Inigo Jones

Inigo Jones (1573-1652)

Inigo Jones, the Vitruvian 17th century architect and set designer, responsible for Ben Jonson's masques--imagine a time when theater had the immediacy of movies and theaters like Shakespeare’s globe evinced their own raucous and sexy spectacle in the galleries. What a name for a stage! The Globe! Ever since humans first recognized their own faces as reflections, the desire and need to see themselves has exploded, Look at the famous Bayeux Tapestries down the road from Omaha Beach and look at how many hits Pornhub receives in a day. Over 114 million is the answer. War is just one of the arenas. Pharoah receiving the prophecy about the calves is another. Joseph btw was the first Jewish psychoanalyst. Let’s call it the interpersonal school! Speaking of analysis, "the rest is silence."

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Nudity

strip club in Anora

Nudity can be physical or emotional. In the latter one exposes oneself, the orifices and cavities which comprise the mind. The former is a taller order. You undress, perhaps finding yourself in one of those dreams where you find yourself standing in front of a crowd with nothing on. As irrational as it may sound, some people would rather admit to anything in lieu of finding themselves scrounging for a fig leaf. The shame attached to nudity is a mystery akin to that of consciousness itself. Words play the role of clothes when it comes to unveiling emotion, but most people are not afraid to let down their guard when they get excised enough, for example. Stripper is a noun most people take for granted. You think of gaudy Gentlemen’s clubs where dupes pay exorbitant fees to drink champagne in the V.I.P room, but why not apply it to those who tell the truth? Further, to be contradictory, is telling all a definition of truth.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Circulation Des Elites

Vilfredo Pareto

It's like overhearing your parents fighting behind their bedroom door. From the point of view of the average Joe, the elites are having a dust up. The sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, coined the term, "circulation des elites." The White House correspondents are no less an elite than Joe Rogan. Certainly Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are their own elite along with Wolf Blitzer and his co-anchor, Pamela Brown. In comes a would be assassin guns a blazing. Will he become an urban legend, the Luigi Mangione of 2026? Will he be locked up in Fort Knox, a true Goldfinger, rather than one those maximum security for-profit federal penitentiaries filled with cypto-kleptocrats? This is not The Apprentice. It's Jerry Springer where you had to call security to break things up.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kant

Kant

Paradigm shift was the catchphrase of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The two words are innocuous, almost pallidly academic yet absolute in their assertion of relativity. But where does the "categorical imperative" figure in? The Kantian requisite differentiates between right and wrong. The present comical universe displays the consequences of “transactional analysis.” Decision making has no relationship to morality. The present state of "value free politics" perpetrated by the president illustrates the consequences of the attack on deontology.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Which Way Should the Male Gaze?

 

"Sunlight" by Joan Semmel (1978)

Is it wrong to look pruriently on Courbet's"L'Origine du monde" with its headless model in a wanton splayed legged pose? Joan Semmel is known for her nudes, currently on display, in her solo show, "In the Flesh," at The Jewish Museum. Does the artist defang the male gaze by virtue of her own agency? Is it an act of esthetic corruption to get turned on by "Sunlight," or another of Semmel's nudes where a female subject is pictured underneath her male lover with one hand grasping his balls and the fingers of her hand reaching tantalizingly towards his anus?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kepler

Johannes Kepler

There are billions of galaxies. The Milky Way is only one, though a Kepler planet, an inhabitant, is still going to be 1200 light years from earth. In addition the cosmos is filled with a dark energy that's causing objects to drift ever further from each other. Space is getting darker, with celestial objects becoming ever more evanescent. No wonder humans constantly and futilely need to assert their self-importance. However delusory, it provides an anodyne. So, much maligned ego does have a function--as a momentary respite from cosmic indifference. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Chance

What are the chances of being spotted by somebody you barely know in the middle of nowhere aka Main Street in a strange city. Not much, right? How much more improbable is it to be spotted by the same person a second time? The improbability of an improbable occurrence repeating increases exponentially. Those who believe there are no coincidences  argue there are other spiritual algorithms at work. Is it a mere throw of the dice? Or...? 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Ozempic Personality Disorder

Apparently weight loss drugs like Ozempic have side effects—one of which is anhedonia or the ability to experience pleasure. In the course of quelling one appetite by way of reducing dopamine flow other temptations are eradicated and patients may start to ponder the point of living. Hamlet comments "that the dread of something after death/The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveler returns, puzzles the will." Suicidal ideation is not compatible with those taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

L.H.O.O.Q.

 

L.H.O.O.Q.

