Los Libros

I like to keep the books I'm reading straight in front of me on my desk so I can turn to them at any point to find that certain quote I underlined in black pen or pink highlighter. All my books are marked this way and I have a habit of marking books with little notes, or "ha", or stars which mark a point of resonance. I too read multiple books at the same time, which proves to be an interesting if not eccentric way of combining ideas. I am now reading "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami; the Taschen book on "Expressionism" by Norbert World; The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson; "About Looking" by John Berger; the latest Art Issue of W magazine; Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality; and finally:

Painters on Painting
Selected and Edited with An Introduction by Eric Protter

Here is what I underlined today:

"The work of art is always based on these two poles of the maker and the onlooker; and the spark that comes from this bi-polar action gives birth to something, like electricity" - Marcel Duchamp

"A PAINTING MUST MAKE HUMAN CONTACT. If a painting does not make a human contact, it is nothing. But the audience is also responsible . . . Through pictures, our passions touch." - Robert Motherwell

Next on the plate: Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking."


RP