November 2006 Archives

'Charlie's practice sessions, or 'woodshedding,' as it was called by jazzmen, took place at home. He rose early in the afternoon, around one o'clock. . . . After breakfast Charlie went upstairs to his room and drew the green shade of the window that looked out over the gardens and clotheslines of the Olive Street neighborhood. Then he removed his horn from its case and began to practice.'

'Ross Russell, from Bird Lives! The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, 1973.

'When he got to the corner he could . . . see the cluster of electric signs at Twelfth and Paseo. The electric signs formed a blazing ring of light; everything down there looked almost like it did in the daytime.

The signs were made of coiled neon tubing, which had just come into that part of Kansas City. Some of the newer night clubs had them. The rest had old-fashioned displays with small electric light bulbs spelling out the letters. On some of the signs an arrow of light chased itself around the border. Others flashed off and on. On some of the neon signs the colors flickered and changed from pale blue to the color of orange soda water. There was a big sign over the Sunset Club and another over the Boulevard Lounge, and farther along you saw signs advertising the Lone Star and the Cherry Blossom.'

'Ross Russell, from Bird Lives! The High Life & Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, 1973.

'''Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.'. . .''

'Charlotte Bronte, quoting Friedrich von Schiller's The Robbers, in Jane Eyre, 1847. According to Susan Ostrav Weisser's 2003 notes, this translates as 'Then there stepped forth one, in appearance like the starry sky.'

'I looked at the blank wall; it seemed a sky, thick with ascending stars'every one lighted me to a purpose or delight.'

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

9beetstretch, our newest radio link, is a broadcast that Park 4DTV (the broadcaster) describes as 'a continuous 24/7 audio webstream [of] 9 Beet Stretch by idea-based artist Leif Inge. 9 Beet Stretch is a recording of Ludwig van Beethoven's ninth symphony stretched to 24 hours, without pitch distortion. We started the stream on saturday may 7th, 2005, at 20h15 (the moment of sunset (local time) in Vienna, Austria, where Beethoven's ninth symphony was first performed, on may 7th, 1824).'

More information on the piece and the artist is available here.

''How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think' And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.''

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

''The flame flickers in the eye'the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling'it smiles at my jargon'it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; when it ceases to smile, it is sad. . . .''

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

'the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination;'

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

''If I dared, I'd touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf! but I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh.''

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

An illusory light in the marshes, used figuratively for delusive hopes; also called will-o'-the-wisp.

'Susan Ostrav Weisser, 2003, from her notes to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, 1847.

Dyed purple or crimson, as in ancient Tyre.

'Susan Ostrav Weisser, 2003, from her notes to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, 1847.

White marble.

'Susan Ostrav Weisser, 2003, from her notes to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, 1847.

From somewhere in California, I think, these are The Most Famous Photographs.

'M&M'S is launching eight new flavors of the popular candies. The new flavors, which are sold in a 'premium collectible' tin, include:

' All That Razz - Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + raspberry-flavored candy shell
' Eat, Drink and Be Cherry - Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + black cherry-flavored candy shell
' A Day at the Peach - Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + peach-flavored candy shell
' Orange-U Glad - Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + orange-flavored candy shell
' AlmonDee-licious - Almond + creamy white chocolate + candy shell
' Mint Condition - Creamy white chocolate + milk chocolate + mint-flavored candy shell
' Nut What You Think - Peanut + creamy white chocolate + candy shell
' Cookie Mintster - Crispy center + dark chocolate + speckled mint-flavored candy shell

Unfortunately . . . if you want to try them, you'll have to purchase the whole $49.95 package.'

'Nicole Weston, posted November 16, 2006, at www.slashfood.com.

'The cave painters did have a wide range of colors in their palette, but the two that dominated everywhere were black obtained from manganese dioxide or occasionally charcoal, and red, obtained from iron oxide. The colored minerals were pulverized and then mixed with some fluid to make the paint. Often the fluid was water from the cave itself. It contained dissoved minerals from that particular place, which made the paint bind to the cave's walls more easily.

