What Did Don Draper See?

This was an interesting moment on Mad Men this week: Don Draper picks up a piece of art in a somewhat tawdry context, thinks about tossing it, but doesn’t. After he sits and looks at it for a while, he is inspired to write a full-page ad in the New York Times, distancing his ad agency from tobacco accounts.

Fair enough; good story line.

But what did he see in the painting that inspired him?
(click for larger version)

As a side note, the role the New York Times plays — and played in that historical context — in presenting Draper’s vision.

NYT and “the thin orange line”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/arts/design/18momo.html

Two From Monique

Thanks, Monique!

Chicago is a typography town

I had a head start …

In “Drama, Performativity and Performance,” W.B. Worthen argues that Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet “…memorializes a past (that it partly invents) and constitutes a new work. Romeo “+” Juliet makes visible what most performances work to conceal: that dramatic performance, like all other performance, far from originating in the text, can only cite its textual ‘origins’ with an additive gesture, a kind of ‘+.'”