Off the Top: Art Entries
Showing posts: 1-15 of 17 total posts
Musee d’Orsay and the Three Mixed-media Arabs
I swear I have written about this before, well I have, but just in my notes going way back.
It took James asking about Museum memories for this IndieWeb Carnival March 2026 to get this out. James asked about museum memories and I have many (I may link a list of them which I may write on) and there were at least four that throw me and get me lost in a good way. One of these is this…
Musee d’Orsay and Three Travelers
In 1987 I had my first trip to Paris and was told by many I needed to go to the Musée d’Orsay and many had suggestions of what I must see. The expanse of the museum in an amazing spacious former train station is a gem of a work in and of itself. The stone and light play wonderfully in the space. As we started out for the museum we had to work around Le Tour de Francethat was racing into Paris that morning, it was great to see it. But, arriving in the museum I couldn’t remember what I “should see”.
Toward the end of the main room there were three sculpture busts that called me over. It was three mixed media pieces by Charles Henri Joseph Cordier that were listed together as The Three Arabs (Algerians). Each was a bronze face with alabaster hats and clothing that were moved by the North African breezes. But, one of the three really caused me to pause, consider, and think. It was the Arabe d’El Aghouat en burnous - Charles Henri Joseph Cordier | Musée d’Orsay who had an alabaster robe with hood that went around his bronze face and head.
Part of what struck me was the movement of the alabaster cloth. But, with the cloaked sculpture and a hood, I couldn’t sort out how the hood, face, and head worked. Each angle and time I’d look I was see another detail of the sculpture that drew me in and distracted me from the static mechanics of how it was done. Whomever I’m with often nudges me onward, but my mind is stuck and enrapt with the hooded in hard alabaster bronze face that seems to have the alabaster moving freely like cloth captured and frozen in an instance (yet crafted over much time).
The Returns
I have been back to the Musee d’Orsay three to five times since. With each visit I wander around a little, usually making sure to also see the sub-set of Monet’s studies of light of the West Facade of the Cathedral of Rouen up on the fifth floor. But, I first make sure the three alabaster and bronze sculptures are still there. Early in the visit I will make my way to the three sculptures and take them in anew again. Then I get drawn into the how the hood, head, and face work. The head looks full or mostly full.
This minor mystery to me will still be with me for years between visits. I run into people who are fans of Musee d’Orsay (but, who isn’t) and want to talk about the three Arabs, but nobody I’ve met seems to know they exist. I am so grateful to the museum to have these sculptures on their site, but also Google Maps has them in the 3D exploration of the museum. When others have said they did not see or didn’t notice these sculptures I have to go and check it wasn’t some personal mirage of my own, and it isn’t. But, the mystery of the hood is still real to me. My inspection of the mystery also has me (and sometimes my museum companion for the trip) a little concerned that a guard has flagged me for the close inspection from all angles with fear I am prepping to steal it.
When I am there and taking in the three pieces I am usually the only one around it looking at them for anything more than a few seconds or passing glance. It feels like they are hidden in plain sight.
The Others
The other two pieces are also really well done and I do feel like I have neglected them each visit. Homme du Soudan en costume algérien - Charles Henri Joseph Cordier | Musée d’Orsay is one that the museum site has a decent back story about the work and the artist. He has a strong pose and looks quite determined.
The other is Femme des colonies - Charles Henri Joseph Cordier | Musée d’Orsay and the bronze has more details with an under garment under the alabaster robe, and also has a piece of sturdy jewelry on her upper arm. Her hair stands out with is braiding and spikes. Her stance is mostly strong and confident, with a serious dose of “I’m over it” and taking a break.
These two pieces and the hooded one all do great justice capturing humanity and a moment in time, with more than an essence of being. In these works the museum as brought in everything but the breath of humanity in its glory.
Time to Notice
These pieces stand out to me and I wish others would see them too and be struck by them in the same, or similar, manner. But, I know they are actually there and amazing to someone as others walk by not giving much notice of any kind.
More…
I have more than 30 notes on memories of museums that I’ve been fleshing out a little. I may post the full list and sketch more out with words over time. There are three more museum piece I hope to write in the near future. There is also a piece about cities as museums I really want to finish framing and wrap up its writing.