The artistic techniques remained identical during the many millennia that cave painting lasted. The artists chipped tiny, pointed chisels from flints to use as engravers. They sometimes used crayons of charcoal or paintbrushes made from animal hairs. More frequently they used wads of fur or perhaps moss and pressed them on the walls. Just as frequently they blew the paint onto the wall by using a hollow reed or bone pipe or by putting the paint in their mouths and spitting it on in a series of explosive puffs made with the lips. When blowing the paint, they used either their hands or a stencil of bark or hide in order to make the shape they desired.

[The] immutable similarity in themes, colors, and techniques shows that the cave paintings were the creation of artists working in a cultural tradition that survived for more than 20,000 years.'

'Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, 2006. Pic is of the Hall of Bulls at Lascaux.

'[T]here is a residue of ochre around the periphery of the domestic fireplaces [at Pincevent]. The hunters used this mineral'iron oxide'in a variety of ways, including, of course, to make red pigment for painting in caves. The color red can stand symbolically for blood, fire, or, in the largest sense, for life itself. Some have proposed that the hunters spread ochre on the floors of their dwellings in order to sanctify them. At Pincevent, though, the ochre is thickest in places where the remains from working fiint are also the densest. The ochre deposit built up progressively over time as the tool working proceeded. That means that, although they may have used ochre to sanctify the ground, they also used it regularly for routine tasks such as tinting the shaft of a spear or coating their skin. It might also have been a preservative.'

'Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, 2006.

'Understandably enough, they [the Paleolithic people] would have believed that caves led into [a] subterranean tier of the cosmos. The walls, ceilings, and floors of the caves were therefore little more than a thin membrane between themselves and the creatures and happenings of the underworld. . . .

[It] was the act of covering the hand and the immediately adjacent surfaces with (usually red but sometimes black) paint that was important. People were sealing their own or others' hands into the walls, causing them to disappear beneath what was probably a spiritually powerful and ritually prepared substance, rather than 'paint' in our sense of the word. The moments when the hands were 'invisible,' rather than the prints that were left behind were what mattered most. . . . [T]he hands thus reached into the spiritual realm behind the membrane of the rock, though in this case paint acted as a solvent that dissolved the rock.'

'Jean Clotte, from The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, 1998; quoted by Gregory Curtis in The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, 2006.

'In 'The Signs of All Times,' [1988, David] Lewis-Williams and [T.A.] Dowson declare that . . . they have discovered . . . a 'neurological bridge' that could take us back to the Paleolithic Age. That bridge is the human nervous system, which they claim was the same then as now. They say that when drugs, fatigue, pain, insistent rhythms, or other stimuli induce a trance, the nervous system produces a pattern of hallucinations derived from it and not from cultural clues. The pattern is the same for all people in all cultures at all times. Therefore, Paleolithic hunters had the same pattern of hallucinations during trances that we do.

In particular the authors mean visions derived from the structure of the optic system. They call such visions 'entoptic phenomena.' One example of entoptic phenomena is the jagged lines or herringbone patterns that some people see on the edge of their vision as a prelude to a migraine. Citing a considerable amount of modern research on the effects of mescaline and LSD, Lewis-Williams and Dowson identify six principal entoptic forms: a grid, parallel lines, dots, zigzags, nested curves, and filigrees. They also say that there are three stages of a hallucinatory trance, although they are not necessarily sequential or completely distinct. A subject experiences the entoptic forms and only those forms in the first stage. During the second stage, the subject tries to make sense of the entoptic forms by, for example, seeing a grid as a chessboard. And in the third and final stage, which is usually accompanied by the feeling of flowing through a swirling vortex, the subject experiences hallucinations that are so powerful they seem real. . . . Lewis-Williams and Dowson exhibit several charts showing that the entoptic forms appear in both San and Paleolithic art. More than that, various images from the art of both cultures appear to apply to each of the three stages of a trance.'

'Gregory Curtis, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, 2006.

''Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.''

'Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

'The origins of the Chinese writing system are still somewhat mysterious. In 1899, the marks on some inscribed bones sold as medicinal 'dragon bones' in a Peking pharmacy were recognised as writing. By that time, these pieces of writing were already some 3,500 years old, having been made during the Shang dynasty (c. 1500-1028 BCE). Though subsequent archaeological sites have turned up many pieces of neolithic pottery bearing marks dating back to c. 4000 BCE, these have yet to be interpreted, and the 'oracle bone' script, such as that discovered in the pharmacy, is the earliest to be at least half understood.

