“Les Demoiselles d’Avignon" Rules

This, I loved reading about. Especially because I also think that Picasso's “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” is one of the best gifts of the 20th-century.
A bit from the Times feature says:

"Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso.
His confidence in the ranking doesn’t come from a stack of degrees in art history (though he has read a lot on the subject). After all, Mr. Galenson is an economist at the University of Chicago who initially specialized in colonial America....
His statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks.
“Quantification has been almost totally absent from art history,” he said. “Art historians hate markets.”

Great read.
graph per google image

Quote of the Day from U2's Bono

This stood out. Great sentence. Thx Bono!
"Bohemia is more attractive than suburbia but maybe you don’t live there, maybe you live on a street which is like any other street where the opera that goes on behind parted curtains is more than enough...."
Taken from Bono's post featured on the previous entry.

Bono Speaks Out Re: "Boy"

I like U2.
I enjoy Bono. A lot. I think he's perhaps one of the most influential musicians of contemporary times. I don't just think he is musically superior, though. That's a given. I find his rhetoric always spot-on, informed, and culturally sensitive. And that is what marks Bono as culturally, not only musically, relevant.
Hence, I was happy to read his commentary on U2's brilliant album "Boy." What I really enjoyed was his altruistic tone. He speaks highly, and justifiably so, of his band mate The Edge. One does not detect an ego or any crippling inferiority complex in his words.
Here is a bit:
"But the star of the show is THE EDGE some guitar credit must be shared with the groups that helped shape us, people like PINK FLOYD, PIL and TELEVISION… guitar players like STUART ADAMSON VINNIE REILLY etc but there is something happening here that is truly special…EDGEs genuine genius developing on the blank and bleached
photographic paper…. avoiding all the obvious blues scales that blind every other guitar player that ever heard LED ZEPPELIN …THE EDGE finds some new colours for the spectrum of rock. Colours he now owns … owning a colour, wow .. imagine owning the colour yellow like VAN GOGH… EDGE owns, well im not exactly sure what colours they are… indigo or violet or crimson?… but you sense an emotional colour temperature that is unique to him… its his palette we’re painting from. he’s following the jazzmen’s maxim to “own your own tone and you will become contagious ” and as a result you can hear him show up in lots of rooms hes not in, isn’t that right…?"
Excellent, excellent post.
Read more here.
graph per rs

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Takes Final Bow

Rest in peace, Solzhenitsyn.
The brave author, also a Nobel Prize winner, suffered two decades of harsh exile as a result of his writings on the absurdities and tormented life journeys of many Russians under the Stalinist regime. Solzhenitsyn himself is an incredible example of someone who underwent "soul-crunching" persecutions and yet survived.
He died at the age of 89.
A bit from the Times feature today says:
"Mr. Solzhenitsyn had been an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town when he burst onto the literary stage in 1962 with “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The book, a mold-breaking novel about a prison camp inmate, was a sensation. Suddenly he was being compared to giants of Russian literature like Tolstoy, Dostoyevski and Chekhov."
Read more here.
graph per ny times