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp's quote which graces the wall in the current MoMA show, sounds a bit like an artist trying to punch his way out of a paper bag. One admires the cleverness of his famed vandalizing of the "Mona Lisa," which sets the state for Rauschenberg's erasing of de Kooning and later guerrilla art such as Banksy. However, to complete the circle and in a Duchampian way turn Duchamp upside down,  can the Dadaist enterprise compete with great art "works?" Compare the experience of "View of Delft," "The Night Watch" and, yes, the "Mona Lisa" to any number of conceptual strategies--that seek to redefine the nature of beauty and art, and you may find you may feel shortchanged. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Le Dereglement de tous les sens

 

"Le dereglement de tous les sens” is both a call to arms and ars poetica from Arthur Rimbaud. It's also an expression used by the playwright Antonin Artaud, famed for his "Theater of Cruelty. Is it akin to the 60s where people dropped acid? Is it a loosening of the bonds of mimesis or reason? Certainly, the idea more related to content than style, relates to the emotion within the mind of the creator. From your mouth to God’s ears goes the old saw. Ghosting is when you don’t get back to someone. However, the state Rimbaud refers to emanates from an extreme out of body experience, similar to that of someone who has just seen a ghost.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Stimulation

"Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Manet, 1863)

What makes for stimulation. Neurologists point to serotonin flow between synapses, but that relates to a result. It’s similar to discussions about consciousness by Daniel Dennett and others who create theory. Is consciousness a biological process akin to digestion? Or does Cartesian dualism still hold sway? In any case you are left with theorems for which proof is offered. But, where does the feeling of excitement originate in art as well as sex? Sexual fantasy, for example, is a form of preconception--fulfillment a matter of the shoe fitting the foot. “Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” is an idyll about which there’s a consensus. It’s one of the most beautiful paintings in the canon of proto-modernism. But how to account for interstice between art and mind, between the eye and the emotion that looking produces?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Patience

Patience is arithmetic, building slowly as one after another particular expectations are or are not met. Impatience is exponential with waiting akin to a fireworks factory going up in smoke. A person who is calm in the face of uncertainty is a practiced juggler who can take things as they come simply--though sometimes it's just because they're wise enough to not have too many balls in the air. Of course the act can be spiced up by doing it on a high wire or bike or both. That’s why it’s called a circus. Impatience doesn’t usually occur under the big top—as it's not a bona fide high wire act.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Letter From An Unknown Woman

If you remember back to high school, equations with two unknowns led to the notion of graphs and coordinates. Speaking of unknowns, think about Sargent’s mysterious "Madame X" in her majestic black gown or Max Ophul's classic romance Letter From an Unknown Woman. Part of the mystery of the algebra itself derived from the fact that the math became visual, numbers created lines. Mirrors and the notion of the virtual image would soon be introduced in physics. Actually the notion of "x" and "y" are hard to swallow at first. It's easy to disregard their mystery and cachet. You have to get on with your life, so you mechanically finish the assignment. However, without knowing it, you have been introduced to the world of math. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Trial

Everybody needs a witness at their trial, someone who can testify to their character but also, in a world of indifference, a judge,a person who keeps a close eye, perhaps even a closer eye than they themselves can about their motives. Joseph K is actually your average Joe. No one who has his back. There's no Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) who stops George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) from jumping to his death.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

No Exit

Hubert Selby: "I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life."

Among the numerous other indignities of the present war between good and evil is the attack on interiority. 

Thank God for Howard Jacobson whose most recent broadsheet/novel about "the war" (aka chthonic battle between medieval notions of good and evil) is titled Howl.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Man Who Couldn't Feel Anything

CIP, Congenital Insensitivity to Pain is life-threatening. How many time can you pound your head into a brick wall? The Man Who Couldn’t Feel Anything sounds just like another super hero until you realize that the strength hides a weakness. The Kryptonite in this case is a neurological condition which allows one the ability to painlessly self-destruct.Such a fictional character is also a metaphor for the institutionalization of forgetting. People don't realize they're time bombs. What goes around comes around. It’s the law of the conservation of energy. One of the chief methods of beheading a population is by convincing them that some atrocity is life as usual. Atrocity can be normalized. You can comvince humans of anything. Evil is truly banal. Like Kafka’s Hungerkunstler, it's the genius, the proclivity that's also is the undoing.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Civilization

 Kohneh Square, Isfahan (photo: Franco Pecchio)

