art details

IN A COMPLETE KNOT OF ARTIFICIALNESS

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Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander share a kiss at the premiere of the film 'Hope' at the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

📸 by John Locher

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He went to see her and told her exactly how he felt. How lonely his life had been until then. How much he had lost over the years. How she had made him realize all that.

— Haruki Murakami, from “Tony Takitani” (translated by Jay Rubin)

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When he awoke in the morning, the first thing he did was look for her. When he found her sleeping next to him, he felt relief. When she wasn't there, he felt anxious and searched the house for her. There was something odd for him about not feeling lonely. The very fact that he had ceased to be lonely caused him to fear the possibility of becoming lonely again. The question haunted him: What would he do? Sometimes this fear would make him break out in a cold sweat. As he became used to his new life, though, and the possibility of his wife's suddenly disappearing seemed to lessen, the anxiety gradually eased. In the end, he settled down and wrapped himself in his new and peaceful happiness.

— Haruki Murakami, from “Tony Takitani” (translated by Jay Rubin)

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He could not seem to grasp with any precision what death was all about, nor could he come to any conclusion regarding what this particular death meant for him. All he could do was swallow it whole, as a fait accompli. And so he came to feel that some kind of flat, disk like thing had lodged itself in his chest. What it was, or why it was there, he couldn't say. The object simply stayed in place and blocked him from thinking any more about what had happened.

— Haruki Murakami, from “Tony Takitani” (translated by Jay Rubin)

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She just faded into nothingness, as if someone had gone backstage and flicked a switch.

— Haruki Murakami, from “Tony Takitani” (translated by Jay Rubin)

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François-Hubert Drouais — Portrait de Joséphine de Savoie, comtesse de Provence (detail). circa 1772

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Serge Marshennikov — Unknown Title. details

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Anthony van Dyck — William II, Prince of Orange, and his Bride, Mary Stuart (detail). 1641

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Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Joachim Trier on the set of Sentimental Value. Photographs by Christian Belgaux.

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— The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)

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Carlo Dolci — Saint Catherine of Siena. detail. circa 1665

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— Friedrich Nietzsche, in an entry from January of 1882 under the heading Sanctus Januarius.

Have a very Nietzsche New Year's!!!

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"The moment they were alone together Natasha too began to converse with her husband in that manner peculiar to husbands and wives, one of those in which ideas are perceived and exchanged with extraordinary clarity and speed by some means that transcends all the rules of logic and develops its own way without any spoken assertions, deductions, or conclusions. Natasha was so used to talking to her husband like this that she took any process of logical thinking on Pierre’s part as an unmistakable sign that something was wrong between them."

— Leo Tolstoy, from "War and Peace"

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Berkel en Rodenrijs, November 2025

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William-Adolphe Bouguereau — Portrait de Madame Hoskier. detail. 1865

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William-Adolphe Bouguereau — Portrait de jeune fille. detail. 1898