A Noble Thought to Share

From “Thompson’s violinist” to the “Experience Machine,” these thought experiments will throw your mind for a loop.

Did traditional Chinese thought pave the way for the philosophy of Maoism?

With his 51st Oscar nomination for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, composer John Williams has mastered the craft of the film score. 

The standard line against painter John Singer Sargent goes like this: a very good painter of incredible technique, but little substance who flattered the rich and famous with decadently beautiful portraiture — a Victorian Andrea del Sarto of sorts whose reach rarely exceeded his considerable artistic grasp. A new exhibition of Sargent’s work and the accompanying catalogues argue that he was much more than a painter of pretty faces. Instead, the exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends and catalogues challenge us to see Sargent’s omnivorous mind, which swallowed up nascent modernist movements not just in painting, but also in literature, music, and theater. Sargent the omnivore’s dilemma thus lies in being too many things at once and tasking us to multitask with him.

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” – Yoko Ono (born on this date in 1933)