I read Inside Steve’s Brain, by Leander Kahney, a compelling business biography of Steve Jobs and Apple. Jobs is a business genius by all accounts (and regularly a jerk on the job, by most accounts). Why has Jobs been so successful as an innovating entrepreneur? One factor is knowing clearly whether consumers or producers drive […]
Steve Jobs and innovation in business and art Read More »
“A contemporary who saw Leonardo working on the Last Supper describes how he stayed on the scaffolding from dawn to dusk without putting down his brush, forgetting to eat and drink, painting all the time. Then for two, three, or four days he would not touch his work and yet be staying there, sometimes an
How artists work: Leonardo anecdote Read More »
In 2012, a medieval cookbook was discovered at the British Library. The book is ascribed to Geoffrey Fule of England and dated to the mid-14th century. The images are delicious (click to enlarge). But here’s the tricky part: How does one capture a unicorn in the first place? Fortunately, about a century after Fule’s cookbook,
How to cook and serve unicorn Read More »
Under the northwest leg of the Eiffel Tower tower is a bust of engineer Gustave Eiffel. Portraits of outstanding individuals are usually not made until they are old or even from memory after they are dead. As a result, those of us in later generations have a harder time grasping how those individuals were in
Gustave Eiffel and portrayals of great humans Read More »
A few excerpts from Rudolf Wittkower‘s important essay “Individualism in Art,” published in Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1961), 291-302. From guild monopolies to individual entrepreneurism: “It would seem that with the breaking of the guild monopoly in the course of the XVth century the artist’s attitude to his work changed. Instead of
“Individualism in Art” — Wittkower essay Read More »