Junk Journal Week 37

This past week was an unusual one for me because it is rare that I go a whole week without finishing a book of fiction. Much of my reading time was connected to art. 

Sally Mann’s Hold Still is a number of things: a memoir/autobiography, a book about aesthetics and the reason one creates art, a book about why people feel so strongly about naked photographs of the human body, especially children.

Smee’s book is a curious book of art history about eight artists, told in four chapters that focus on the relationship between pairs. Those pairs are Freud and Bacon, Manet and Degas, Matisse and Picasso, as well as de Kooning and Pollock. I started the book wanting to learn more about the paintings of Freud and Bacon. I found this book to be deeply satisfying because it seems to both be a book that specialists will appreciate, but it offers enough background for people who know little about the history of painting to enjoy it.

You might not recognize the name Geoff McFetridge, but I suspect you would recognize his work. Among many other projects, he has done quite a bit of work with Spike Jonze in movies like Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, and, most especially, Her.

I have read Shel SIlverstein off and on since the 1970s. Elisabeth Egan had a nice audio story in the NYTimes worth listening to. The poem Homework Machine, despite being written more than forty years ago, could also be describing current AI technology like ChatGPT.