"It's well established that people tend to run for cover until fortunes recover."

- Conrad Black

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Elvira Resting at a Table, 1919. Saint Louis Museum of Art, St Louis, Missouri.

"Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now."
- Maya Angelou

quota

At the Toyota Hollywood dealership, each sales person is expected to sell 10 cars per month. To do that, each sales person must make at least 50 outbound prospecting telephone sales calls daily.

"Artists live dangerously [because at any given moment they could make that extra stroke that kills the painting.]"
- Isabella Stefanescu, Globe Studios, Kitchener, Ontario

coping with bipolar disorder

Canadian First Lady Margaret Trudeau at Studio 54

"It wasn't until I had gotten help that I realized how sick I had been."

"a dark bitter hatred"

"I have to work very hard not to appear to dread it as much as I do. And it's not about the between 'action' and 'cut' stuff, so much. It's about emoting on some economically based schedule."
- Sean Penn on acting 

Totem Walk at Sitka (1917)

"How I loathed London."

- Emily Carr who studied there and was broken there

glory cannot be shared

"Always to be first."
- The spirit of Achilles

beauty is taking away all the excess

detail of the Pieta

“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.” 

- Michelangelo

dirt smeared on a cloth

Self-portrait

"I was drawing from nude models at the age of eight. I thought 'Oooo! This is a good profession.'"
- Chuck Close

"Nakashima ... elevated the craft of driftwood furniture from beachside tourist shops to high art ..."
- Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty, p.165

no prerequisites

free online classes by a former Stanford professor here.

geography

There are more Vermeers in New York City than in any other place in the world. 

An expedited way for foreign nationals to obtain a Green Card is to make a $500,000 investment and create 10 jobs for Americans.

"You need courage to be hated."
- Bette Davis

molten & flexible

"We want the glass to be the sculpture."

- Nikolas Weinstein 

Veep

The entire first episode is available for free here.

aphorism

"I use memories, but I will not allow them to use me."
- unattributed 

aphorism

Punjab, India, 1947

"'Now' is the moment that never ends."

"Every good painter paints what he is."

- Jackson Pollock lived to the age of 45

1st modern female painter

Self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1652)

1st modern painter

Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337)

the stove

www.lacornue.com

arbeit macht frei

On January 17, 1943, at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, 79 year old Richard Cassel from Berlin, Germany, was exterminated.

In 1926 the thousand year old spelling of Cassel was changed to Kassel; 85% of the city with that name in central Germany was destroyed in WWII.

Han Dynasty

"Be where your enemy isn't."
- Sun Tzu, sixth century BC

"Noise is like salt: too little is wrong; too much is wrong."
- Danny Meyer

banned

August Sander, 1876-1964

Photographs of the disabled did not adhere to the ideal Aryan type.

gruesome reality

by Otto Dix, 1920

German veterans of WWI afflicted with injuries play cards.

What's better than a sausage making class? A sausage making class with wine:

http://www.meatlondon.co.uk/butchery-and-wine-courses.php

(Hat tip: popbitch)

loot

28 things even the world's richest people can't afford 

and Warhol

Peter Paul Rubens, The Four Philosophers

"[He made money] by following Jeff Koons's and Damien Hirst's template - and incidentally, Rubens's and Rembrandt's: he maintained an art factory."
- Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty, p.113

Detail from Marcello Venusti, 'Portrait of Michelangelo', 1535

"Creative people are likely to be eight to forty times more likely to be manic-depressive."
- Jonah Lehrer

"Creativity is the residue of wasted time."
- Albert Einstein

on nutrition

"Would you ever think to water a plant with a can of soda?"
- Michelle Obama

going rate

In 1951 M*A*S*H surgeons earned $413.50 per month, which has a current value of $3504.24 per month or just over $42000 per year.  

nicotine and alcohol

"He was a person for whom clock hands moved slower."
- Martin Amis on Christopher Hitchens

where the Foo Fighters have stayed in London

http://www.royalgardenhotel.co.uk

"The best wine, like the best people, come from suffering."
- Mark Bittman

"There is no such thing as a bad whisky. Some whiskies just happen to be better than others."
– William Faulkner

"There's more power in telling little than telling all."
- Mark Rothko

vagabonds, drunks, gypsies

Waldemar Januszczak's Manet: The Man Who Created Modern Art

"Destruction is the prerequisite for new ideas."
- El Anatsui

art is powerful and controversial

"Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and seek new potential." ... "Say what you need to say then take responsibility for it."
- Ai Weiwei

creating moments of representation

"Not only is it about finding myself in man, it's an unbelievable human need."
- Catherine Opie  

Re: Berlin

"Never 'is'. Always 'becoming'."

ethic

"I got used to watchin' it and not doin' it."
- Dale Chihuly

Most famous German painting of the 19th Century

- Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

"Don't do Crack. More than once."
- David Cross

points of view

Andy Warhol:  Make normal art.
Keith Haring:   Make art normal.

philosophy

"Hit it. Go find it. Hit it again."
- Bubba Watson's father teaching his son in the 1980s

a place to eat in Paris

http://robertetlouise.com