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| Sebastiano Ricci Bacchus and Ceres before 1710 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Fêtes Vénitiennes 1718-19 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Jean-Baptiste Pater Fête Champêtre before 1736 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
from A Placebo
I feel love from the fashion community as light from photographs of others' bodies
as light from their scrutiny of my photograph in a dress bold enough to sustain
the penetration of disembodied light of my entrance.
To audience, unnamed cutters, sewers, embroiderers, beaders I attribute this beauty,
when meaning i.e., style, is given a sympathetic presence.
Mirroring touches it, like exquisite jet beads on a gray coatdress in almost
transparent bouclé, clusters of dark stones on the shoulder.
A loose blouse in cream silk crepe is tied at the sleeves with glistening cellophane
ribbons.
You feel I understand your own contingency plans.
Do you remember my show in London, when all the models were drunk, broken
glass everywhere?
Fashion does that, giving shape and color to our inarticulate impulses.
I present the contemporary as liminal, transitions, transparencies.
You nurture the uncontained confusion, when no preamble resonance has yet
formed.
The gray is cloudy, deep, but without melancholy.
– Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge (2013)
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| Alessandro Magnasco Landscape with Camaldolite monks praying at a roadside shrine ca. 1720-30 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Antonio David Baptism in Rome of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender) 1725 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Anonymous artist Portrait of an unknown man before 1750 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Arthur Pond Portrait of the poet Thomas Gray ca. 1731 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Nicolas Lancret Music party in a landscape before 1743 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Nicolas Lancret Dans cette aimable solitude before 1743 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Domenico Guidobono An Allegory before 1746 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Flat: Sentences from the Prefaces of Fourteen Science Books
1. Mary-Frances applied continual pressure on me to start the job and helped in recording and editing.
2. Thanks to Sandra for her heroic typing, although this need not be taken to indicate her agreement with various points.
3. Peter provided information about the notorious perpetual pill.
4. As someone who gloried in seeing dogma overturned, he would have delighted in the irony of seeing arguments for the reverse.
5. And without their willingness to take on the chore of responding to our whims and fancies over a 3-year period, this book would have fallen short of its goals.
6. The production of this tome would have been unthinkable without the marvelous electronic tools that are now widely available.
7. However, Chapter 7 was written in a relatively self-contained fashion, so the serious student may skip Chapter 6 and delve directly into the theory.
8. The late abbess of Shasta Abbey proved that looking through different windows into the same room is not a metaphor.
9. Nick, who is writing a book on oxygen, gave much appreciated data concerning that element.
10. The filmstrip format employed in Chapter 10 originated with Elizabeth.
11. I have been very fortunate in being able to use such penetrating minds.
12. In recent months, I have often felt like a small child in a sweet shop as astronomers all round the world have sent me the most mouthwatering new data.
13. Suffice it at this point to observe that I am not just talking about wallpaper patterns on shirts and dresses, although many of these patterns do turn out to have interesting properties.
14. I do not expect that many readers will want to be masochistic enough to want to read the book in order from cover to cover.
– Bruce Covey (2010)
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| Jean-Baptiste Oudry The Bloodhound (design for tapestry) before 1755 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Pietro Rotari Young woman with a book ca. 1756-62 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| David Martin Self-portrait ca. 1760 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Francis Cotes Portrait of Catherine Gunning before 1770 pastel National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Francis Wheatley Portrait of Benjamin Bond Hopkins before 1791 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)