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How can less be more? I've always thought that was a daft expression. Maybe less is better, but it can't be more. ...and what's this thing about something being "the new black"...what's that all about, eh?
Going back to the original point..
Hey, anyone see the film Garden State on telly last week? Blimmin good it was...

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
How can less be more?

Well....

It's said by the painter Andrea del Sarto (who was a real person--1486-1531), in Robert Browning's 1855 poem by that name. Here's how Browning had Andrea del Sarto say "less is more." He's addressing his beautiful, but somewhat stupid and apparently unfaithful young wife, Lucrezia (SWMBO?), for whom he abandoned an important painting commission and--some have said--his true calling.

...I could count twenty such ...
Who strive ...
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat--
Yet do much less ... --so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
... Somebody remarks
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? ...

Sooooo.. Why do you guys talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road ?? Bush says after Iraq you guys are next.. Any thoughts on this ??

Nothing would surprise me from GW Bush...

Fredrik

Steve - If my wife swept past me smearing my painting with her clothes I don't imagine I would eulogise the result in a poem. He must have been just plain infatuated, and therefore his "less is more" remark remains daft.
You'll have to do better than that Steve