Slippery

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardwinchell/2432660543/
Image: Flickr

Andy Warhol made a significant statement with Brillo Boxes, first exhibited at New York’s Stable Gallery in 1964. The banal collection of soap boxes seemed indistinguishable from those found at any supermarket. Warhol seemed to be saying that it’s not the visual appeal of an object that determines its status as art; rather, it’s the artist’s intention, his decision to regard an object as art, that confers that status. But this creates some puzzles:

For one, ironically, the original Brillo packaging had itself been designed by an abstract expressionist, James Harvey, who had been driven into commercial art to make a living. Arthur Danto writes, “The question was why Warhol’s boxes should have been worth $200 when that man’s products were not worth a dime.” Does Warhol’s stance mean that concepts entirely trump beauty, that one should properly judge an artwork by what it means rather than how it looks?

If so, is this art?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixteen-miles/4772558547/
Image: Flickr

It’s not Warhol, but “Not Warhol,” by artist Mike Bidlo, displayed in the northeast corner of the lobby at New York’s Lever House in 2010. If Warhol can co-opt Harvey, can Bidlo co-opt Warhol? Why not? “At the time that they were shown, the Brillo Boxes were underappreciated,” Bidlo told the New York Times. “This is a different context and a different audience, but it’s a great opportunity for so many people to see them.”

Where does this end? Museum director Pontus Hultén claimed he’d created more than 100 wooden Brillo boxes in 1968 “according to Andy Warhol’s instructions,” but in 2010 the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board determined that “there is no known documentation that Warhol authorised their production.” What then is the status of these boxes? If art is in the mind of the creator, how do we resolve a dispute as to the contents of the creator’s mind? By committee?

| Art

Consequences

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_Anton_von_Scheidel_Le_Chat_Sauvage_Le_Chat_D%27%C3%A9spagne.jpg

In May 1875, Frederick Law Olmsted received a letter from his 4-year-old son Henry, asking him to send the family dog to Massachusetts, where he and his mother were visiting family friends. Olmsted replied:

Dear Henry:

The cats keep coming into the yard, six of them every day, and Quiz drives them out. If I should send Quiz to you to drive the cows away from your rhubarb he would not be here to drive the cats out of the yard. If six cats should keeping coming into the yard every day and not go out, in a week there would be 42 of them and in a month 180 and before you came back next November 1260. Then if there should be 1260 cats in the yard before next November half of them at least would have kittens and if half of them should have 6 kittens apiece, there would be more than 5000 cats and kittens in the yard. There would not be any place for Rosanna to spread the clothes unless she drove them all off the grass plot, and if she did they would have to crowd at the end of the yard nearest the house, and if they did that they would make a great pile as high as the top of my windows. A pile of 5000 cats and kittens, some of them black ones, in front of my window would make my office so dark I should not be able to write in it. Besides that those underneath, particularly the kittens, would be hurt by those standing on top of them and I expect they would make such a great squalling all the time that I should not be able to sleep, and if I was not able to sleep, I should not be able to work, and if I did not work I should not have any money, and if I had not any money, I could not send any to Plymouth to pay your fare back on the Fall River boat, and I could not pay my fare to go to Plymouth and so you and I would not ever see each other any more. No, Sir. I can’t spare Quiz and you will have to watch for the cows and drive them off yourself or you will raise no rhubarb.

Your affectionate father.

| Literature

On the Couch

In the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the subject is asked whether he agrees with a series of statements, such as “There seems to be a lump in my throat much of the time,” “I am not afraid to handle money,” “I feel uneasy indoors,” and “My sleep is fitful and disturbed.” His responses give insights into his personality and psychopathology.

