Cover of Damned to Earth’s self-titled debut
Previously Pre-Posted…
• Museek — in which I don’t like the cover but do like the music
• A Little Light Night Music — in which I don’t like the music but do like the cover
John Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds (1825, Frick Collection)
Elsewhere other-engageable…
• Discussion of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds (1823) at Wikipedia
Twin-peacock lamp at the V&A by René Lalique (1860-1945)
Twin-peacock lamp by Lalique (alternative view)
Elsewhere other-accessible…
• Nou’s Who — a review of Art Nouveau by Camilla de la Bedoyere
I first came across this quote about cats in French:
« Le plus petit des félins est une œuvre d’art. »
• “The smallest of felines is a work of art.”
It’s widely attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but I can’t find any proof that he ever said it. Here it is in a fuller Italian version:
« Anche il più piccolo dei felini, il gatto, è un capolavoro. »
• Même le plus petit des félins, le chat, est un chef-d’œuvre.
•• Even the smallest of felines, the cat, is a masterpiece.
It’s a good quote, wherever it comes from. But the attribution to Leonardo reminds of another saying in Italian: Se non è vero, è ben trovato — “If it’s not true, it’s a happy invention.”
(From Pinterest)
Leonardo’s Étude du mouvement des chats
From George Orwell’s “As I Please” for 11th February 1944, Tribune:
THE FOLLOWING lines are quoted in Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography:
When Payne-Knight’s Taste was issued on the town
A few Greek verses in the text set down
Were torn to pieces, mangled into hash,
Hurled to the flames as execrable trash;
In short, were butchered rather than dissected
And several false quantities detected;
Till, when the smoke had risen from the cinders
It was discovered that — the lines were Pindar’s!
Trollope does not make clear who is the author of these lines, and I should be very glad if any reader could let me know. But I also quote them for their own sake — that is, for the terrible warning to literary critics that they contain — and for the sake of drawing attention to Trollope’s Autobiography, which is a most fascinating book, although or because it is largely concerned with money.
Elsewhere Other-Accessible…
• Pindar (c. 518-438 BC) at Wikipedia
• An Analytical Inquiry Into the Principles of Taste (1806) by Richard Payne-Knight at Archive.org
• An Autobiography and Other Writings (1869) by Anthony Trollope at Gutenberg
Cover of Albinö Rhino’s Upholder (2016)
I don’t like the music, but I do like the cover.
Cover of Maha Sohona’s Endless Searcher (2021)
I don’t like the cover, but I do like the music.
Previously pre-posted…
From the arts-sports [like ice-dance] I took heart [about my possible triviality]. They proved that creativity is indivisible. The skaters, the divers and the gymnasts reminded me that what I read in books, saw in pictures and heard in music had all started in a fundamental human compulsion to give dynamism shape. […] There are moments in Shakespeare when he sets three or four ideas all travelling at once through each other’s trajectories. He couldn’t have been thinking of Bach, who wasn’t born yet. But he might well have been thinking of a juggler he stopped to watch on the way to work. — from “Souls on Ice: Torvill and Dean”, Postscript (ii), in Reliable Essays: The Best of Clive James, Picador 2001.
Weiße Katzen beobachten Goldfische / White Cats Watching Goldfish, Arthur Heyer (1872-1931)
« La couleur est mon obsession quotidienne, ma joie et mon torment. » — Claude Monet (1840-1926)
“Color is my day-long obsession, my joy and my torment.” — Claude Monet
Illustration of a swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machaon) by Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905-90), who used the pen-name of BB for books like The Little Grey Men (1942)
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 