The Geometry Professor
But Could You?
I blurred at once the chart of trite routine
by splashing paint with one swift motion.
I showed upon a plate of brawny glutin
the slanting cheekbones of the ocean
Upon the scales of tinny fishes
new lips summoned, though yet mute.
But could you
play
right to the finish
a nocturne on a drainpipe flute?
- Vladimir Mayakovsky
Apart from one’s physical father, one always finds on the highways and byways a spiritual father...and I must say, of course, that I never loved, idolized, worshipped anyone as much as I did my teacher..and to extreme old age I shall consider myself unworthy to kiss the dust from his feet, although his errors as a person have evidently swept away forever from the pages of our theatrical history the footprints of the greatest master of our theatre.
Sergei Eisenstein on Meyerhold’s "disappearance" as an "enemy of the people"
(bolshevik suicide)
Geometry is:
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Aleksander Rodchenko
Vladimir Tatlin
Dziga Vertov aka David Kaufman aka Spinning Top
Spacetime is a four-dimensional coordinate system
one
two
three
four
containing three spatial dimensions and one time dimension
abracadabra
You just know they would have loved this and would have played around with it as an escape hatch:
OLD MAN #1: I remember like it was now.
OLD WOMAN #1: No, it's me who remembers like it was now!
OLD WOMAN #2: You remember like it was now, but I remember like it was before.
OLD MAN #2: But I remember like it was before like it was now.
OLD WOMAN #1: I remember how it was even before that, a long, long time ago!
OLD MAN #1: I remember now it was before and like it was now!"
- from "The Bedbug," Valdimir Mayakovsky
I made this piece because I love these guys.
Wood, paint, silk an old clock that moves 1 1/2 minutes per pull. Time marches on.
Vitrine is 10 1/2 ft tall.
Puppet is 4 ft tall