Posted in Culture Cues, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Dec 25th, 2011
ShareEACH CHRISTMAS MORNING I wake up relieved that the struggle against “Happy Holidays” is over for another year. Holidays are holy days, after all. When Hanukkah and Christmas arrive so close together as they do this year, I wonder if it would be possible to announce “Happy Holy Days!” into the secular void. The wondering [...]
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 History, Culture Cues, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Jul 27th, 2011
ShareONCE RADICAL EVIL SHRINKS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL PROPORTIONS, society’s ability to inflict hardship—including the psychological pain of deep remorse—diminishes. Restitution and rehabilitation become one and the same thing. That pulls the rug out from under an artist’s capacity to conceive anything close to the grand hellscapes, sublime in their gravity, that came freely to Hieronymous Bosch. [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Culture Cues, Environmental Piety on Jul 15th, 2011
ShareThe art of eating is one thing. The art of swallowing is quite something else. The first concerns the graces and pleasures of the table. The second is not about gobbling your dinner. It is a reference to credulity, an artless childlike trust—in this instance—in the romance of organic food. As in: “He swallowed the [...]
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 Artistic Identity, Artistic Pretension, Culture Cues, Environmental Piety on Jul 10th, 2011
ShareI could not believe my eyes at Mass this morning. There in the sanctuary, just behind and to the right (stage left) of the altar, was a bottle of hand sanitizer. It was not tucked discreetly behind a vase of flowers. There were no flowers. Just an economy-sized dispenser of Purell.
The Church has distributed the Eucharist [...]
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 [...]