Posted in Art and Politics, Artistic Pretension, Feminist art on Jan 10th, 2013
ShareFor connoisseurs of civilizational decline, the delights keep accumulating. Contemporary art is especially generous in building the case that Spengler had it right. If only he had been an art critic. The ignorance and terminal vulgarity of what passes—still—for feminist art disqualifies most of its practitioners from any claim on civilized attention.
Newly arrived is a [...]
Posted in Art Education, Art and Politics, Collage, Culture Cues on Sep 25th, 2011
SharePolitical mythology is a more significant player than art itself in shaping a culture’s mentality. Commemorating 9/ll by means of children’s artwork sentimentalizes the event and allows us to avoid calling the events of that day acts of war. 9/11: Through Young Eyes severs its subject from the only thing by which it can be [...]
Posted in Art, Art and Politics, Culture Cues, Things to Read on Aug 3rd, 2011
ShareJUDGING FROM EMAIL RESPONSES, the accidental cross-shaped form left standing at Ground Zero rouses great ire. All my mail has been sympathetic to the lawsuit against it on the grounds that the cross is not a secular symbol. (I never said it was. I said it resonated beyond sectarian distinctions. Quite a different thought.) It [...]
Posted in Art and Politics, Culture Cues on Jul 28th, 2011
ShareATHEISTS ADMIT THAT ATHEISM IS A BELIEF SYSTEM. It is about time. Atheism is as much a faith-based system as any God-centered religion. The existence of God can neither be proven nor unproven, no matter all the effort expended on debate. Unbelievers assert their own beliefs as ardently as any church-goer.
That is the single, dominant [...]
Posted in Art, Art & Money, Art and Politics, Artistic Pretension on Jun 23rd, 2011
ShareRandy Pausch gave good advice to his computer science students at Carnegie Mellon: When you know you are in pissing contest it, get out of it as fast as you can. So in the Pauschian spirit, I offer this delicious cartoon, sent by Mr. Eyeballs as both a free gift and a chastisement.
The previous [...]
Posted in Art, Art and Politics on Jun 11th, 2011
ShareWhere is Byron when we need him? This is what George Gordon Lord Byron, sexual magnet and progenitor of the Byronic hero, looked like:
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Oh, the melancholy tilt of the head, the dark eyes shining with sensitivity, his pale skin so delicate, so caressable! And that mouth! Small wonder Byron was the toast of London’s social [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art and Politics, Artistic Pretension, Culture Cues, Environmental Piety on May 14th, 2011
ShareIN CASE ANY OF YOU WONDERED WHETHER SUSTAINABILITY was, at heart, an ideological love affair with subsistence living, take a gander:
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Take this as a fashion forecast of our new footgear when the sustainable crowd finally erases the Industrial Revolution and its works from the planet. The shoes on the left are a bit hard to [...]
Posted in Art, Art and Politics, Culture Cues on Apr 28th, 2011
ShareWHEN I BEGAN THIS BLOGGY THING, I never intended to drift into politics. Quite the opposite, really. My fantasy—and it was fantasy—was to transcend politics, leap over or slide under it. Good luck with that, Maureen. The art world itself is so sodden with politics that it becomes impossible to ignore the drift. Even comic [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art and Politics, Painting on Apr 15th, 2011
ShareBy Christopher S. Johnson
“BE ASSURED MY YOUNG FRIEND, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith wrote to his distraught friend, John Sinclair, after the battle of Saratoga (1777). Smith’s words are a model of equanimity; the defeat would bring French forces into the conflict and effectively decide the outcome of [...]
Posted in Art, Art & Censorship, Art and Politics, Culture Cues on Apr 13th, 2011
ShareCONTEMPORARY CENSORSHIP IS A FUNNY THING. Art that mocks Christianity or displays hostility to Israel, is fine, thank you. But our institutions walk on eggs not to offend Islamic sensibilities. So it is cheering, to a point, to see a petition circulating on the internet to protest the dismissal of Jack Persekian, director of the [...]