The New Aesthetics of Summer: Beauty Under a Heat Dome It’s hot in France, I mean really hot. Here they call it a canicule, and it’s not a clever name for strange breezes off the Mediterranean, or as I initially thought, a pastry; it’s a heat wave. In Paris, where zinc roofs cover 80 percent of the
Aesthetical Action: Some Cool Cues One very, very hot evening, I was finally watching Ira Sachs’ film Passages but strangely I kept finding myself losing track of the complex relationships in the film and getting lost instead in what I guess I would call… bedscapes, and not the sexy kind. Specifically, I became obsessed with
Aesthetical Action: A Madeline Moment She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madelines’ which looked as though they had been molded in the scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically weary after a dull day with a prospect of a depressing morrow, I carried to my lips
Featured I worry about things... A lot When I say things, I mean literally things: I worry about the way a stack of books sits in a corner. I worry about whether a knife should rest on the edge of a plate. I worry about one orange in a bowl. This does not make me neurotic or
Aesthetical Action: The Bling Thing There are many purportedly refined objects that aim at elegance but succumb to bad taste, overburdened with needless decoration and meaningless frivolity. With these works, utility becomes a secondary consideration, verging on the enfeebled and morally corrupt. -Soetsu Yanagi Over the last 100 years, there has been a tendency to
What Befits a King: The Moral Aesthetics of Gold But that’s the thing about gold. The human desire for its sparkle has never been a question of need, only want. -Julia Carrie Wong I’ve been thinking a lot about gold recently, and it’s not my fault. The Trump administration has caused untold political upheaval, and there’
