Ballast Quarterly Review, V03n3, Spring 1988

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Ballast Quarterly Review

Spring 1988

Ballast Quarterly Review, v03n3, Spring 1988

The Art Academy of Cincinnati

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t around age six, on Neumann lived in A perhaps, I was V this elegant house standing by myself in Princeton. As I in our front yard waiting parked my car and for supper, just at that hour in a walked in, there was this very late summer day when the sun is large Great Dane dog bouncing already below the horizon and the around on the front lawn. I risen full moon in the visible sky knocked on the door and von stops being chalky and begins to Neumann, who was a small, take on light. There comes the quiet, modest kind of a man came moment, and I saw it then, when to the door and bowed to me and the moon goes from flat to round. said, "Bigelow, won't you come For the first time it met my eyes in," and so forth, and this dog as a globe. The word "moon" brushed between our legs and came into my mouth as though fed went into the living room. He to me out of a silver spoon. Held proceeded to lie down on the rug in Above: Logo for Screamin' Fool Visual in my mouth the moon became a front of everybody, and we had the Design, designed by William Korbus, a word. It had the roundness of a entire interview--whether I would reader from Austin, Texas. Mr. Korbus is Professor of Journalism at the University Concord grape Grandpa took off come, what I knew, what the job of Texas at Austin. his vine and gave me to suck out was going to be like--and this of its skin and swallow whole, in lasted maybe forty minutes, with Ohio. the dog wandering all around the Arnold Toynbee: America is a house. Towards the end of it, von large friendly dog in a small Eudora Welty, One Writer's Neumann asked me if I always room. Every time it wags its tail, Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: traveled with the dog. But of it knocks over a chair. Harvard University, 1984), p. 10. course it wasn't my dog, and it wasn't his either, but von • Neumann--being a diplomatic, Question: What's the difference middle-European type person--he between a buffalo and a bison? kindly avoided mentioning it Answer: You can't wash your until the end. hands in a buffalo . Julian Bigelow [Princeton • mathematician, recalling his job Frank Lloyd Wright: The doctor interview with John von can bury his mistakes, but an Neumann], quoted by Ed Regis, architect can only advise his Who Got Einstein's Office? (New clients to plant vines. York: Addison-Wesley, 1987), p. 110. Suggested by Joseph • Above: Logo designed by Elaine Goetz Podlesnik, a reader from Anon: Writing about art is like (1987), a reader from Cincinnati. Chicago. darn~ing about architecture. • page2

