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, Sacred Art on Jul 31st, 2011
ShareSOMETIMES I JUST DO NOT KNOW what to think. This is one of them.
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A comic book, Habemus Papam, featuring Benedict XVI as a manga-style superhero will be handed out to all the ardent juveniles who show up in Madrid for World Youth Day. It runs about a week, from August 16 to 21. You might [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Culture Cues, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Jul 26th, 2011
ShareEARLIER AGES WERE BETTER AT PICTORIAL DEPICTIONS OF EVIL because they believed in its existence. Our own therapeutic society prefers to think of evil as an outmoded concept that gives way to material and psychological explanations. A strain of received wisdom has it that the concept of sin is as outmoded as phrenology. Wickedness, properly [...]
ShareLLOYD MARTIN LIVES AND WORKS IN RHODE ISLAND. By no means does that permit anyone to call him a New England painter. There is nothing regional about his painting. His achievement embodies Robert Hughes’ observation—made some twenty years ago—that Manhattan is no longer a creative center. A marketing center, certainly; but vital for the development [...]
Posted in Art, Culture Cues, Environmental Piety on Jul 13th, 2011
ShareWHEN A READER HAS TO MAKE MY POINT for me, I know I failed to do it myself. John_L, in his comment to the previous post, has it just right: The true target of that post was the prevailing preoccupation with forestalling, denying or outwitting our mortality. Obsession with hand sanitizer, organic food, and bottled [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Culture Cues on Jul 3rd, 2011
ShareLOST IN THE CHEERY GREETING, “Happy 4th of July,” is the solemnity of Independence Day and the magnificence of our Declaration of Independence.
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That came home to me yesterday at the grocery check-out. The young man at the register handed me my change with a mechanical, “Have a good one.” (There is a phrase to set [...]
Posted in Art, Art & Money, Artistic Identity on Jun 25th, 2011
ShareFOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT make your way through comment threads, or click through to off-site links, here is the comment by Banksy referred to earlier by reader Sam at the end of a comment thread:
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Whether you agree with it or not, you have to admit it is a bit rich coming from [...]
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 & Money, Art Education, Culture Cues on Jun 22nd, 2011
ShareThe Art Institutes, the largest collegiate system for design education in the world, began in 1921. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh was the flagship school, a model for the complex which has grown to some 45 schools in North America. It specializes in design: graphic, industrial, game, and related applied art fields that have a [...]
Posted in Art, Art Writing, Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension on Jun 18th, 2011
ShareReader Sam has done us all a great favor by emailing the link to Arty Bollocks Generator. The site provides an instant Artist Statement for anyone applying for a grant, preparing for a show or cobbling together a CV. Gallerists, too, will find it useful for composing the kind of press releases vital to so [...]