Explain your dissertation to an intelligent child

From the introduction to Ernst Gombrich's A Little History of the World (Yale University Press, 2008), Gombrich's granddaughter writes: "It so happened that, in the final stages of writing his doctoral thesis, my grandfather had been corresponding with a little girl who was the daughter of some friends. She wanted to know what was keeping him so busy, and he enjoyed trying to explain his subject to her in ways she would understand. He was also, he said later, feeling a little impatient with academic writing, having waded through so much of it in the course of his studies, and was convinced that it should be perfectly possible to explain most things to an intelligent child without jargon or pompous language."

The wonderful introduction also mentions that Gombrich was unemployed after finishing his dissertation in 1935, something that everyone I know on the job market this year can relate to. It was during his time as a jobless art historian that he wrote A Little History of the World, which then led to his Story of Art a few years later. The moral of this story: find something useful to do with your unemployed self.

Unswept Floor, Herakleitos. Mosaic based on a painting by Sosos of Pergamon, 2nd Century BCE.

At the Rutgers Visiting Artist lecture last night (organized by V), the brilliant Josephine Halvorson used this mosaic to talk about her painting practice's engagement with the 'real.' Click to enlarge. Note the small mouse about to seize the nut; the chicken leg is also quite mesmerizing.

Catskills!

V and I decided we needed a few days of relaxation to prepare for the stress of the new school year and the pressures of the (almost non-existent) academic job market season. I found this adorable hotel in Roxbury, NY called The Roxbury. Every rooom has its own theme, decorated to the max, but not in a tacky way. The hotel manages to achieve a delicate balance between kitsch and comfort. We stayed in the Go Lightly A-Go-Go room, complete with tiara, tiffany blue glitter mosaic and pictures of Audrey Hepburn all over the room.

We took a couple of wonderful and long hikes; my favorite was the Giant Ledge hike which featured 180 degree panoramic views over the Hudson valley. It was a straight climb uphill for a mile and a half, past some spectacular mushrooms and various little frogs. I am sorry to report that no squirrels were sighted but we did see a very rotund groundhog after the hike, munching on some grass near our hotel.

After the hike we were super hungry and wanted a delicious lunch. Unfortunately it was past normal lunching hours when we finished so the best we could do was a local diner: the awesomely named Bun N' Cone in Margaretville. Viktor had a very sad little hot dog and I had a killer american cheese grilled cheese on white bread. Probably made with margarine, but it was delicious nonetheless. I convinced V to split a banana split with me: vanilla/chocolate soft serve swirl, whipped cream, nuts, hot fudge and cherry on top. Ice cream fantasy realized!
The best part of Bun N' Cone was the bathroom. I'm not normally in the habit of bringing my camera to the bathroom but I thought that the unique toilet configuration had to be immortalized.

Paris comes to New York

le fooding is coming to NYC for two nights only! i've already got my tickets for Sept. 25's event featuring yves camdeborde, david chang, and others. i can only hope there is enough food to go around....

I love the Newark Museum

The only museum I have ever been to that features a 'mini -zoo,' complete with marmosets, owls, boa constrictors and fish a plenty. This is probably intended to make children associate animals with museums and therefore FUN. Or to entice adults, as it was the first part of the museum we visited. After our animal experience, onto art. One of the major strengths of the collection is eighteenth and nineteenth-century American painting, displayed in the permanent galleries under the rather bland title of "Picturing America." Fortunately, the exhibit surpassed its boring title and did a great job of hinting at the diversity of American visual culture during the period. You're not allowed to take pictures in the galleries (a little squirrel provided me with images below...) so I cannot show the dynamic hanging of nineteenth-century American small-format photographs that was in the first part of the exhibit. The highlight of the photography case were a few tintypes, a direct positive format that people of modest means could afford, not often on view in museums. Several photographs featured African American sitters as well as soldiers, bringing issues of race and class to the forefront. Less dazzling was the wall text of a wonderful painting of a Newark storefront from the 1840s by an anonymous artist which refers to the black man in the lower righthand corner as a "worker:"Unknown Artist, The House and Shop of David Alling, c. 1840s, oil on canvas.

As any nineteenth-century viewer would have recognized, this man is no mere "worker." New Jersey, more than its northern neighbors, clung to the institution of slavery. It was not until 1846 that slavery was officially abolished. The status of the "worker" in this 1840s painting is therefore uncertain. Is he a free worker, a slave, or in 1840s New Jersey slave parlance, "an apprentice for life?" The questions posed by this painting merit mention in the wall text...in my humble opinion.

