Washington Square Park

Washington Square Park, New York City, 2010

Washington Square Park is like a postage stamp of New York City. It is opened up by a grand arch that honors George Washington. Fifth Avenue rams into the park at once — and then voilà, you're in what New Yorkers call Greenwich Village. Nineteenth-Century row houses line the Fifth Avenue side, while New York University's campus buildings line the opposite side. As a graduate student at the New School for Social Research, I spent many hours in Bobst Library — the largest building to border the square. The square itself is filled with life — chess players, performers, the homeless, and groups proclaiming a cause. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if a subway line ran underground through the park and you could alight on a train from the fountain. And I do love the fountain. In the Summertime, you can step inside it, feel refreshed, take your shoes off and watch the zest of bodies, of allegria, of life.

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Aesthetic Thursdays: Dionysos Holds a Theater Mask

Terra-Cotta Mixing Bowl, Dionysos and Young Pan, 410-390 B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art

The mixing bowl depicted above was probably made in Greek occupied southern Italy in the 5th century B.C. The bowl was used to mix wine for the celebration of the feast of Dionysos, the god of the theater. Dionysos stands opposite a young Pan who pours water into a mixing bowl. 

Dionysos holds a mask. Masks were used by actors on stage to personate the roles they played. In this piece, Dionysos appears to hold a mask of himself. The mask he holds is identical to the artistic representation of his face. Dionysos wears the person of the character he personates. His mask is his person. To personate means to wear the person of someone. Person derives from the Greek word for "mask." To personate is to wear a mask. Personation is the act of personating. In an obsolete usage, a personation is also the mask itself. So we could say that Dionysos holds his own personation.

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Stanley Cavell on the Aesthetic Autonomy of the Photographic Image

"Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, a way that could not satisfy painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the task of reproduction."

Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed

Source: Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed : Reflections on the Ontology of Film. New York: Viking Press, 1971. Print.

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View from the K-Mart Adjacent to the Astor Place Subway Station (6 Train)

View from K-Mart (6 train), New York City, 2011

If you enter the K-Mart at Astor Place in downtown Manhattan, go to the lower level and you can see there is an entrance to the Astor Place subway station. Get your essentials and hop on the local Lexington Avenue line. Caveat: the K-Mart is only accessible on southbound trains, though. If you are going uptown you will have to forgo this convenient lifehack.

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30 Ways to say "Sheep Skin"

Thanks to a tag on a sheepskin rug sold at Ikea in Hicksville, New York, one can easily learn to say "peau de mouton" in thirty languages.

"Sheep Skin" in 30 Languages

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Aesthetic Thursdays: Tony Feher

Art is fixated on its medium. Tony Feher has draped the walls and floor of the Pace Gallery in Chelsea with vinyl tubes filled with food coloring. Typical of contemporary art, Feher eschews traditional media and instead uses cheaply bought vinyl tubing and dye. Is it art? Well, if art is what is deemed sacred: no one stepped on the tubes during my recent visit. The Next On Line Exhibit runs till February 12th.

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Two Photographs Taken From In And Around Long Island City in the Borough of Queens

Queens Queensboro Bridge Peaks Over Building in Long Island City, Queens

New York City Taxi Cab Lot in Long Island City.

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