised materials. It has an abundance of art’s most heartening qualities, including diligence and inspiration.”
- Patrick Bringley, from “All The Beauty In the World”
Mardonio Margana - Mother with a Child on Her Back (1933)
Pinturicchio - Virgin Teaching the Christ Child to Read (1490s)
Leonard Cohen - "Night Comes On"
Cavafy - "Aboard the Ship"
It certainly resembles him, this small
pencil likeness of him.
Quickly done, on the deck of the ship:
an enchanting afternoon.
The Ionian Sea all around us.
It resembles him. Still, I remember him as handsomer.
To the point of illness: that’s how sensitive he was,
and it illumined his expression.
Handsomer, he seems to me,
now that my soul recalls him, out of Time.
Out of Time. All these things, they’re very old—
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.
"Ordinary Creature" - Of Monsters and Men
Bob Dylan - "Tell Me That it Isn't True"
Hubert Robert - "Ruins of a Roman Bath with Washerwomen" (~1776)
Guy Davenport on Balthus
“…Both Balthus and Spencer give us the surface of the canvas as a mimesis of natural textures, not paint. In Picasso, Van Gogh, on out to…Pollock, it is paint. The difference is a philosophical one, perhaps even a religious one.
Spencer’s iconography of saws, ironwork, human flesh reseen without the authority of neoclassical conventions, kettles, drying laundry, the location of shadows in naked light, parallels Balthus’s return to a realism of an accomplished eye that demands accuracy of detail and that generalizes nothing.”
- Guy Davenport, from “A Balthus Notebook”
Jeune fille a la fenetre (1955)
Maurice Marinot - "The Great Tulips" Vase (1923)
Francisco de Zurbaran - "The Annunciation" (1650)
"Head of a Woman" - After Leonardo da Vinci (artist unknown)
Arcade Fire - "Wasted Hours"
Danielle Orchard - "Beach Couple" (2020)
Anna Kenneally - "Night Music"
From "Gilead," by Marilynne Robinson
“Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”