Is the destruction of a civilization not too high a price to pay to turn attention away from the Epstein files? But from a world historical point of view, the real question is: who is the greatest authoritarian? The field is tight with KimJong-un, Recep Erdogan, MBS, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump all in the running. A Quinnipiac poll indicates most Americans feel Kim Jomg-un is most repressive with his ceremonial displays of strength in Kim II Sung Square. But fascism is on the upswing with Trump’s goon squad of masked agents bringing back the glory days of Kristallnacht when Black Shirts roamed freely through the streets of Berlin.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Half-Lives

"Half-life" is an odd term since it emanates from the elements. Humans have short half-lives. Here today gone tomorrow. It's stunning how quickly people pickup their things and leave the consciousness of other human beings forever. What’s the rush? Sorry to inform you, life goes on very nicely without you. No need to fret, thank you. One good thing is that most people are like Miss Havisham, cloaked in clutter. However, a quick exit from the stage, enables the minions to get rid of remains. Oh yes, now and then you will come to mind,  say when the word “soup” is mentioned. You like your soup "hot!"

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Fountain

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp (1917)

You have the found object or “objet Trouvé” epitomized most famously by Duchamp’s "Fountain." Then there are the the lost objects that people try to recover. Are you someone who is always crying out “where’s my phone?” There are those who would lose their heads if they weren't attached to their necks and some who routinely lose their minds. There are valued items that are stolen as is the case with the bike in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. But what about those things that disappear of their own volition? You can’t find  them anywhere. If you leave your cellphone in your freezer, you may want to discuss it in therapy. Are the things that refuse to show up part of an unconscious deaccessioning project that has yet to reveal itself. No sooner had you purchased Dan Simmon’s Hyperion at the advice of a friend than that piece of sci-fi went into outer space, into an orbit comprising space/time coordinates that were no longer part of your universe.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

En Plein Air

 

South Fork Poetry: ‘En Plein Air’

“En Plein Air,” mixed media, 2026, by Hallie Cohen.

Courtesy of the Artist

By Francis Levy

April 2, 2026 

I am standing by my

easel en plein air

right here on Main

 

usually there is a group of us down by the inlet

but I don’t see any of those

“No painting from life” signs

the source of the trepidation is:

am I getting things right?

am I exploiting their pain?

is this a justification for art?

 

solitary figure under street lamp

go blank

dark light to draw the figure

 

Nardy Pest Control

Yardley & Pino Funeral Home

 

Valhalla is where everybody who is anybody’s going

the L.I.E. is one those conversations that goes on forever

 

You’re all

over town

without spreading yourself thin

or being unfaithful

and the ripples of the current,

Swann’s Way on Circle Beach

always the mad honking

flocks of geese over Georgica Pond

country cousin of herds of yellow cabs

I started in the sad light

when everyone was still sleeping

the houses were

tombstones in my mind

shadow dancing is what I call these kinds of strokes it’s nothing new

for me

 

I could have just taken a shot with my cell

but it’s not the same

it’s complex

 

I’m the town crier

he finally died is where my art begins

but it’s a tale of estrangement, and love

this one loved him

that one not

then there’ll be the church

I won’t be able to paint the service

and how this one was or was not talking

to whom

---

Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. “En Plein Air” is part of a recently completed poetry collection, “The Unavoidable Imminence of the Inexplicable.”

 

Taste

Focus groups are used by advertisers and purveyors to psyche out the desires of populations. Vance Packard the author of books like The Status Seekers epitomized the world of 50s advertising. His version of popularized sociology epitomized the  post-war consumer culture. Dwight McDonald famously wrote Mass Cult and Mid Cult. Mad Men presented another look at the attempt to survey and profit from consumerism. Taste is the common phenomenon. Lionel Trilling ‘s The Liberal Imagination is an attempt to help readers of literature examine good from bad. The Dow and The Pulitzer are both forms of measurement and certain bestsellers represent the meeting point between commerce and art.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

A Connecticut Yankee

Alignment refers to celestial bodies. Human wishes often mimic the movement of planets and moons. Lunar and solar eclipses, interplanetary and stellar movements are the essence of cosmology and also astrology but they also function as metaphors in an imaginative context. When you have your chart read, you're looking into a crystal ball. On the other hand heavenly bodies can be used to obfuscate.  Remember how Hank Morgan uses a solar eclipse in Connecticut Yankee to convince Arthur of his magical powers.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Andrenalin

Karl Marx

Controversy produces Adrenalin. Adrenalin is an antidote to priapism, which can create necrotic tissue. It’s also the chemical cause for impotence. You get anxious and lose your erection. Or if you’re a Hegelian "world-historical figure," adrenalin produces the antithesis that facilitates The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star