Max Beckmann, 1884-1950, German from an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2016 and from collections in New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and St. Louis Max Beckmann, become gaunt, suffered a fatal heart attack crossing Central Park in December 1950. He was going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to […]
Apollo’s Golden Clubs
Golden club, Floating Arum, Never-wets, Tawkin (Orontiun Aquaticum) The single living species in its genus, its name is what remains of a notion that there is a plant similar to it growing in the Orontes River as it flows north through Syria on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. An aquatic plant which […]
Colour Reset, 2018
Winterthur, Delaware, February 2016. Photo taken by Mark Detwiler, a fellow traveler in these natural realms. Below a partial view of flowering plants at Winterthur in late April and very early May 2018. Spirea Bridal wreath spirea below flowers of a Wilson pearlbush Spirea with lilac Korean Spice Viburnum, fragrant […]
Wrapped Again
This package had been left for her with a friend. She took it home and unwrapped it. She supposed this was meant to be a reconciliation present. She studied it. She turned it over. She set it down on a table. Handsome it was, wrapped and unwrapped. She saw that this gift had nothing to […]
George A. Weymouth: the eye of a realist
George A. (Frolic) Weymouth, 1936-2016, American George A. Weymouth, affectionately called ‘Frolic’ by friends, was an exceptionally fortunate man. A member of the American du Pont family who settled in 1802 on the Brandywine River outside Wilmington, Delaware; and whose philanthropic bequests to the nation are beyond quantifying; a friend of the […]
Orchids: a continuing fever
Orchids at Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, 2009 – 2018 and at the Philadelphia Flower Show years without number Longwood Gardens: pleasure gardens, conservatory and research establishment left by Pierre S. du Pont, 1870-1954. The Philadelphia Flower Show takes place in March every year and is a fundraiser for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Epiphytic orchids which […]
Blues
Do I Move You? Nina Simone, 1933-2003, American. From Nina Simone Sings the Blues, Version II, 2006 Longwod Gardens, Pennsylvania, one of the land legacies left by members of the du Pont Family to public access for pleasure and research, point out that blue is the rarest colour for […]
Painted in Black, White and Grey
The Three Brothers, oil on canvas, 1964. Will Barnett, 1911-2012, Philadelphia Art Museum The artist had a career of 80 years and, having cycled through most of the styles of his age, came at last to figuration. A lovely painting of the mysterious, ambiguous, guarded, alert relationship between siblings. Romaine Brooks 1874-1970, […]
Michel Onfray Corrected by A Millenial
Update on January 19, 2018 After a recent series of webcam interviews with the young French scholar, Pierre Vesperini, Michel Onfray says that he understands that the work of this young man has overtaken his own and that of a number of eminent scholars on the question, for instance, of the nature of the […]
David Bowie in Memory
January 9, 2018 Wild is the Wind ………………….don’t you know you’re life itself Tomorrow is the second anniversary of David Bowie’s death. It is David Bowie week in Philly this week with celebrations in many venues. It was just outside the city that David Bowie recorded his first live album – David […]