A temporary American nineteenth-century landscape exhibit was full of surprises including this painting by Mary Nimmo Moran that depicts the industrialization of northern New Jersey as a gathering gray cloud in 1879:

Mary Nimmo Moran, View of Newark from the Meadows, 1879, oil on panel.
I love thinking about how Mary had to trudge out to the meadows in order to depict the contrast between the pristine outskirts of Newark and the smoky industrial center that was already becoming a part of the New Jersey landscape.

Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature: Hidden Paris Museum

The first Sunday of every month in Paris is free museum day which means that all of the gigantic wonderful museums (Louvre, Orsay, Pompidou) fill up with people and make for a less than ideal museum going experience. If you want to avoid the crowds on Sunday (or any day really), the Musee de la Chasse should be on your list. Housed in a beautiful hôtel particulier just off the rue des Archives in the 3e arrondissement, this quiet museum specializes in creatively arranged taxidermy mixed in with marvelous animal art in various media and from a wide range of time periods. For example, one of my favorite rooms features the contemporary Belgian artist Jan Fabre's owl heads on the celiing and georgeous 18th-century sketches of birds on the walls. The domesticated dog room is another highlight: Jeff Koons' Puppy is displayed alongside an 18th-century genre painting of a misbehaving lapdog (pictured below) and dog collars from 17th-century dogs of Spanish noblemen. There are some wonderful dead animal still lives by Chardin and Desportes in the hunting-themed rooms mixed in with hunting accoutrements and taxidermy vitrines. Beyond the great artwork and the masterfully executed taxidermy (look at the way the eyes are integrated into the animal to see just how good these french taxidermists were!), the joy of visiting this museum is seeing how far the curators have pushed the envelope. Working here must be a blast.




Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
62, rue des Archives - 75003 Paris
Tél. : 01.53.01.92.40 / Fax : 01.42.77.45.70
Closed on Mondays and on holidays

Brussels: Stand Up Seafood Bar

The center of Brussels is filled with overpriced and mediocre food options. Thankfully, Mer du Nord (Nordzee) is just beyond the city center, at Place St. Catherine. It's a stand-up seafood bar with a small menu, cheap and delicious wine by the glass and laid back ambiance. We ordered nearly everything on the menu and devoured it all. The gambas a la plancha were so good we had them twice. On an unrelated note, for beer we LOVED A la Morte Subite for their huge selection of Belgian brews and their lambic (do NOT miss the peach lambic!). For chocolate, Pierre Marcolini will satisfy all of your high-end chocolate requirements.

Gambas a la plancha
Grilled Sardines

Croquette de crevettes grises (a belgian specialty not to be missed)

45, Rue Sainte Catherine. Brussels 1000. Belgium

Restaurant De Kas: Amsterdam

V and I decided to cheap out on the hotel so we could afford the 50 EUR 5-course prix fixe at De Kas. Housed in the former municipal greenhouse of Amsterdam, the restaurant prides itself on serving farm-fresh, seasonal ingredients harvested from their own growing spaces. The restaurant is a good hour's walk from the city center and is located in a beautiful park with many varieties of water fowl. I was particularly taken with the loons. We arrived early enough to walk around the park (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!) and took the tram (#9, 1.60 EUR) back to the center after dinner.

You will not find rich sauces here: the ingredients are the stars. Everything was perfectly seasoned to bring out simple essences. Beets came drizzled with olive oil, sea salt and dill. They were earthy, nutty and perfectly cooked (I obviously have a thing for beets). If you do not like vegetables, this is not the place for you. The perfectly cooked scholle (a flat whitefish) filet was served with tiny camomile flowers, shaved fennel, succulent tomatoes, and basil leaves. A side of couscous mixed with various lettuces and spiked with a buttermilk dressing was light and airy. In terms of drinks, we decided to drink by the glass. We started with their elegant house aperitif - a glass of champagne and two fragrant lemon balm leaves. Looking around, we realized almost every table ordered it and we understand why. For wine, we opted for glasses of the Primitivo. Dessert was a dream: creme fraiche ice cream and strawberry cheesecake. We wanted seconds.










Kamerlingh Onneslaan 3, 1097 DE, Amsterdam.
+31 (0)20 462 45 62.