Ingres considered bright colors “anti-historic” and warned his students against them. “Better to fall into gray,” he said, “than into bright colors.” Color, as Delacroix saw it, was essential to painting. “Remember,” he urged in his journal, “the enemy of all painting is gray.”
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Drawing or Color, Part II: The Florentines versus the Venetians
They called Michelangelo "the divine one." Titian was "the prince of painters." But these two contemporaries were on the opposite side of one of art's great debates.
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QFT: The World is Stranger Than You Thought
Beginning with studies of electromagnetism, scientists have come to understand reality in such a way that there really is no such thing as tiny bits of matter that exist independently and that cannot be divided. Atomism (in any traditional sense) is dead. Reality is not what we thought it was.
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On the Importance of Forgetting
Most attention in our culture is given to the importance of remembering. But it turns out that forgetting can be just as important. The inability to forget can be as destructive as the inability to remember.
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Origami, Neusis and Angle Trisection
The history of mathematics tells us that oftentimes approved technique is as much a matter of philosophical commitments and aesthetic sensibilities as it is a matter of pure utility.
