The Humanities

The Summer 2008 issue of The Wilson Quarterly has an excellent article by Wilfred M. McClay, "the Burden of the Humanities"

Mr. McClay brings some excellent and piercing perspective on the Humanities as they are currently being taught in our universities, and how they are perceived by the general public, and why.

Strange, that an era so pleased with its superficially freewheeling and antinomian qualities is actually so distrustful of the literary imagination, so intent upon making its productions conform to predetermined criteria. Meanwhile, the genuine, unfeigned love of literature is most faithfully represented not in the universities but among the intelligent readers and devoted secondary-school teachers scattered across the land.

Mr. McClay points out how identity politics has eviscerated the meaning of the Arts and Humanities and he goes on to show why we should care about this at all. He shows that the Humanities can and should remind us "that the ancients knew things about humankind that modernity has failed to repeal," a reminder more important today, as some aim to move us into a post-human world.

Go have a good read.


(image "Landscape" 1994, by Mark Tansey, used as the title illustration in the original article)

Happy Fourth of July!




Day By Day

UPDATE: Maggie's Farm has posted a large quote from The Declaration of Independence with links to the full text and the other charters of our country.

The Right Brush

Painting in acrylic is murder on brushes. An average brush lasts me maybe one year, sometimes two. As a result of this, I had been loath to try more expensive brushes, like Kolinsky Sables, even though I wanted the level of control that such a good brush brings.

Never the less, I broke down and bought a set of Performen Kolinsky brushes by Creative Mark from Jerry's Artarama when they were on sale...

... last summer.

Even though these are not very expensive (especially for Kolinsky Sable, which can retail for between $400.00 and $700.00 per brush for the larger sizes), I was still uptight on using such a brush and automatically condemning it to an early death.


Well, I bit the bullet yesterday, and started using them.

It was amazing! They hold more paint, so that I can do longer strokes and cover more in less time. They have excellent control, allowing me to pull long lines and to accurately pull an edge. And they rinse and wash out better and easier than any brush I've ever owned.


Just goes to show that there is no substitute for quality.

Compare and Contrast

Art in America's June/July '08 issue focuses on Art & Politics. You can guess some of the political leanings going on...

I found the contrast of two articles particularly curious;

In Activist Esthetics, Tom McDonough makes the (in my opinion, highly contestable) claim,

The social history of art, as it fitfully developed over the course of the 20th century, has always been bound up with the troubled history of the workers' movement, and more particularly with its state-socialist variant. There seemed few ways to think through the relation between art and the social outside the parameters provided by the canonic Marxist ontology.


At least he is up front with his agenda. It's such a sweeping statement, it makes me wonder about all the art training I've gotten and all the artist's relationships I have that are distinctly non-Marxist. We must be some sort of aberration.



Later, there is a very interesting interview with Ai Weiwei, described as "China's most outspoken artist..."

Mr. Weiwei's first response to the interviewer is as thus,

I grew up in a Communist society and amid ideological struggles. The system devolved into extreme totalitarianism with no personal rights, no freedom of speech or expression. Justice was replaced by class struggle, which is really just an excuse for the government to maintain its power. From a very early age, I found it almost impossible, in those conditions, for individuals to develop self-consciousness or any real awareness of esthetic values. Instead, there was a severe conflict between individual and state power. These struggles pervaded the environment in which I grew up. And still, after 30 years of so-called "opening and reform," we have a reduced version of the same state. Today, we are still under a one-party system with very limited space for freedom of expression. (emphasis mine)

It's interesting, that a westerner who (I'm assuming) has never grown up under Communism places Marx on a pedestal of heroic proportions, saying in effect that all 20th century art owes it's social impact to Marxism. On the other hand, the first thing said by an artist, who has actually grown up under the thumb of Marx, is how Communism makes the conscious expression of art and esthetics nearly impossible.

It is a wonder, the ignorance shown by those who simply will not learn from history.

Art, or the Colosseum?


UPDATE, thanks to Assistant Village Idiot and Eugene Volokh for the links. If you are here for the first time, please also check out my Art Studio website, Jerub-Baal Studio



Neatoramma posts about German artist Gregor Schneider, who plans to display a person's death as a piece of performance art. A doctor has agreed to help find a volunteer.

Actually, to be fair, Neatorama’s description is not really accurate. The piece would be considered installation art. If I have followed the article trail properly through Google, this interview in the Art Newspaper is where it all started, with a response by the artist to the comments thread here and a further defense by the artist published in the Guardian Further interesting reading on the subject, from a legal angle (US only) can be found at the Volokh Conspiracy (who I might ad, posted an interesting essay on the Aliza Shvarts art-thesis-cum-hoax at Yale, and the legal and ethical issues surrounding Yale’s ending of her project. Read through the comments…. )

I think all of these are good reads before coming to a conclusion about the project.

