मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, October 03, 2026

Leonard Starr's Everyday Happiness...

 

 

artist: Leonard Starr (1925-2015)

First: what strikes the eye immediately

This is joy without irony.

  • The woman is unselfconscious, not coy

  • Her smile is open, almost conversational

  • She isn’t performing for the viewer—she’s absorbed in her own small ritual

That alone sets Starr apart from a lot of mid-century pin-up or glamour illustration, where happiness is often a mask for seduction.

Here, happiness is the subject, not the bait.

The body: present, but not predatory

Yes, the body is emphasized:

  • long leg

  • corseted waist

  • bare shoulders

But notice something crucial:

Nothing is tense.

  • No exaggerated arch

  • No clenched toes

  • No hyper-sharpened erotic triangle

The pose is relaxed, almost domestic. She’s sitting, not presenting.

This is very important for understanding Starr’s emotional register.

The mirror, the photograph, the absent man

One of Starr’s quiet genius touches is the photograph of the man in the mirror frame.

  • He’s smiling

  • He’s not watching her

  • He’s not dominating the composition

He exists as context, not control.

This changes everything.

The scene becomes:

“I am happy, and someone exists who shares my life—but my happiness does not depend on being watched.”

That’s a subtle but radical idea for commercial illustration of that era.

Color and line: why the happiness feels clean

Starr’s line is:

  • smooth

  • continuous

  • never aggressive

His colors:

  • warm but not loud

  • playful without garishness

  • reds and greens balanced so the image never screams

There is no visual anxiety here. No harsh blacks. No cutting diagonals. The eye glides, it doesn’t pounce. That glide is emotional as much as visual.

Why you feel “happiness” (and not just charm)

Starr’s women are often:

  • pleased with themselves

  • amused by life

  • quietly confident

They are not:

  • yearning

  • scheming

  • inviting conquest

This is happiness as self-containment, not conquest.

That is rare.

Starr’s happiness is not dramatic. It is not heroic. It is not tragic.

It is everyday happiness. That may be why it feels so good—and so rare. In art, especially modern art, happiness often feels embarrassing, naïve, or suspect.

Starr refuses that suspicion.

He simply says:

“This moment is enough.”

And somehow, that still works—decades later.

Why Leonard Starr is unusual among “mainstream” artists

Most mainstream illustrators carefully manage:

  • desire

  • fantasy

  • ownership

Starr breaks one rule:

He allows his women to enjoy themselves independently of the viewer.

That makes them:

  • less erotically available

  • more psychologically complete

Mainstream art usually fears this because:

a complete woman cannot be possessed by the gaze.

Yet Starr risks it. That risk is why the image feels strange—even slightly “uncooperative.” 

p.s. AI help has been taken although ideas are mine 

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