clipped, lapidary, wayward, standing in the world. Caprice. “Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen” overflows with works from American artist James McNeill Whistler’s personal collection of Japanese and Chinese art

What do you suppose she’s thinking?

This scene in “Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen” overflows with works from American artist James McNeill Whistler’s personal collection of Japanese and Chinese art, from porcelain and lacquer to the painted Japanese screen referenced in the work’s title that, like the walls of our famed Peacock Room, shimmers with applied gold leaf.

Whistler poses his model, Joanna Hiffernan (d. 1886), as an active viewer by having her hold a print from the series “Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces” by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Her rapt attention transforms her into a proxy for both the viewer and the artist as discerning connoisseurs who were creating imagined views of East Asia through collected objects.

Explore this work’s connection to our most famous work of art in “Ruffled Feathers: Creating Whistler’s Peacock Room,” now on view in Gallery 11. https://s.si.edu/4cjw8I1

Part of our #AmericanArt collection. #SmithsonianAsianArt

Image: Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), 1864, United States, Oil on wood panel, 50.1 × 68.5 cm (19 3/4 × 27 in), National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1904.75a

America's standing in the world.

Happy birthday to Bruce Chatwin, born on this day in 1940! We can thank him for revolutionizing the genre of travel writing, and giving us glimpses of “the uttermost part of the earth.” https://bit.ly/3fICALB

John Updike described Chatwin's writing as "a clipped, lapidary prose that compresses worlds into pages",^[146] while one of Chatwin's editors, Susannah Clapp, wrote, "Although his syntax was pared down, his words were not — or at least not only — plain.... His prose is both spare and flamboyant."

A Rewoven Black Flag, Raised for a New Audience 
By JON PARELES
The year’s oddest musical tribute belongs to Dirty Projectors, the Brooklyn band that brought its lapidary, wayward constructions to the Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night.

“Unaccustomed Earth” with an intimate knowledge of their conflicted hearts, using her lapidary eye for detail to conjure their daily lives with extraordinary precision: the faint taste of coconut in the Nice cookies that a man associates with his dead wife; the Wonder Bread sandwiches, tinted green with curry, that a Bengali mother makes for her embarrassed daughter to take to school. A Chekhovian sense of loss blows through these new stories: a reminder of Ms. Lahiri’s appreciation of the wages of time and mortality and her understanding too of the missed connections that plague her husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and friends.

wayward fance of the readers

caprice

/kəˈpriːs/

noun

1. 1.

   a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behaviour.

   "the caprices of the electorate"

   Similar:

   whim

   whimsy

   vagary

   fancy

   notion

   fad

   freak

   humour

   impulse

   quirk

   eccentricity

   foible

   crotchet

   urge

   fickleness

   changeableness

   volatility

   inconstancy

   capriciousness

   fitfulness

   unpredictability

   Opposite:

   stability
2. 2.

   Music

   another term for capriccio.

   "the caprice was divided into a theme and eleven variations"

clipped

adjective

UK 

 /klɪpt/ US 

 /klɪpt/

clipped adjective (SPEAKING)

with words pronounced quickly and clearly, sometimes with parts missing, or in a very short and unfriendly way:

I heard the clipped tones of his secretary saying "I have Mr Watson for you."

lapidary
n., pl. -ies.

1. One who cuts, polishes, or engraves gems.
2. A dealer in precious or semiprecious stones.

adj.

1. Of or relating to precious stones or the art of working with them.
2. 1. Engraved in stone.
   2. Marked by conciseness, precision, or refinement of expression: lapidary prose.
   3. Sharply or finely delineated: a face with lapidary features.

[Middle English lapidarie, from Old French lapidaire, from Latin lapidārius, from lapis, lapid-, stone.]

n. 宝石細工人［術］.
━━ a. 石に彫られた ((碑文など)); 碑文（体）の; 宝石細工の.

wayward

(wā'wərd) adj.

1. Given to or marked by willful, often perverse deviation from what is desired, expected, or required in order to gratify one's own impulses or inclinations. See synonyms at unruly.
2. Swayed or prompted by caprice; unpredictable.

[Middle English, short for awaiward, turned away, perverse : awai, away; see away + -ward, -ward.]

━━ a. わがままな; 片意地な; 気まぐれな; 不安定な.