IndieWeb Carnival - Totems
This is following the prompt - IndieWeb Carnival July 2025: Totems | Maxwell’s Realm, as set by Maxwell Joslyn. All interpretations of totems have come to mind from things I’ve kept in my pockets, a Swatch watch on my belt loop from high school through much of college, my dad’s watch, to a regular cap. But, growing up in the Pacific Northwest the idea that comes to mind when someone says “totem” are the native tribes of the Pacific Northwest’s totem poles and art.
As a young child living in the Seattle area and Portland there were not only totem poles around, but a lot of Totem poles - (Wikipedia) around and I enjoyed them and if we were traveling and there were totem poles around, we needed to go see them. I picked up a couple replicas for my book shelves as a kid and had them for a long time (I swore I still had them). But, it was not just the poles, it was Northwest Coast art - (Wikipedia) that also drew me in.
We would take regular trips each year to Vancouver, British Columbia, which meant even more totem poles and art. Stanley Park had is large totem pole, which we needed to visit, but as I found or more we needed to go see those as well. I could stand and look at them for a long time, but my parents didn’t have the same interest in staring at them and walking around them.
Once my family moved to Portland, Oregon the opportunities weren’t as prevalent to see the totem poles, but the art was all around. In my perspective the best thing about Portland was being close to Lelooska Foundation & Cultural Center – Living History Museum. Going to see Chief Lelooska and the Cultural Center for school trip and cub scout trips, and any other opportunity, was a perfect time in my book. Going to the long house celebrations with the stories and dancing, which came with explanations were fantastic.
This art and gathering called out the local salmon, ravens, hawks, orcas, and more in celebration and made each of them seem even more special. The sometimes world around you that can get overlooked by the day to day (even for kids) gets pulled into pure focus.
Weeknote - 10 January 2021
The first week back at work after a 10 day break was going well, other than a continual battle with my work computer that had a battery bulge that started six months ago and slowly turned into throttling, slow cursor and slow recognition of keystrokes at times, and regular crashes. The long replacement / fix cycle is pure Covid impact. After on Friday 5pm my refresh the laptop arrived, it felt like I got half my brain back spending time getting it setup (that process is still underway).
But, the insurrection actions to take over the U.S. Capitol took the focus of the week. Work Thursday and Friday was a welcome distraction, but lack of sleep and a computer doing its best to die made them not overly productive. I never thought I would see the U.S. foundations attacked in such a brutal way. Large mobs fed by outright lies trying to keep Congress from doing what the Constitution requires them to do is years and decades in the making. Chants to execute the Vice President because he said he couldn’t do what there is no legal path for him to do is beyond excuse. Attacking the the monuments to the democracy, but also attacking the Constitution and what it has laid out to protect the U.S. democracy is pure insurrection. This is a true wicked problem that is a tightly wound gordian knot of complexity. Having leader still sitting in office that supported the insurrection and the lies that created its actions is beyond me. They are sitting in seats and elected bodies they don’t believe in and want to destroy and want to run a country with a Constitution they want to destroy.
Read
Friends shared the Rijksmuseum’s now offering high resolution images of their collection, which are stunning.
I restumbled upon SPACE10, which I used to follow but the RSS feed seem to have broken, but some of their long pieces (which is many of them) are not structured well for a long read and they have the scroll bar in the browser turned off to know roughly how far along you are in a long piece, and there are no anchors in the long pieces to link to sections of relevance. It is a really not well conceived site for people thinking about architecture and a structured world.
That said, their piece on The Digital in Architecture: Then, Now and in the Future is rather good, it reminds me of a collection of presentations on information architecture from some of the top information architects from around 2003 to 2015 or so. The piece also has a good bibliography, but nothing is linked (I’m really not sure they understand what they are doing with the web, but they content is interesting and that is likely why I pushed it off my radar in the past).
Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for fast Flow by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais finally arrived. This looks much better than what I had thought it was and may dig into it over the weekend. I picked it up to gut around the topic of teams and optimizing them, particularly around adaptive teams. I a lot of experience with building and running teams and team ecosystems in large organization and bringing helping them be modern and breaking out of the command and control as well as chain of command model non-digital companies lean on (which destroy capabilities and efficiencies and mostly died out in the early 2000s except for the dinosaur companies - for more than 20 years I’ve flipped that models and been able to vastly improve every important metric). I haven’t found good books on teams that echo not only the experiences I’ve had and have consulted others on, but ones I see as prevalent in most of the high performing companies that work the same way. I know Team Topologies is more focussed on DevOps / developer / engineering models, but some underlying foundations for improving my framing of things is what I’m looking to get out of it. There are some things I don’t fully agree with and I regularly see as problematic that are listed in headings, but I don’t know their take. What I do know is a lot of the reference materials they point to are ones I’ve long used and have in my foundations as they echo experiences and things I’ve seen in practice that are really good (I love well documented books, particularly ones that use solid references that hold up with time).
Also arrived is a used version of Paul Madonna’s Everything is its own reward, which is a book of his monochrome watercolor and sketches of San Francisco. It is wonderful and takes me back to a San Francisco I deeply miss and loved. Even though it was used, but still had the poster piece tucked into its back cover sleeve. This poster is a wonderful edition.
Watched
News…
Listened
New to me band, Her, fit the mood early in the week and I’ve added them to easy access in some playlists.
Exponent - Episode 191: Facebook, Twitter, and Trump was a good conversation that was a bit out of sync, but good from a thinking and considering the situation piece.
Postlight Podcast - WordPress and Beyond: With Matt Mullenweg was really good, as expected. Some of the side discussion that started Paul Ford thinking, really have me intrigued. I’m needing to go back and track these down.
I had A.J. Croce’s A.J. Croce album on and had forgotten how good it really is. It is so well recorded and produced as on decent headphones or sound system it sounds like you are in the room with them. This was the in the soundtrack of the cross country drive with my dad in 1993. But, even with those wonderful memories I’ve always loved this album as there is so much good music in it and the lyrics are really good with nice turns of phrase.
Productivity
I’ve gone back to a practice of daily notes (the daily dump) in Obsidian / markdown that helps keep track of thoughts. It is similar to the sections I have for the weeknote template, but include: Thoughts, read, talked to, health, watched, listened to, worked on (personal items - I haven’t kept a daily work journal in a long while, but have daily meeting notes I keep in my work environment), learned, ate, bought, added to wishlist. These last two are to keep track of why.
One of the things I’m trying to sort through in my notes, research, and writing process workflow that I’m doing between just the daily notes and weeknotes is a microcosm of my regular workflows for writing (which I’m getting back to). My notes sit in directories in markdown files that are now in Dropbox for mobile device access and Obsidian sits on top of them linking things together and all is searchable in spotlight and DevonThink Indexes it. My writing is now in iA Writer, which works best with iCloud directories, which can be searched by Spotlight, but is outside Obsidian and outside DevonThink.
I sometimes start writing in iA Writer, but they may be: Just a stub, more fleshed out but still a draft, mostly finished but not posted / published, or posted / published. I have many pieces from mid-summer around the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was murdered, which really moved me, but they weren’t finished or posted. Weeknotes ran into multi-week notes, then into just idle and start from scratch. There are things I know I have written I want to point to, but they aren’t shared out (this is a common issue). I finally created a quick template for marking the state at the bottom of a piece in progress. But, this isn’t helping sort through my central repository in Obsidian where searching across that collection and interlinking to pull things closer.
I’ve swapped through a bunch of writing apps and at the moment I have no interest in moving off iA Writer as I really like it. There are some things I need to investigate for some writing coming (footnotes, tables, and possibly integration with Grammarly as I need to get back into good writing patterns and practices). In the past my long or focussed writing was in Scrivener, which I still love, but its treatment of markdown as second class citizen, which made it difficult to have a smooth workflow with for publishing to the web. I used Ulysses for a short while, but its own structures and not freely available markdown files made it not work well at all in my workflows. There is a lot I really like with Ulysses and Scrivener with notes and note management, but easy working across devices isn’t as smooth as iA Writer nor as smooth as the workflow that is easy with freely available markdown files.
