Tim Rollins (1955–2018)

A New York Times obituary describes Tim Rollins as “an artist and educator whose mural-like paintings inspired by literary classics brought 1980s art stardom to him and his collaborators — a shifting collective of at-risk South Bronx teenagers.” Together they were known as Tim Rollins + K.O.S., meaning Kids of Survival. The Times describes the way they worked:

It was a demanding process, which Mr. Rollins oversaw from beginning to end. The authors he selected were challenging and included Shakespeare, Daniel Defoe, Lewis Carroll and Malcolm X. Digesting their writings could take weeks, and arriving at a suitable motif, a process they called jammin’, could take months.

Among the group’s other source materials: Franz Kafka’s Amerika and Duke Ellington’s The River: A Ballet Suite. Here are two samplings of the work of Tim Rollins + K.O.S.: one, two.

“A few days of living with K.”

In the schoolroom/gymnasium that doubles or triples as living quarters for K., who works as the school’s janitor, and Frieda:


Franz Kafka, The Castle, trans. Mark Harman (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

If the book fits

[Photograph by Rachel.]

Items in a series

Honesty. Integrity. Quality. Trust. Premium Onions.

[As seen on a bag of, yes, onions. I suppose that if onions are your everything, this series makes sense.]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with the American Dialect Society’s pick.

Stating the obvious

A “very stable genius” would not be tweeting in the pre-dawn. How do I know that? Because I’m, like, really smart.

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Dunning K. Trump

[Context: here and here.]

From the Saturday Stumper

From today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, not a tricky clue, but one I learned from. It’s 46-Across, eleven letters: “Word from the French for ‘stir up.’” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Today’s puzzle, by Lester Ruff, is at least semi-tough. Either these puzzles are getting easier, or I’m getting better, or both.

NPR, sheesh

From Weekend Edition Saturday, spoken not someone in the story but by the reporter: “Me and people my age are redefining what it means to travel by car.”

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[I object not only to the object pronoun but to putting me first. But at least the reporter didn’t say “me and my friends.”]

Andrew Sullivan on a year of insanity

“It seems possible, after a year of this insanity, to entertain some measure of hope that it will some day be over, and the country and the world not irrevocably damaged in the process”: Andrew Sullivan explains why he has hope.

“Not irrevocably damaged”: that’s the kind of resolution I’m hoping for.

Poor K., poor Frieda

K., who has come to the Castle to work as a surveyor, is now working as the school janitor. K. and Frieda and K.’s two assistants are living in the schoolroom. Frieda has shown that she can make any room comfortable to live in, but there’s little she can do here.


Franz Kafka, The Castle, trans. Mark Harman (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Yes, the schoolroom doubles as a gymnasium. When K. and Frieda, sleeping late, are surprised by the arrival of schoolchildren and the schoolmistress, they throw their blankets over the parallel bars and pommel horse to make themselves a changing room.

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)