Politics: David Brooks on the Trump landscape now

...It also means addressing the substantive social chasms that fueled Trump’s rise. We are clearly going to have a lot of angry populists around in the years ahead, of right and left. It should be possible to oppose them with a political movement that champions dynamism with cohesion, globalism with solidarity — a movement that supports free trade, open skilled immigration, ethnic diversity and a free American-led world order, but also local community building, state-fostered economic security, moral cohesion and patriotic purpose.

In other words, it should be possible to be conservative on macroeconomics, liberal on immigration policy, traditionalist on moral and civic matters, Swedish on welfare state policies, and Reaganesque on America’s role in the world.  (NYT, 10-21-16)

I guess agreeing with this makes me a moderate Republican.  At least, a centrist.    

PAINTING: Agnes Martin Retrospective LACMA

 "...Martin’s work shared some of the vocabulary of Minimalism – grids, repetition — she didn’t consider herself a minimalist, believing that her paintings had emotional content."

 “I would like [my pictures] to represent beauty, innocence and happiness,” she said. “I would like them all to represent that. Exaltation.”  (from Guggenheim website notes)

"To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you like. The things that are acceptable to your mind."

The exhibition has gone to the Guggenheim, with 20 added works. How wonderful it would be to see those paintings spiral up the ramp in the wonderful light Wright created.

Wright supposedly expressed latent hostility towards artists in the didactic progression he designed to display their work. I would think it suits Martin magnificently, remembering my own visits there.

web image

These photographs document most of the major paintings displayed at LACMA, many which aren't available to view online.  I've tried to place them in chronological order, and added some from websites which have paintings which I didn't photograph but were included.

Untitled, 1955 (web image)

1958? web image

Heather, 1958

Untitled, 1960

Words,  1961

Video Games: Neko Atsume

My grandchildren got me going on this, the only Iphone game I play - oops, there's Sudoku, too - and it's such fun.  Cute, and teaches basis economics.  No cats to clean up after either!

Cats in the Sugary Style Yard

Jeeves

Macchiato, new rare cat

Kathmandu - has 4 eyes, visited today

PAINTING - Shirley Jaffe, geometric abstractionist, 1923-2016

Shirley Jaffe was a contemporary of Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, and Al Held. What a discovery!  How did I never find her when I was studying and enjoying hard edge abstraction, Miro, and Stuart Davis?

The NYT headlines her work as "joyful".  So it is.  

“The Chinese Mountain” (2004-5) by Shirley Jaffe.Creditvia Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. All Rights Reserved, 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Hop and Skip

X encore...

Shirley Jaffe’s “Four Squares Black” (1993).Creditvia Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. All Rights Reserved, 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

"The Black Line"