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."

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Looking at Picture, Smoking It and Turning It Into Nocturne By An Old Master!

 James Hall, TLS, May 2025:

"...A trickle of late-medieval night scenes – the finest being Taddeo Gaddi’s greyscale fresco of the annunciation to the shepherds in a blaze of divine light (c.1330) – became a flood in the seventeenth century, when Adam Elsheimer and Georges de La Tour specialized in starkly lit night scenes, and Caravaggio and Rembrandt spot-lit faces in what passes for perpetual night. Illuminated by moon, torch, bonfire, hearth, candle or lamp, night enabled artists to create drama, mystery, fear and awe; sentience became more secretive, imbued with visionary or nightmarish intensity. The trick was not to make the dark stretches feel turgid or slapdash, with luminous heads becoming Orpheus-like floaters on bituminous seas. This was almost inevitable, however, as successive layers of varnish and tobacco smoke could transform any picture into a nocturne: Hogarth’s print of Father Time has him blowing pipe smoke over a painting to make it look old. The passage of time darkened the “Mona Lisa”, thereby enabling Walter Pater to dub her a vampire and “diver in deep seas” who “keeps their fallen day about her”...."

Time Smoking a Picture, 1761 by William Hogarth deals with art connoisseurs and their mislead enthusiasm for old master paintings of any quality or lack thereof, because of the popular notion that 'time' both improved and mellowed art. William Hogarth's portrayal of time and his activities is less than flattering. He sits upon a statue he has utterly destroyed. A severed hand points directly to time's ever darkening varnish. 'Time' meanwhile is viewing a painting which he blackens and obscures with the voluminous smoke from his pipe. He has also carelessly ripped a great hole in the canvas with his scythe.

Time Smoking a Picture is an original engraving printed upon early nineteenth century wove paper and with large, full margins as published by William Heath in 1822. This is a fine, original example of the satirical art both designed and engraved by the British artist, William Hogarth.


 

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