BALLAST Quarterly Review. Published n a children's art by the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Roger I[ class, we sat in a Williams, Director. Jane T. Stanton, Academic Dean. Designed, produced and ring on kindergarten IBl II edited by the Communication Design chairs and drew three faculty (Roy R. Behrens, Chairman, daffodils that had just been picked Lawrence W. Goodridge, Mark Thomas - stwald had a;'aversion to and Gregory Wolfe) and students at the Art out of the yard; and while I was Academy. This issue was designed by drawing, my sharpened yellow (()) being touched by Roy R. Behrens with Paula Mathews, pencil and the cup of the yellow strangers, such as barbers assisted by James Connors, Paula Laib, and tailors. He also tried Julie Robben and Gregory Wolfe. daffodil gave off whiffs just alike. That the pencil doing the to avoid dealing with persons who BALLAST (a distant allusion to BLAST) drawing should give off the same had not had a scientific training. is an acronym for Books Art Language Though he disliked being Logic Ambiguity Science and Teaching. It smell as the flower it drew is a journal devoted to wit, the contents of seemed part of the art lesson--as dependent on others ... he which are intended to be insightful, shouldn't it be? Children, like eventually reached the point amusing or thought-provoking. Its where he no longer could avoid purposes are educational, apolitical and animals, use all their senses to noncommercial. It does not carry paid discover the world. Then artists hiring a secretary. Even then, he advertisements, nor is it supposed to be come along and discover it the did not dictate to her directly but purchased or sold. It is published every via a dictating machine (the old three months (more or less), beginning in same way, all over again. Here October and ending in June. There is no and there, it's the same world. Or type with wax cylinders). When charge for subscriptions as such, and (to now and then we'll hear from an he had accumulated a number of the extent that finances allow) the journal these cylinders, he would place will gladly be mailed to persons who send artist who's never lost it. in a mailing address, accompanied by (to them in a basket that he then assist in deferring our various costs) two Eudora Welty, One Writer's carried to a stand in the hall first class U.S. postage stamps for each outside his study. There was no issue. In other words, to receive BALLAST Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: for one year (a series of four issues), we Harvard University Press, 1984), electricity in the house, so he ask that each reader contribute a total of pp. 9-10. would signal the secretary by eight first class U.S. postage stamps. means of a bicycle bell. After the When subscribing, please send good looking or unusual stamps. We do not young lady was sure that Ostwald accept phone orders. All subscription had gone, she would go into the requests (including all gift subscriptions) hall, retrieve the cylinders, and must be mailed to: ----, type what he had dictated. The BALLAST Quarterly Review typed sheets were placed, together Attn: Reader Service Drudge with the cylinders, on the stand in The Art Academy of Cincinnati Eden Park the hall. She, in tum, would then Cincinnati, OH 45202 ring the bell, and retreat. When BALLAST is published in a limited Ostwald was sure that she was edition and back issues are not available. back in her quarters, he would However, the magazine may be xeroxed, to emerge from his study and take provide others with copies, but the copies the typed sheets and cylinders must never be altered or sold. back into his study for reading, Readers are hereby encouraged to suggest correction and revision. ollbeat examples of verbal or visual insight of the sort that the journal might publish. Original material must be Above: Logo designed by Jeff Hudepohl, a Ralph Oesper [referring to explicitly labeled as that. Material which reader from Cincinnati. Wilhelm Ostwald, the German is not original must clearly make note of its author and source. All contributions chemist and inventor of the are unpaid, and unsolicited material will Ostwald system of color notation] not be returned unless it is accompanied by in The Human Side of Scientists a self-addressed stamped envelope. Ted Turner: If I had a little (Cincinnati, OH: University of humility, I would be perfect. Cincinnati Press, 1975), p. 149. Suggested by Buster Delauney, a reader from Scottsdale, Arizona. Fran Lebowitz (in Metropolitan Life, 1978): Breakfast cereals that • Volume *3 No 3 Spring** 1988 come in the same colors as Joe E. Lewis: I distrust camels, Copyright 1988 by The Art Academy of polyester leisure suits make and anyone else who can go a Cincinnati oversleeping a virtue. week without a drink. page 3

ews weren't allowed to JI carry over a certain amount of cash on the street in Prague ... And my father was out on the street one day with what he knew was more than the amount of cash in his pocket that he was supposed to have. And he was stopped and picked up. The cops took him into the police station, and he was supposed to empty out his pockets. • So he's desperate, but he got this l brain wave. He took his ' hankerchief which he had in his pocket and he wrapped it around the money and pulled it out and blew his nose, and the money was in the hankerchief. Then he cleared his pockets out, and it was okay. They didn't look in his hand, but the money was in his hankerchief. He just stuck it back in his pocket and walked out free.

Marianne Ross, quoted in Steven J . Zeitlin, et al., A Celebration of American Family Folklore (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 25. •

nee upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo ... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy A bove: P late from De a nimalibus insectis ... by Ulisse Aldrovandi, first published in face. Bologna in 1602. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold Canada is a country so square Dick Cavett: There should be lemon platt. that even the female three days a week when no one is impersonators are women. allowed to say: "What's your James Joyce, opening paragraphs sign?" Violators would have from A Portrait of the Artist as a Richard Benner, Outrageous! their copies of Kahlil Gibran Young Man (New York: Viking (screenplay), 1977. confiscated. Press, 1963 [1916]), p. 7. page4

Sequential illustration designed by Jeff Hudepobl, a reader from Cincinnati.

