Monday, January 14, 2013

"But there was a time about 10 years ago, writes Hunt-Grubbe in her piece, when she, then a lab assistant, found Watson distressed over a British newspaper headline: Abort babies with gay genes, says Nobel winner. Hunt-Grubbe asked Watson about that incident again when they met for their recent interview. "It was a hypothetical thing," Watson tells her. Someone had asked a question about aborting homosexual babies, and Watson believed mothers "should have the right" to decide when they have a baby. "I was just arguing for the freedom of women to try and have the children they want, not what is right or wrong,"

The Mortification of James Watson



The opposite of this would be Plato's approach, quoted and put into practice by D. Arbus:

“There are and have been and will be an infinite number of things on earth. Individuals all different, all wanting different things, all knowing different things, all loving different things, all looking different. Everything that has been on earth has been different from any other thing. That is what I love: the differentness, the uniqueness of all things and the importance of life… I see something that seems wonderful; I see the divineness in ordinary things.”

Diane Arbus. Paper on Plato, senior English seminar, Fieldston School, November 28, 1939

I was very touched by her straightforward and yet conceptual approach. My idea of what she is trying to show, was confirmed by the above mentioned quote, which I read in the documentation room at the end of the exhibition. 


Diane Arbus