Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Georg Simmel, quotes, the arcades project, thesis Leave a comment
“The jostling crowdedness and the motley disorder of metropolitan communication would…be unbearable without..psychological distance. Since contemporary urban culture…forces us to be physically close to an enormous number of people,..people would sink completely into despair if the objectification of social relationships did not bring with it an inner boundary and reserve. The pecuniary character of relationships, either openly or concealed in a thousand forms, places [a] …functional distance between people that is an inner protection…against the overcrowded proximity.”
– Georg Simmel, Philosophies des Geldes (Leipzig, 1900)
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappacini's Daughter, the arcades project Leave a comment
…as for Rappaccini, it is said of him—and I…can answer for its truth—that he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard-seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.
Professor Pietro Baglioni, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappacini’s Daughter
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ernest Seilliere, Eugene Delacroix, the arcades project Leave a comment
“Delacroix is the artist best equipped to portray modern woman in her heroic manifestations, whether these be understood in the divine or the infernal sense… It seems that such color thinks for itself, independently of the objects it clothes. The effect of the whole is almost musical.”
– Ernest Seilliere
[painting: Girl Seated in a Cemetery, Eugene Delacroix, 1824]
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Marquis de Sade, the arcades project Leave a comment
“Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.”
Marquis de Sade
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
Piracy’s preserving effect, while little known, is actually nothing new. Through the centuries, the tablets, scrolls, and books that people copied most often and distributed most widely survived to the present. Libraries everywhere would be devoid of Homer, Beowulf, and even The Bible without unauthorized duplication.
Provocative read on why history needs software piracy. Reminiscent of the story of how the widely pirated first edition of Arabian Nights made it one of the most influential pieces of storytelling in history. (via austinkleon)
Posted: January 28, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charles Baudelaire, Félicien Rops, quotes, the arcades project, thesis, Walter Benjamin Leave a comment
“It presents a multifaceted allegory.-Plan to use an etching by Bracquemond as the frontispiece to the <second edition of> Les Fleurs du mal. Baudelaire describes it: “A skeleton turning into a tree, with legs and ribs forming the trunk, the arms stretched out to make a cross and bursting into leaves and buds, sheltering several rows of poisonous plants in little pots, lined up as if in a gardener’s house.”
Walter Benjamin, via The Arcades Project
[Etching entitled Frontispiece by Félicien Rops]
Posted: January 28, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Édouard Manet, Stéphane Mallarmé Leave a comment
an infant dies to
us both—de
monstrates our
ideal, child-man
—anew! father
& mother quietly
entrust existence
survive a son in
the two extremes—
malassociating him
acquiescing separate
—death is more—nul
ling this tiny “self” denied
Stéphane Mallarmé
[painting by Édouard Manet]
Posted: January 28, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charles Baudelaire, Paul Valéry, the arcades project, Walter Benjamin Leave a comment
“Thus, Baudelaire’s problem might have-indeed must have-posed itself in these terms: ‘How to be a great poet, but neither a Lamartine nor a Hugo nor a Musset.’ I do not say that these words were consciously formulated, but they must have been latent in Baudelaire’s mind; they even constituted what was the essential Baudelaire. They were his raison d’etat. In the domain of creation, which is also the domain of pride, the need to come out and be distinct is part of life itself.”
Paul Valéry, Introduction to Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1928) via The Arcades Project
[Paul Valéry, image source unknown]
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: architecture, technology Leave a comment
Should architects design buildings as if they were Web apps? via archinect
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Geffroy, the arcades project, Walter Benjamin Leave a comment
“the profound and complex charm of a capital city which has grown old and worn in the glories and tribulations of life… I have rarely seen the natural solemnity of an immense city more poetically reproduced. Those majestic accumulations of stone; those spires ‘whose fingers point to heaven’; those obelisks of industry, spewing forth their conglomerations of smoke against the firmament; those prodiges of scaffolding ‘round buildings under repair, applying their openwork architecture, so paradoxically beautiful, upon architecture’s solid body; that tumultuous sky, charged with anger and spite; those limitless perspectives, only increased by the thought of all the drama they contain;-he forgot not one of the complex elements which go to make up the painful and glorious décor of civilization…”
Charles Baudelaire on Gustave Geffroy, via The Arcades Project [p 231]
[image] The Pont-Neuf by Charles Meryon, 1853-1854
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