Charles Darwin’s children were inveterate doodlers. Though it appears in his Origin of Species manuscript, this fish has not been identified in life.
Recent links of note:
Museums Ban Selfie Sticks From Their Stately Venues of Enlightened Gazing
Maggie Lange, New York Magazine
So much for #museumselfie day.
Tempo Shifts
Colin Dickey, Berfrois
“No matter how we try to organize and structure the calendar — be we French Revolutionaries, post-Soviet mathematicians, or American evangelicals — we design it so that we are the center of history. Time and tide may wait for no man, but the calendar always revolves around the calendar-makers.”
Picasso Trial: So how did French couple come by £50m art hoard?
Henry Samuel, The Telegraph
Thinking back to last week, one can only assume that there are Picassos around every corner, just waiting to be found.
The Whiff of a New Blacklist
James Panero, WSJ
Our executive editor investigates the changing relationship between art and politics.
One Wine, Two Wine, Red Wine, Blue Wine
Damion Searls, The Paris Review
“The most well-known color-translation problem is Homer’s “wine-dark sea”—the sea rarely being, of course, what we would call the color of wine of any color. Explanations relying on poetic license or metaphors of intoxicating depths quickly run aground on the rest of Homer’s color terms: He calls oxen “wine-dark,” too. The sea, when not “wine-dark,” is “violet,” an adjective he also applies to sheep.”
From our pages:
The other Italy
Dominic Green
Elena Ferrante’s novels reveal the violent state of Southern Italy.