The bones, mostly the shoulder blades of oxen, were used by the Shang rulers for scapulimancy: divination by reading the cracks that appeared after the application of heat to the prepared surface of the bone. The inscriptions typically consisted of a preface recording the date and the name of the diviner and the topic of divination, which was often the potential outcomes of military campaigns, hunting expeditions, sickness, childbirth or agricultural events.'

'Wikipedia, 2006.

'The earliest record of written Chinese is inscriptions carved on turtle shells and oxen shoulder blades excavated from the ruins of the Shang dynasty (sixteenth to eleventh centuries BCE) capital at modern Anyang in Henan province. This type of writing is usually called 'oracle-bone script,' and it was carved there for the purpose of divination. It was first discovered accidentally in Anyang in 1899 after a Qing-dynasty scholar, Wang Yirong, who was an expert on bronze script, found a strong resemblance between bronze script and the carvings on some 'dragon bones' that had supposedly some curative powers and were perhaps given to him as part of a medicinal prescription. Currently, over 100,000 pieces of shells and bones with engraved script have been recovered through excavation in Anyang. A total of about 3,700 different characters have been identified from these artifacts; however, only about 2,000 of them have so far been deciphered. Closely related to the oracle-bone script is the bronze script that is carved on the surface of bronze vessels supposedly placed in palaces and used for sacrificial ceremonies at the times of Shang and Western Zhou dynasties.'

'Chaofen Sun, from Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction, 2006.

'In Africa . . . about 150,000 years ago . . . the first modern humans, Homo sapiens . . . appeared. . . .

Then, about 47,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, who had always looked like us now began to behave like us as well. After that time, their sites are flush with carvings, figurines, and other art. They performed elaborate burials. They decorated their bodies and clothes with shells, beads, and the teeth of animals. All of this implies a rich culture, a focused intelligence, and a probing, seeking, imaginative life, none of which had been present before.

There is no apparent reason for this sudden change. Richard G. Klein of Stanford University believes that the change was the result of a neurological change in the brains of Homo sapiens that occurred about 47,000 years ago. Specifically, he believes that this sudden neural alteration created the ability to speak a complicated language. Without language, symbolic thinking would have been impossible. With language, people did begin to think symbolically, and all our art and culture, our music and myths and tales, and all our religions are the result.'

'Gregory Curtis, from The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, 2006.

'People of African descent have been in New Orleans, like the French, from the early eighteenth century. The city's relative social and geographic isolation during its early history as a French colony and international port contributed to the unique black culture. Blacks were brought to the city as slaves from Senegal, Senegambia, and the Windward Coast of West Africa, as well as from the French Caribbean islands, especially Haiti, after the French Revolution. Some were trained as skilled laborers and crafsmen and were able to buy freedom for themselves and their families upon enactment of the so-called Code Noire, which made this possible for the first time. This gave rise to a community known as the 'Freemen of Color.' The intermarriage of Freemen of Color with native Indians and French settlers resulted in the growth of Creoles'blacks of mixed ancestry.'

'Alan Govenar, from A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music by Michael P. Smith, 1990.

'They do things in church, they sing and they dance and feel the spirit. That's what church is all about. They praise the Lord.

With Mardi Gras Indians we do the same thing in a sense. We sing, we party, we dance, and we even have our prayer. We praise our past Indians when we sing 'Indian Red.' It's like an Indian national anthem.'

'Johnny 'Kool' Stephenson, interviewed by Alan Govenar, from A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music by Michael P. Smith, 1990.

'If we wish to raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced . . . to transform our architecture. We shall only succeed in doing this when we remove the element of enclosure from the rooms in which we live. We can only do this, however, with glass architecture, which allows the light of the sun, moon and stars to enter not merely through a few windows set in the wall, but through as many walls as possible'walls of coloured glass. The new milleu created in this way must bring us a new culture. . . . Then we should have a pradise on earth.'

'Paul Scheerbart, from Glasarchitektur (Glass Architecture), 1914; quoted in Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

''More sun! More light! Is the cry of our desperate age,' wrote a female correspondent in a German nudist magazine. . . .

The nudist's belief in the therapeutic power of sunshine gained medical credibility during the 1920s as the Swiss doctors August Roller and Oskar Bernhard, working independently, proved the efficacy of the so-called sun cure (heliotherapy) on tuberculosis. . . . Roller's clinic in Leysin, Switzerland . . . incorporated sun balconies where patients could lie in the sun (they took the sun when it was low in the sky rather than when it was at its strongest). . . .'

