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Simplicity, complexity, and Madame X

By Jim Chen

[T]he ladies of John Singer Sargent . . . [are] very demure, the ladies of 1905, and then also they express themselves. There are Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes; the Misses Vickers; Lady Agnew; . . . and there is Madame X. —  Lynnette Abel, Sargent's "Madame X," or, Assertion and Retreat in Woman

Madame X, currently on display at MoneyLaw for the purpose of illustrating the academic advantages of risk-taking, also illustrates the relationship between simplicity and complexity — one of the pervading intellectual themes of Jurisdynamics:

Simplicity and Complexity: Is there a simplicity in all art, a deep naiveté, an immediate self-containedness, accompanied perhaps by fresh directness or startling economy? — and is there that, so rich, it cannot be summed up; something subterranean and intricate counteracting and completing simplicity; the teasing complexity of reality meditated on?

Full post as published by Jurisdynamics on April 10, 2008 (boomark / email).