Subject matters.
Whatever can be said of the art can be said of the artist.
The question to ask of an abstract artist is not, “What is it?” but, “Is it you?”
The subject of a portrait is always an identifiable person.
1. Portraiture is the personality.
2. Half-length figure is the man.
3. Full-length figure is the man's occupation.
“The question arises, however; is the fastidiousness, the patient care of the artist, consistent with vagabondage? Should one not say the greater the stylist, the lesser the vagabond? He may save you soiling your fingers; but the real attractiveness of certain things is inseparable from their uncouthness, their downright ugliness. In fact, he seeks the elemental everywhere.”
A door locked from inside is all that separates one from homelessness.
William Kennedy, Ironweed: realistic fiction on a supernatural theme, "real" ghosts, ghosts a timeless tradition in literature, revised to put the homelessness into today's context.
“Spirit” is a disposition of the soul, its personality.
A ghost is a soul in limbo.
homeless = lost soul
posthumous fame
If life is theater, is it episodic, or climactic?
What was the tragic event in this man's life that led to a life of vagrancy?
No one is born bad, but some are born with a defect.
Choice, or chance?
Nobody is innocent or guilty by chance.
Aristotle: The four types of cause are nature, necessity, chance, and human.
Three states of appetite: 1. Taste 2. Desire 3. Hunger
Free will is assent.
Determinism is having no choice.
A hero is a dead winner. The winner lives to boast. A loser plays for sympathy.
Sympathy for losing is more to be desired by some than winning.
Aristotle asserts that drunkenness is no excuse -but deserving of added punishment.
Aristotle also asserted that health, including mental health, is a personal responsibility.
“...and by the addition of small, particular, accessions not cognizable...” By degrees disease advances to the point of no return (sorites, literally "a heap," the proverbial last straw.)