'Christopher Wilk, The Healthy Body Culture, from Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

In black-line wood engraving the burin removes all the surface of the block except the lines of the artist's design; in white-line engraving, the surface of the block prints as a black background, while the burin removes the lines of the design which appear white in the impression. Blocks engraved with a combination of both methods achieved engravings of great strength and delicacy. . . .

'Early Victorian Illustrated Books; Britain, France and Germany, 1820-1860, by John Buchanan-Brown, 2005.

'Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.'

'Gwyneth Paltrow, (b. 1972).

'Gleaming with the soft effulgence of a luminous dial, the snow's incandescence, self-engendered, reached inward to probe the very soul of luxury and draw it forth through stone till it was visible. . . .'

'Jean Cocteau, from The Holy Terrors, translated from the French by Rosamond Lehmann, 1957.

'We work in the dark'we do what we can'we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.'

'Henry James; quoted by Azar Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'Sometimes I get e-mail messages on my computer, like fireflies . . . from my former students, telling me about their lives and memories.'

'Azar Nafisi, from the epilogue of Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses'

'e.e. cummings, from somewhere i have never travelled; quoted by Azar Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'I have the two photographs in front of me now. In the first there are seven women, standing against a white wall. They are, according to the law of the land, dressed in black robes and head scarves, covered except for the oval of their faces and their hands. In the second photograph the same group, in the same position, stands against the same wall. Only they have taken off their coverings. Splashes of color separate one from the next. Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same.'

'Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'The Islamic Republic coarsened my taste in colors, Manna said, fingering the discarded leaves of her roses. I want to wear outrageous colors, like shocking pink or tomato red.'

'Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.'

'Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted by Azar Nafisi in Reading Lolita in Tehran, 2003.

'Colours change our emotions. . . . Room colours alter moods and can be adjusted using projection: coloured glass or plastic, or coloured light bulbs or overhead transparencies or electronic software. Red stimulates blood and is good for activity areas. Violet is good for sleep, calms the body and balances the mind. Blue lowers blood pressure and reduces stress, whereas green balances the body and is a spirit colour.'

'Colin Beard & John P. Wilson, Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers, second edition, 2006.

'The white room uses light and sound and is accompanied with white furniture and walls to create an environment that can help relax, calm and stimulate individuals. This therapeutic environment has a proven record with clients with various difficulties. . . . Imagine the White Room as a blank canvas where a colourful palette of lights are projected to give a stunning world of colour and imagery. Relaxing music gently plays in the background whilst the Vibro Acoustic Seat resonates deep bass sounds through the body. All these combine to provide a powerful sensory experience and valuable tool for carers and teachers.

The Black Room . . . helps with particular visual problems; brightly coloured items against a black surface are easier to identify because the black doesn't reflect the light. . . . Ultra violet is . . . used extensively along with UV reactive equipment. Imagine the Black Room as a darkened theatre where occasionally a glowing hand held object appears as if by magic.'

'SpaceKraft, from their website, www.spacekraft.co.uk, 2005; quoted in Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers by Colin Beard & John P. Wilson, second edition, 2006.

'Consciousness is that which makes all things and events knowable. Without consciousness eyes could not see, ears could not hear, and mind could not think. Consciousness is like a pure light energy whose power is to make events knowable, just as an electric light makes objects visible. Consciousness could be called the light of lights because it is by its light that all other lights become visible.'

'Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis, 1986; quoted in Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers by Colin Beard & John P. Wilson, second edition, 2006.

Photo by Michael Hughes.

'Learning spaces . . . have micro-climates consisting of tiles, ceilings, walls, floors, desks, books, computers and many other objects, all of which can be used in creative ways to enhance the learner experience. The floor is ideal to create models and concepts with large groups of people, using masking tape, large pieces of coloured card and other training aids. The walls are places to create 'graffiti walls' using decorating lining paper, so that people might contribute thoughts or reactions to events through drawing or scribbling words or phrases. Walls can also be used to place and move stick-it labels, or to project colours or images to influence mood. It is likely that futuristic classrooms will have walls that become large functional working spaces, made of glass in the form of a touch screen that can be written on. In this way, handwritten material and electronic text, pictures, diagrams and other images can be interchangeable and moved by hand (rather than with a mouse) in a similar way to the functions found in interactive whiteboards. This is good news for the kinaesthetic learner who prefers not to sit behind a desk for long periods.'

