Speed of Life

In L.A.? Tomorrow night @hammer_museum presents  @aiww 's film "Human Flow" and Q&A with Ai Weiwei https://t.co/pFlTnIuLyD pic.twitter.com/zMsYYTTUAC — Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) January 3, 2018

Gregg Chadwick Calvino's Elephant 30"x40" oil on linen 2011 "In fact, the elephant recognizes the language of his homeland, obeys orders, remembers what he learns, knows the passion of love and the ambition of glory, practices virtues “rare even among men,” such as probity, prudence and equity, and has a religious veneration for the sun, the moon, and the stars." - From Man, the sky and the elephant pp. 315-330 of The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1986. Pliny the Elder identified the elephant as the animal spiritually “closest to man.” The phrase “Maximum est elephas proximumque humanis sensibus” opens Pliny’s Historia Naturalis , Book VIII. In turn this inspired the brilliant Italian writer, Italo Calvino, in his introductory essay to Pliny’s Historia Naturalis . And I am again reading WS Merwin's recent book of poems - The Shadow of Sirius - and thinking deeply about the mystery of our place in the ...

by Gregg Chadwick "L.A. is a city where people come to find themselves and explore new ways of thinking and being. They have a longing for an understanding of soul, and find themselves drawn to Jung." -Nancy Furlotti, (co-president of the Philemon Foundation which financed the the translation of The Red Book ) At the Hammer Museum until June 6th is the exhibition The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology . On display for the first time on the west coast is psychologist Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) Red Book . Many scholars consider Jung's Red Book the most influential unpublished work in psychology. The Hammer Museum explains that "Jung also considered the Red Book to be his most important work, or as Jung described it, the " prima materia for a lifetime’s work ." Jung's massive illuminated volume has spent most of its existence in a Swiss safe deposit box. Only a select group has ever been allowed to view Jung's Red Book . T...

HAMMER MUSEUM Poetry Reading W. S. MERWIN Thursday, October 29 at 7 PM Photo: Mark Hanauer In a career spanning five decades, W. S. Merwin has become one of the most widely read and acclaimed poets in the United States. His first book, A Mask for Janus (1952), was chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series, and his most recent volume, The Shadow of Sirius (2008), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (his second: the first was for The Carrier of Ladders in 1970). His many other honors include the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lily Prize. Admission to the event is free. Please arrive early. Dedicated to the memory of Doris Curran, this series, which has provided a stimulating forum for nationally and internationally known poets for forty years, is co-sponsored by the Friends of English, the W Hotel, the UCLA Office of Cultural and Recreational Affairs, and the Office of Instructional Development...