ecause of these Rodney Dangerfield: I told my Mae West: I used to be Snow investigations he psychiatrist that everybody hates White, but I drifted. remained secluded me. He said I was being in his house, almost like a ridiculous--everybody hasn't met hermit, for weeks and months, me yet. • without knowing much of what he nineteenth went on in the world and without lfff\l century produced showing himself. Spending his • J!. great preachers in time on those caprices, he knew, Wales, some of whom are while he was still alive, more remember when a child in remembered to this day. John poverty than fame. He left a wife the pew on Sundays Elias was one such ... The story is who used to relate that Paolo amusing myself with told of his preaching in a small would spend the whole night at his JI village in mid-Wales on the way saying over common drawing-board trying to find the words as 'black', 'white', 'board', the finger of God touched every rules of perspective, and when she et cetera, twenty or thirty times, man. At the height of his called him to come to bed, he until the word lost all meaning peroration he flung out his arm, would answer: "Oh, how sweet is and fixedness, and I began to having carefully arranged the this perspective!" doubt which was the right name candles beforehand so that the for the things ... huge shadow of his finger fell Giorgio Vasari (remembering upon the wall. Seeing this Paolo Ucello, Renaissance Ralph Waldo Emerson (in his montrous arm, the congregation painter and perspectivist), quoted journal on 22 August 1841) in fled. in Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, William H. Gilman, editor, Born Under Saturn : The Selected Writings of Ralph Ivor Richard, We the British Character and Conduct of Artists Waldo Emerson (New York: New (New York: Doubleday, 1983). (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), American Library, 1965), pp. 104- Suggested by Marylou Plutarch, a p. 54. 105. reader from Otterville, Iowa. page5

e had been building up one he limitations and rimful of some new IBI of those piles of thought, as peculiarities of his IB3 idea, and in spite of my ramshackle and fantastic medium force the artist at assuring him that time as a Chinese pagoda, half each step to make choices, was precious, he drew me from words let fall by gentlemen consciously or unconsciously; to within the door of an unoccupied in gaiters, half from the litter in select for representation those garden by the road-side, and his own mind, about duck features or aspects which he there, sheltered from observation shooting and legal history, about considers to be relevant, and to by a hedge of evergreens, he took the Roman occupation of Lincoln discard those which he considers me by the button of my coat, and and the relations of country irrelevant... The measure of an closing his eye·s commenced an gentlemen with their wives, artist's originality, put into the eloquent discourse, waving his when, from all this disconnected simplest terms, is the extent to right hand gently, as the musical • rambling, there suddenly formed which his selective emphasis words flowed in an unbroken l itself in his mind the idea that he deviates from the conventional stream from his lips. I listened ' would ask Mary to marry him. norm and establishes new entranced; but the striking of a standards of relevance. All great church clock recalled me to a Virginia Woolf, Night and Day innovations, which inaugurate a sense of duty. I saw it was of no (1919). new era, movement, or school, use to attempt to break away, so • consist in such sudden shifts of taking advantage of his attention and displacements of absorption in his subject, I, with Clarence Darrow: When I was emphasis onto some previously my penknife, quietly severed the a boy I was told that anybody neglected aspect of experience, button from my coat, and could become President. I'm some blacked-out range of the decamped. Five hours beginning to believe it. existential spectrum. afterwards, in passing the same garden on my way home, I heard • Arthur Koestler, The Act of Coleridge's voice, and on looking Johnny Carson: For three days Creation (New York: Macmillan, in, there he was, with closed eyes after death, hair and fingernails 1964), pp. 333-334. -the button in his fingers--and his continue to grow but phone calls right hand gracefully waving, taper off. just as when I left him. He had • never missed me! Woody Allen: I was in group Charles Lamb (recalling a analysis when I was young curious meeting with the British because I couldn't afford private. ames (Quick) Tillis, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), I was Captain of the Latent young heavyweight ... quoted in Leonard Russell, Paranoid Softball Team. We is a cowboy from English Wits (Port Washington: played all the neurotics on a Oklahoma who now fights Kennikat Press, 1940). Suggested Sunday morning. The Nail out of Chicago. He still by Isabelle Garbo, a reader from Biters against the Bed-Wetters. remembers his first day in the Richmond, Virginia. Windy City, after his arrival from Tulsa: • • "I got off the bus with two Winston Churchill (in reply to a cardboard suitcases under my female Member of Parliament aving ordered a pizza, arms in downtown Chicago and who accused him of being drunk): IBI Yogi Berra was asked stopped in front of the Sears And you, madam, are ugly. But I whether he would like Tower," Tillis said. "I put the shall be sober tomorrow. it cut into four or eight suitcases down, and I looked up at pieces. "Better make it four," he the Tower and said to myself, said. "I don't think I can eat Tm going to conquer Chicago.' • eight pieces." When I looked down, the suitcases were gone." Question: If your house were on Richard L. Crouser (adapted), fire, which object would you take It's Unlucky to Be Behind at the Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1981. with you? End of the Game and Other Sports Suggested by Issac B. (Robot) Tristan Bernard: The thing Retorts (New York: Morrow, LeNesbitt III, a reader from Death nearest the door. 1983). Valley, California. Jean Cocteau: The fire. page6