'Colin Beard & John P. Wilson, Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers, second edition, 2006.

'When I look at a chair, I say I experience it. But what I actually experience is only a very few of the elements that go to make up the chair, namely, that colour that belongs to the chair under these particular conditions of light, the shape which the chair displays when viewed from this angle, etc. The man who has the experience, as distinct from a philosopher theorizing about it would probably say that he experienced the chair most fully not when looking at it but when meaning to sit down in it precisely because his experience is not limited to colour under specific conditions of light, and angular shape.'

'John Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, from Experience and Nature, 1925. Quoted in Experiential Learning: A Best Practice Handbook for Educators and Trainers by Colin Beard and John P. Wilson, second edition, 2006.

'Although Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books.'

'Charles Dickens, from Hard Times, 1854.

Blue-bound statistical reports issued by the government.

'a footnote to the 1993 Norton Anthology Edition of Charles Dickens' Hard Times, originally published in 1854.

'It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.'

'Charles Dickens, describing Coketown in Hard Times, 1854.

''You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma'am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn't a penny to buy a link to light you.''

'Charles Dickens, from Hard Times, 1854.

A flaming torch used to light up the street for pedestrians.

'a footnote to the 1993 Norton Anthology Edition of Charles Dickens' Hard Times, originally published in 1854.

'The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces'or the travellers by express-train said so'were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the night, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, were clattering home.'

'Charles Dickens, from Hard Times, 1854.

'Silver thread and golden needles
Cannot mend this heart of mine
And I dare not drown my sorrows
In the warm glow of your wine'

'from Silver Threads And Golden Needles, written by Dick Reynolds & Jack Rhodes.

'The first Penguin titles appeared at a time when the various roles of designer, art director and printer were not clearly differentiated. The basic horizontal tripartite division of the covers, as well as the penguin itself, were devised by Edward Young, who became the company's first Production Manager. The colours used to indicate subject matter'initially just orange for fiction, green for crime, dark blue for biography, cerise for travel & adventure, red for plays'were an aspect of the design which far outlasted the original layout.'

'Phil Baines, from Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, 2005.

'With the resonance that the Penguin name rapidly acquired, it is possible to believe that the word itself was a significant element in the success. It was apparently suggested by a secretary'Joan Coles'after various alternatives had been rejected, and Edward Young, then a 21-year-old office junior, was sent to the London Zoo to make sketches. He came back with the first version of the logo and the comment, 'My God, how those birds stink!' The design of the books'also by Young'was simple but striking, and a reaction to the decoration or illustrative whimsy found on many other books: three horizontal stripes, the upper and lower of which were colour-coded'orange for fiction, green for crime, dark blue for biography'and a central white panel containing author and title printed black in Eric Gill's sans serif type. In the upper coloured panel was a cartouche . . . with the legend PENGUIN BOOKS, and in the lower panel the logo appeared. Although manufactured as paperbacks with printed covers, they came with printed dustjackets like a conventional hardback.'

'Phil Baines, from Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, 2005.

'It was chiefly as a text designer that [Hans] Schmoller made his mark [at Penguin Books]. . . . It was a design based on sound principles and well-tried practices, although Schmoller, like [Jan] Tschichold before him, had to repeat the same insistent instructions about 'optically even letterspacing' time after time. Schmoller gained a reputation for his fastidiousness and ability to notice minute variation of detail. He earned the nickname Half-Point Schmoller, 'The only man who could distinguish between a Bembo full point and a Garamond full point at 200 paces'.'

'Phil Baines, from Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, 2005.

'The formal quality of everry piece of typography depends on the relationship between the printed and unprinted parts. To see only what is printed, to overlook the decisive contribution of the unprinted parts, is a sign of professional immaturity. The business of typography is a continual weighing up of white and black, which requires a thorough knowledge of the laws governing optical values.'

'Emil Ruder, from Typography as Communication and as Form, 1960; quoted in Swiss Graphic Design by Richard Hollis, 2006.