In 2006, poet Katie Degentesh fed these statements into Google and combined the results into a series of poems, which she published as The Anger Scale. Here’s an excerpt from “As a youngster I was suspended from school one or more times for cutting up”:

Everyone knows about Dallas
and its acts of terrifying gorgeousness

a chef in a tall hat piping meringue
discussing the “brain drain”

dropped a slab of concrete on his left foot
before being lured to the guitar

doesn’t recall details of cutting up friend
to create fake masterpiece

Poets Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith call this “a ‘pataphysical nosography, evaluating and diagnosing the mental stability of the Internet itself.” But how do we evaluate the results?

| Science & Math

Franklin’s Mint

Lesser-known maxims from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

  • Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander, hath as lasting fame as his master.
  • Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self?
  • We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.
  • A temper to bear much, will have much to bear.
  • Content and riches seldom meet together; riches take thou, contentment I had rather.
  • Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.
  • Vanity backbites more than malice.
  • In success be moderate.
  • A new truth is a truth, and an old error is an error, tho’ Clodpate won’t allow either.
  • What maintains one Vice would bring up two children.
  • The Golden Age never was the present Age.
  • Quarrels never could last long, if on one side lay the wrong.
  • If your riches are yours, why don’t you take them with you t’other World?

“Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful. Nor is a duty beneficial because it is commanded, but it is commanded because it is beneficial.”

| Literature

Recommendation

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glaspalast_M%C3%BCnchen_1889_095.jpg

In 1880, Sidney Lanier made an important announcement to his 11-year-old son Charley:

West Chester, Pa.
August 15, 1880

My dear Charley:

A young man came to our house yesterday morning who claims that he is a brother of yours and Sidney’s and Harry’s and that he is entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining unto that honorable connection. … He is a most exemplary young man. He never stays out late at night; neither chews, smokes, nor uses snuff; abstains from all intoxicating liquors, and does not touch even tea or coffee; however much preserves and fruit-cake there may be on the supper-table, he never asks for any; he does no kind of work on the Sabbath; he honors his father and mother, particularly his mother; he plays no games of hazard, not even marbles for winnance; and I am positively certain that in the whole course of his life he has never uttered a single angry or ungentlemanly word. I am bound to admit that he has his shortcomings: he isn’t as particular about his clothes as I would like to see him; he has a way of trying to get both fists in his mouth which certainly does look odd in company; and he wants his breakfast in the morning at four o’clock — an hour at which it is very inconvenient, with our household arrangements, to furnish it to him. …

Earnestly hoping that this lovely little (for I omitted to mention that he is small of stature) brother Rob may find a good warm place in your three hearts without being obliged to resort to extreme measures, and with a hundred embraces for you, me dear big Charley,

I am
Your &c &c &c.

| Literature

The Soul Trial

When Arizona copper prospector James Kidd disappeared in 1949, he left behind a curious will:

this is my first and only will and is dated the second day in January 1946. I have no heirs have not married in my life, after all my funeral expenses have been paid and #100, one hundred dollars to some preacher of the gospital to say fare well at my grave sell all my property which is all in cash and stocks with E F Hutton Co Phoenix some in safety deposit box, and have this balance money go into a reserach or some scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death I think in time their can be a Photograph of soul leaving the human at death, James Kidd

He left it in a safe deposit box, so it didn’t come to light until 1963, by which time Kidd’s estate had appreciated to nearly $200,000. This attracted more than 100 claimants, each of which argued it was best qualified to find the human soul. The Neurological Sciences Foundation of Phoenix, for example, said that it was working with hallucinogenic agents, biochemical controls of the brain, and the nervous system. “To the extent that the ‘soul’ is a function of the human body,” it insisted, “to this extent our work … is relevant to the intent of the will.”

Arizona superior court judge Robert L. Myers finally awarded the legacy to a local neurological institute, but after an additional six years of litigation it went to the American Society for Psychical Research. “The Kidd legacy was not only a windfall,” wrote Nicholas Wade in Science, “but proved the parapsychologists could at least convince a court of the seriousness of their intentions.”

| Death · Oddities

Easy Rider

https://www.google.com/patents/US4735429

For the conservation-minded, in 1988 Joseph Beck patented a “sail attachment” for a bicycle. The mast extends upward from the rear wheel, and it’s mounted on a pivot so that it will swing out of the way if you run into something. I’m not sure how you’d store it, though.

Related: In 1826 George Pocock invented a buggy drawn by kites.

| Technology