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, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Nov 30th, 2011
ShareART HISTORIANS ARE NOT NECESSARILY the best commentators on art. They are primarily researchers: archival sleuths, inquirers, unearthers of fact. Gumshoes, the best of them. Some can write, many cannot. The discipline draws bookish sorts who are more at home in a library carrel, reading up on the words of some other member of the [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Nov 20th, 2011
ShareHASAN NIYAZI, impressario of Three Pipe Problem, had included a list of readings that informed his essay in the previous post, Navigating the Cognitive Philosophy of Michael Fried. I omitted the roster simply to conform more closely to the format of Studio Matters. The audience for this blog are, in the main, other working artists, [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Painting, Things to Read on Nov 12th, 2011
Shareby Hasan Niyazi
CARAVAGGIO AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN ROME has arrived at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Those unable to experience the majesty of the Baroque in person are left to ponder the substantial catalogue recently published by Yale University Press.
Featuring essays by exhibition organizers and notable scholars of the Baroque, Michael Fried’s [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on Oct 25th, 2011
ShareONE PROBLEM WITH ART HISTORIANS-TURNED-JOURNALISTS lies in the requirements of journalism. The art pundit must be interesting; no matter if accuracy suffers. Diversion is the name of the game. Elegant and high-minded, to be sure, but diverting nonetheless. And there really is not time, given the copy deadlines of daily or even weekly publications, to [...]
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 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 Art, Art Writing, Artistic Identity, Things to Read on Jun 4th, 2011
ShareA small gem of a book that artists should have on their shelves is Jacques Maritain’s The Responsibility of the Artist. Together with Jacques Barzun’s The Use and Abuse of Art, it is all anyone needs to think or talk about the artist’s ultimate purpose.
Dover keeps Barzun in print. Sadly, it does not do the [...]
Posted in Art, Art History, Art Writing, Sacred Art, Things to Read on May 9th, 2011
ShareREADER SAM’S REFERENCE, in a comment on the previous post, to the biblical story of Adam naming the animals lends thrust to Tallis’ argument on—for lack of a better term—the metaphysics of pointing.
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The Genesis narrative distills into a simple, vivid anecdote the substanceN of Raymond Tallis’ thesis in Michelangelo’s Finger. The mythical Adam could hardly [...]