'The most expensive fabrics were silks, which had to be imported, mainly from Italy. . . . Lucifer's prologue to Thomas Middleton's play The Black Book (1604) talks of 'that smooth glittering devil satin, and that old reveller velvet.''

'Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, 2005.

'Colour and light were crucial in the masque. [Frances] Bacon said that the colors to wear were those that 'shew best by candlelight . . . white, carnation, and a kind of Sea-Water Greene, and Oes or Spangs.'. . . It is not clear how far a sustained system of colour symbolism, as described in late medieval manuals of heraldry, which associated colours with virtues and vices, existed in masque design. . . . Some colours, however, were constantly used and presumably 'read' correctly'black for grief or melancholy; white for humility, hope and purity; red for courage; green for love and joy; blue stood for peace and honour, and was a courtly colour, as was carnation. The masque had elaborate and sophisticated lighting, both as part of the stage mechanics and as produced by the torch-bearers, which reflected off the costume with its gold and silver fringes, its sequins or spangles (what Bacon calls 'Oes or Spangs'), the shining silk of dress and embroideries, floating gauzy veils and rich jewellery. The masquers' main purpose was to look stunning and to dance well. . . .'

'Aileen Ribeiro, quoting Bacon's Of Masques and Triumphs, 1597, in Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, 2005.

'DEVICE: 'Tis the Mode to express our fancie upon every occasion. . . . Shall I decipher my Colours to you now' Here is Azure and Peach: Azure is constant, and Peach is love; which signifies my constant Affection.

SISTER: This is very pretty.

DEVICE: Oh, it saves the trouble of writing. . . . [Y]our yellow is joy, because. . . .

LADY: Why, yellow, Sir, is Jealous.

DEVICE: No, your Lemon colour, a pale kind of yellow, is Jealous; your yellow is perfect joy. Your white is Death, your milke white innocence, your black mourning, your orange spitefull, your flesh colour lascivious, your maides blush envied, your red is defiance, your gold is avaritious, your straw plenty, your greene hope, your sea greene inconstant, your violet religious, your willow forsaken.'

'James Shirley, ridiculing Device's ribbons in Captain Underwit, early 1640s; quoted in Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England by Aileen Ribeiro, 2005.

'Black became the image of the mercantile classes in the Dutch Republic, the financial centre of Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century, a fact that may have influenced Puritan sympathizers and the English middle classes to follow suit. . . . In fact, black dye was very expensive (it was difficult to achieve a durable colour). . . . Black was also essential for mourning wear in all classes, and because it was often the most expensive costume in a non-elite wardrobe, it doubled as 'best' or Sunday wear as well. According to Marshall Smith's The Art of Painting (1692), in art black was 'the symbol of Grief, sorrow and Damnation. Yet denoteth Constancy, being the most durable Colour'; the equivalent in precious stones was the diamond, which enabled such jewellery to be worn for mourning.'

'Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, 2005.

'[Oliver] Cromwell famously preferred 'a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else'; he put his soldiers into russet, a sturdy greyish or reddish-brown woolen cloth (the original homespun), which became a metaphor for godly simplicity, in the same way that wool and cotton were to be linked to 'democracy' during the French Revolution.'

'Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, 2005.

'On the boulevards two men are carrying some immense gilded letters in a handcart; the effect is so unexpected that everyone stops and looks. There is the origin of the modern spectacle. The shock of the surprise effect. To organize a spectacle based on these daily phenomena, the artists who want to distract the crowd must undergo a continual renewal. It is a hard profession, the hardest profession.'

'Fernand Leger, from the essay The Spectacle: Light, Color, Moving Image, Object-Spectacle, 1924, quoted in Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

'When [Kazimir Malevich] first exhibited his Black Square in 1915, he placed it in the corner of a room, in the position that icons occupied in a traditional Russian Orthodox home. In this way he imbued his image with the transcendental qualities of the icon and indicated that it embodied a metaphysical truth.'

'Christina Lodder, the essay Searching for Utopia, from Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.