ery composedly and have never painted a ne day I found that \t ;/ very slowly, the art JI rubber-plant in my life. my sketch for an oil W teacher, who Nor would I if it was the painting did not visited each room on last plant alive. It proves carry out my intention. Fridays, paced the aisle and there is no God, for he'd never There were too many shapes looked down over your shoulder at create a rubber-plant. pressed in.to_a chaotic- what you were drawing for her. arrangement. I took scissors. This was Miss Ascher. Coming Lucian Freud [British painter Cutting away some parts of the from behind you, her deep, and grandson of Sigmund Freud] drawing, and turning it at an resonant voice reached you from an interview in The angle of ninety degrees, I was without being a word at all, but a Manchester Guardian, 1988. satisfied. When remnants were sort of purr. It was much the Suggested by Anthony Batchelor, pasted on a new sheet, the whole sound given out by our family a reader from Cincinnati. had little similarity to the still doctor when he read the life which I had chosen as the thermometer and found you were point of departure. People, running a slight fever: "Um-hm. • accustomed to naturalistic Um-hm." Both alike, they let you he first thing that schemes, insisted that this 'still go right ahead with it. l11f\l happened to me, when the life', mutilated and turned upside J.!. exhibition opened in Fort down, looked like a rider on a Eudora Welty, One Writer's Worth, was that I had to go motorcycle. I protested, but Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: on television. One of the things basically I had a feeling of the Harvard University, 1984), p. 27. that the museums demand is that I complete autonomy of action. It promote, do a promotional tour, occurred to me that, if I could • otherwise you can't have a show. make such changes in a drawing, Significant Inversions: War The first thing they said was, I could also decide with the same spelled backwards is raw. "We have to go right away to freedom the shapes and colors in Pal spelled backwards is lap. Houston, we are going to be on a my oil paintings. Suddenly I Gnat spelled backwards is tang. Good Morning show." The host understood the blue faces and blue Mood spelled backwards is doom. was this woman with bright red horses of the expressionists. Golf spelled backwards is ffog. lipstick, a big beehive hair-do, red But spelled backwards is tub. nails, white skin, and she said Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, The New Eros spelled backwards is sore. (drawling), "Mr. Avedon, I'm so Vision and Abstract of an Artist Eye spelled backwards is eye. glad to meet you, I can't tell you (New York: George Wittenborn, Fun spelled backwards is nuf. this is my dream come true." 1947), p. 71. Gas spelled backwards is sag. And she said, "God rests on your head!" While I was trying to • figure this out, the cameras went • green, and she said, haughtily, ERIC (Shakespearean actor): Did y great-grandfather had "Avedon, West... Why?" I just you see my Bottom at Stratford come from Poland, or couldn't open my mouth, I just upon-Avon? right near Poland, and he looked at her. I didn't know what ERNIE: I'm afraid not. came to this country to say. So I made up these ERIC: A pity--many people during the Spanish-American answers the best I could, as consider it my best part. War. There was one of those honestly as I could. The better I Uncle Sam posters saying "We did the sicker I felt. When I got to Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, Want You!" and he thought it Chicago, I think the second stop, I The Morecambe and Wise Joke meant him! "Why me?" he had gotten pretty good at it. I do a Book (1979). wondered. "What's so special day like today, go back to my hotel • about me? I just came to and vomit because, in some way, I America." And he went and he betray everything that I am. Mark Twain: When I was a boy joined the army! of fourteen, my father was so Richard Avedon, interviewed by ignorant I could hardly stand to David Nachamonoff, quoted in A Mildred Thompson in have the old man around. But Celebration of American Family "Interview: Richard Avedon" in when I got to be twenty-one, I was Folklore (New York: Pantheon, Art Papers, vol 11, no 6, astonished at how much he had 1982), p. 82. November/December 1987, p. 37. learned in seven years. page7

