Oscar Wilde | ZETEO

view of Alberto Burri’s Cretto di Gibellina, Sicily

Smithson, Tuymans; Art & Explication

September 6, 2016 by William Eaton

Beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray I Robert Smithson’s Mirrors and Shelly Sand (images above) is a long, low, floor-lying crest of sand (approximately 30 feet by 5 feet), which is divided in equal parts by 50 double-sided mirrors.[1] Division and reflection—reflection in the sense of light, images, and ideas being thrown back without being absorbed—are central concepts here. As regards division, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiLL • Tags: art, beauty, capitalism, cultural criticism, intellectuals, Oscar Wilde

Not all books deserve review

February 9, 2015 by William Eaton

By Theana Kastens and William Eaton {Click for pdf} At times book reviewers receive books that should not be reviewed at all because even bad publicity may prove “better” than no publicity. A reviewer might return such a book, largely unread, to the editor, saying, “Send me another. Leave this one alone.” But sometimes the reading is done, the writing begun; editors want their copy. What to do? Having read an enticing blurb in a highly reputable publication, Zeteo […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Frederick Douglass, oppression, Oscar Wilde, rape, Review

“What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire?”

January 4, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link] Given that Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall are now offering us such a rich, idiosyncratic portrait of the painter J.M.W. Turner, and given that the movie, for whatever silly reason, takes a detour to make fun of the art critic John Ruskin, I should begin with this: Who cares whether Mr. Ruskin’s views on Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: dialogue, History, J.M.W. Turner, John Ruskin, literature, Mike Leigh, movies, Oscar Wilde

Salinger and Other Authors We’d All Like to Know

February 26, 2014 by William Eaton

I’m reading about seven or eight things at the moment, some I need to read and others I simply desire. Books are good friends in the way that they are there when you need them, whether it is to read them in their entirety or simply to open them and find a passage that moves you—a long conversation or a quick check-in. Nothing else can move you like a piece of art. One of the books I’m reading at the […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: J.D. Salinger, Oscar Wilde