'[Jan] Tschichold emphasized the basic geometric forms, the square and the circle, which the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich had seen as the 'fundamental Suprematist elements'. Squares and circles appear in more than half the illustrations of Elementare Typographie; its first double-page spread is bordered by the eight pages of [El] Lissitzky's Constructivist fairytale, The Story of Two Squares. Lissitzky, describing the upheavals at the time of the First World War, wrote, 'Into this chaos came Suprematism, extolling the square as the very source of all creative expression.' When [Theo] Van Doesburg proclaimed, 'Already many people are using the square', he was stating a fact. Hans Arp wrote that his wife, Sophie Taeuber, had 'discovered' the square in 1916. In Switzerland after the First World War, when they saw the rectangles in foreign magazines such as De Stijl, they though it was 'a joke, as if everyone who had drawn a square had been forced to yell with ecstasy and excitement'. True to the spirit of Dada, 'We still decided to register our own squares at the Patent Office'.'

'Richard Hollis, Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920-1965, 2006.

'we write everything in lower case to save time. and besides, why two alphabets, where one will do' why use capital letters if we don't use them when we speak''

'printed on the Bauhaus Director's letterhead, 1925. Quoted in Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920-1965 by Richard Hollis, 2006.

Highland Road, Baton Rouge, early this morning. I didn't touch it, I promise!

'As good as gold.'

'Charles Dickens, from A Christmas Carol, 1843.

'Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!'

'Robert Browning, from Pauline, 1833. He is referring to the poet Shelley.

'O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and the purple light of Love.'

'Thomas Gray, from The Progress of Poesy, 1754.

'Eyes colored like a water-flower,
And deeper than the green sea's glass;'

'Algernon Charles Swinburne, from F'lise, 1866.

'Perhaps one of the most difficult things to convey to a mind not in the hasheesh delirium . . . is the interchange of senses. . . . [T]he hasheesh-eater knows what it is . . . to smell colors, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings. How often do I remember vibrating in the air over a floor bristling with red-hot needles, and, although I never supposed I came in contact with them, feeling the sensation of their frightful pungency through sight as distinctly as if they were entering my heart.'

'Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.

'Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them.'

'Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights, 1833.

Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948.

ARTNET, Nov. 3, 2006.' Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948, for some $140 million to David Martinez, 48, the Mexico-born founder of the London-based Fintech Advisory Ltd. The price is said to be the highest ever for a contemporary painting. . . .

Formerly owned by S.I. Newhouse, the 4 x 8 ft. work was included in the 1998 Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Speculation has Geffen, who last month reportedly sold two other blue-chip contemporary works for a total of $145.3 million, raising funds to make a bid for the Los Angeles Times.

'Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.'

'Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.

'I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bedchamber, and hailed their familair unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers.'

'Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.

'A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it.'

'Gertrude Stein, quoted in footnote to The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885'1918, by Roger Shattuck.

'I watch the glitter of that mystic star
Whose shifting tint

Matches the misty color of your eyes'

'Guillaume Apollinaire, from his Calligrammes, 1918. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885'1918, by Roger Shattuck.

'The sky was full of feces and onions. I cursed the unworthy stars whose light flowed out over the earth. . . . Ships of gold, unmanned, crossed the horizon. Gigantic shadows passed across the distant sails. Several centuries separated me from these shadows. I despaired.'

'Guillaume Apollinaire, Onirocritique, 1908. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885'1918, by Roger Shattuck.

'[H]e had read in a Chinese book about the customs of a foreign people whose heads could fly up to the trees to seize their prey, always attached by a red thread, and afterward returned to fit themselves into the bloody collar. But if a certain wind blew the thread would break and the head would fly away beyond the seas.'

'Alfred Jarry, Les jours et les nuits, 1897. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885'1918, by Roger Shattuck.

'The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness: they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her; they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond'you would have said out of this world. . . .'

'Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.

''I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.''

'Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.

'Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw'ah! it was beautiful'a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging on silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there. Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves; shouldn't they have been happy' We should have thought ourselves in heaven!'

'Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.

'The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.'

'Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.

'Even today, when I close my eyes, I do not know darkness. Now, still, my brain lights up with a vivid and continual glow the visible and the invisible procession of images'innumerable, sometimes without pattern. The images float over the Danube and over the Desna. The clouds in the sky float free and capriciously; they swim in the vast blue emptiness and meet in so many combats and duels that if I could only snatch a tiny part to put it into books or into films, I would not have lived on this earth in vain. . . .'

'Alexander Dovzhenko, from Beginnings: Sources, 1942; Cinema In Revolution, edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, translated by David Robinson, 1973.