Paul Harwitz: The marvels of modern technology include the development of a soda can which, when discarded, will last forever -and a $7,000 car, which, when properly cared for, will rust out in two or three years. • Tom Taussik: The difference between Los Angeles and yogurt 2 2 is that yogurt has real culture. :• • • WENDLE: I'm not a suspicious woman but I don't think my to husband 'as been entirely faithful to me. PELLET: Whatever makes you think that? WENDLE: My last child doesn't resemble him in the least.

Noel Coward, This Year of Grace (1928). • grew up pretty much as I[ everybody else grows up, and one day ... found myself saying to myself-- I can't live where I want to--1 can't go where I want to--1 can't even say what I want to--School and things that painters have °fiG..2. taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as U .S. P atent No. 1,538,542 , patented 19 May 1925 (Bicycle Seat for Men) that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern fter we had been whomever I am with anybody but myself--that was away and I talking for about am free." Einstein pushed nobody's business but my own ... A the twenty minutes the bowl away, and so I was quite maid came in with a huge happy and much flattered Georgia O'Keeffe, quoted by and bowl of soup. I wondered what more at my ease for the rest Lloyd Goodrich and Doris Bry in of the was happening and I thought that Georgia O'Keeffe (New York: talk. this was probably Praeger, 1970). a signal for me to leave. But when the girl left the Lancelot Law Whyte (recalling a room Einstein said to me in a · visit to Einstein's home), quoted • conspiratorial whisper, "That's a in G.J. Whitrow, Einstein: The Grandma Moses (Anna Mary trick. If I am bored talking to Man and His Achievement (New Robertson): If I didn't start somebody, when the maid comes York: Dover, 1973). Suggested by painting, I would have raised in I don't push the bowl of soup Samuel Finley Breese, a reader chickens. away and the girl takes . from Braintree, Massachusetts. page8

John Ruskin (adapted): Left: Calligraphic interpretation of Hundreds can talk for one who BALLAST Quarterly Review. Calligraphy can think, and thousands can and Chinese translation by Cheng Hsi-ling, Professor of History at the think for one who can see . University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. • ne day my dad got hurt on the job and as a result, he ~ ne day, because of an said he couldn't bear to put 'V engagement elsewhere, any weight on his heel. ~ The doctors, however, said it was 'V he posted the following notice on the all in his mind, and they sent door of his lecture room: "Professor him to a psychiatrist. This irked him, so my dad said, "If they Thomson will not meet his classes today." The want to think I'm crazy, I'll young men make them think I'm crazy." So decided to play a joke on their he goes to the doctor's office, and beloved teacher, and one of them carefully erased the "c" so that the the doc.tor brings out the note read: "Professor Thompson Rorschach inkblot tests. The will not meet his lasses today." doctor laid these cards down in They then left. The class front of my father, and dad gathered the next day and reached over, picked them up, anticipated that the professor shuffled them and dealt them out would make some suitable for a hand of Five Card Draw and remark about the said, ''I'll open for a dollar." altered notice. He came slightly late, but obviously he had already seen Daniel W. Humphrey, quoted in what they had left. The notice of Steven J . Zeitlin, et al., A the day Celebration of American Family before had been changed once again, and this Folklore (New York: Pantheon, time by the 1982), pp. 39-40. professor himself. It now read: "Professor Thomson will not • meet his asses today." "Who inu hell," I said to myself, Ralph Oesper [referring to the 19th "wants to try to make pies like century Scottish physicist Sir Mother makes when it's so much William Thomson] in The simpler to let Mother make um Human Side of Scientists inu first place?" (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 1975), p. 181. Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker Suggested by Loralee Haldane, a (New York: Simpson, 1954). reader from Norfolk, Virginia.