Atlantica - 01.09.2004, Qupperneq 13

One word comes up when I attempt to describe my personal life,
my work schedule, my hair style, and my driving: chaos.
How did this one word answer creep into the vernacular?
From the Greek “khaos” meaning “abyss, that which
gapes wide open”, this modern day one-word
mantra is prominent in Hesiod’s Theogony, where
it is described as the primeval emptiness of the
Universe. Ovid flushed it out: “rather a crude
and indigested mass, a lifeless lump, unfash-
ioned and unframed.” And Edmund Spenser
righteously explained that Chaos was in the
lower world, waiting in line to return to rule
if enough people slipped up.
In Chinese mythology, Chaos is a god with-
out eyes or ears. And then there is the math-
ematical use, the chaos theory which allows
for the study of nonlinear differential equa-
tions.
Okay, so chaos comes up in a lot of academic
work. Which leads to the real use for the word: as
Jeff Goldblum demonstrated in Jurassic Park, just
mentioning chaos and then droning on can make
you sound pretty deep. Though it’s best to have an exit
strategy planned for the discussion—say getting eaten by
a dinosaur. BC
Funny Old Word: Chaos
She was one of Iceland’s most promi-
nent artists during the second half of
the 20th Century, and this fall the
Scandinavia House in New York will
present a major retrospective on
Louisa Matthíasdóttir.
Louisa Matthíasdóttir: A Retrospective
(from 21 September to 13 November)
will show nearly 100 of Matthias-
dottir’s works, including oil paintings,
rarely-shown clothing patterns and
works on paper that have never been
exhibited before.
By 1943, Matthíasdóttir was living and
working in the US, yet she drew on
motifs from both her native Iceland
and the US, presenting more than 50
acclaimed exhibitions in some of the
world’s most prestigious galleries. EW
Icelandic
Retrospective
airmail
ART
For more information on Louisa Matthíasdóttir: A Retrospective, log onto www.scandinaviahouse.org
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