Drawn by the Weather Project
Okay, I admit it, I have a passionate interest in the Weather Project. I have been enrapt with the photos of the visitors (David Gallegher, Eliot Shepard, Dan Hill, etc.
I have yet to completely figure out what has me fascinated with this exhibit. One element is the color as well as the light. There were early mornings in San Francisco when I was heading east on California Street near Masonic and watch the new sun rising over the hills and the bay with an orange-red glow. That was one of the more spectacular views I have seen anywhere. The weather project has a similar color and intensity, but with a more ominous power than one of striking beauty.
Design graduation speech to wake the artist
Communication Arts this month offers their Interactive Awards, but also opens with a great graduation speech to artists and designers from Sean Kernan. This speech really hit home as similar topics have been on my mind of late as I have been trying to work through some long writing pieces related to the Model of Attraction, but also have not been able to do what I truly enjoy and usually get paid for. In this time I have been helping Joy get ready for junior's arrival and running incessant errands. This piece really has struck a strong chord as at the heart of things I have a strong creative spirit that has been a musician and writer. This is balanced with an extremely logic driven side, that eases its way into programming and other highly structured pattern making and pattern discernment.
I wish to come back to this article over and over through time. I hope you enjoy this article as much as I did.
Portland Moving Public Art
I uploaded my quicktime movie of Portland moving public art(3.5MB Quicktime movie) that is located across the street from Powells Books. This was taken from my digital still camera, but I really wanted have a picture of this in action. Now I share.
Chiam moves on
I learned a great deal about art and myself from reading My Name is Asher Lev, which is now ingrained in my senses. The author, Chiam Potok passed away today. It is days like these that you wished you had reached out and said thank you, at the very least.Cities of Ideas
Today's New York Times provides Creative Cities and Their New Elite, which theorizes that cities with higher than normal gay and bohemian populations are fertile grounds for economic sustainability, innovation, and technical growth. There seems to be a strong correlation between open accepting environments that recognize the importance of creativity and intelligence and the other measures of successful city cores that are economically viable. The article focuses on Robert Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life", which fully fleshes out these discussions. The Austin American-Statesman expounds on the Cities of Ideas in their series. The core of growth is based on knowledge and ideas that provide the fuel for the local economy. The precept seems to account for the cities I truly enjoy, including Amsterdam and Paris.The Communication Arts Design Interact SOW is MoMA's The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934, a well done Flash presentation of the exhibition. As always the SOW (site of the week) provides great background on the how and why of the site. The exhibit site is http://www.moma.org/russian.
Carrie points to Launch New York City: After the Fall, a wonderful Flash presentation of post September 11 NYC by photographer Geoffery Hiller.
Being April 1st, Josh at Praystation turns back the clocks for just one day.
There are Quicktime clips of SXSW sessions and interviews, which includes one from the Josh Davis session. It is rough and not in context, but it does offer a good snippet of Josh and the magnetic dots.
An Artful Barrage from Josh Davis
The mind is functioning and also completely blown from watching and listening to Josh Davis. The world of visual, digital, mathematical, and relational information has broken more synapses than I new were functioning today and seemed to have spawned new channels for information to flow and be processed. In other words, my mind and concept of the world has just been altered again. Not only do I know have an understanding of what somebody means when they say the words that comprise the name Josh Davis, but I have a whole new way to look at information and human responses.
One of the items presented was a visual and audio presentation of network activity. Not only could one visually watch the activity and interaction of those on the network and watching what activities the users on the network were performing and showing their IP address. This visual presentation was augmented with audio that dynamically corresponded to the actions. A sys admin could sit and monitor a network aurally and not watch a monitor. Like a mother and a child, a sys admin could emotively interact with the sounds of the network. A user on the network has saturated the bandwidth the downloads, and the sounds emitted could trigger and emotive response from the sys admin to nurse the network back to a healthy state for all users. As many of us hear our cars and listen to the pitch the subway train makes pulling into the station, which indicates how full the train is so we know where to position our selves on the platform (usually lower tone>es indicate fuller trains and the lowest rumble on a seemingly empty train is the money car on the money train).