Catching up

I. Two of my favorite things—entwined!

I noticed that she wore no wedding ring, carrying in its place on her third finger a large opal, enclosed by a massive gold serpent swallowing its own tail.
—Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

II. “Philip Guston, the Abstract Expressionist who late in life became a painter of dark, comic images, was a great as-if artist. He wanted, he said, ‘to paint things as if one had never seen them before, as if one had come from another planet.’ He aspired ‘to paint as a cave man would.’ ¶ Of course Guston (1913-1980) was no troglodyte, with all due respect to the Geico cave men....” —Ken Johnson, “The Sophisticated Troglodyte,” NYT (Via Mike)

Morgan Library & Museum

An untitled 1975 drawing by Philip Guston, at the Morgan.