First or all, Mr. Schneider is taken aback at some of the insults and threats that he has received in response to the publishing of his idea. I can’t say that I blame him. The examples he gives, if they are true (and given the often vituperative nature of on-line commentary, I believe him. He could probably have gone on for several pages… ) Such things are not arguments or discussion, and they do nothing but take away from any rational criticism that could be given to the artist. I sincerely hope for his safety and peace of mind.

That said there are a number of things in the artist’s arguments that appear to me to be flawed. Foremost is his comparison of his art concept with several modern social realities and some art history, as a way of justifying the morality and compassion of his concept.

One of these arguments is that modern entertainment, especially television, regularly portrays death in a degrading way. Well, he will get no argument from me that television is often debasing of its subject matter. However, using this as an argument to validate his motivations or methods as moral and compassionate is highly suspect. This is moral relativism. The unethical, immoral, or distasteful actions of others does not make my actions moral (or immoral, as matter of fact), anymore than Mr. Schneider’s being German makes me an American.

Mr. Schneider’s argument from art history is that, “Michelangelo used to cut up dead people to study their anatomy. Is that not much more shocking than what I am proposing to do?” * Well, obviously, Michelangelo’s subjects were already dead, and were not subject to public scrutiny while he made his studies (that being due more to his fear of the Catholic Church’s authorities than of any moral rectitude on his part). But even in later years, where such dissections were done as a matter of public viewing, it still remains that the subject’s actual passing was not the part on display. The artist's argument would have made more sense had he compared it to public hangings, seen as entertainment by the masses in days gone by. However, I don’t think that comparison would have the effect he hopes.

Mr. Schneider states that, “…I am not proposing that I would bring about someone’s death, or stage it.” ** Or that he would encourage suicide. I believe him. This does leave a scheduling problem. If the point of the exhibit is to show death as a positive experience, then the natural death would have to occur during the operating hours of the museum or gallery, hardly something you could plan out. Would this then mean that the exhibition was a failure, or that the patrons and visitors should get their ticket money back? My understanding of most municipal health code regulations is that leaving a freshly dead and untreated human body lying about in your home or place of business is out of the question. (Heck, I’m not even allowed to bury my cat in the backyard.) This would seem to be a major operational flaw.

Another argument for the moral standing of Md. Schneider’s proposal is that many people die in bleak environments, separated from loved ones and any support. “These days, many die in hospitals, locked away from the public,” and, “Shouldn’t this last journey be the most intimate and personal journey in a person’s life?” *** He is arguing two opposing points here. In one, the public is not allowed to see death (suggesting that the artist believes it should be so allowed), in the other, death should be personal. His proposed art installation would certainly be public. The very act of displaying someone’s death in a gallery environment would remove any vestige of the intimate or personal for the subject. He also complains of the regulations and rules surrounding burial, saying, “In my view, the dying should be able to define the rituals and sites of their funeral themselves.” † But where would this lead? Is the artist then suggesting the possible return of Suttee?

A further justification provided is the support Mr. Schneider has received from a priest. Unfortunately, history shows that the approval of a religious leader is no guarantee of moral strength or purity. (Meaning no disrespect to the gentleman mentioned, who I do not know.)

Finally, I will quote Mr. Schneider one last time. “My feeling is that the church used to provide us with rituals and ceremonies appropriate for death, but in a secular age, don’t we need to create our own?” In a way, this is the whole of the resistance that Mr. Schneider has found himself facing. The lack of a moral framework leaves no standard for decency or any idea of what actually constitutes respect.

This art concept (as a public display) and the arguments underlying it, exemplifies the muddy, self-justifying and often self-centered thinking behind much of the Arts today. In my opinion, such is the result of the amoral atmosphere that exists in the modern Humanities.


Notes

* ”There is nothing perverse about a dying person in an art gallery” Gregor Schneider, The Guardian, Saturday April 26, 2008

** ibid,

*** ibid,

† ibid,

(Editing note, corrected paragraph eight, where I mistyped "we" for "he." The pronoun has been corrected)

Comparative Myths

Assistant Village Idiot has an excellent and pithy post on the different myths our society argues about, and their comparative impact.

A good quick morning read, go and enjoy.

Another New Sketch



the Burden of the Prophets, Modern Theology Series
Watercolor on Paper, 8x10 inches © 2008 MJAndrade

Modern Theology, its critique and its results are turning out to be a fertile ground for painting concepts.

More on this as it comes...

The Library of the Mind


The repository that is the human mind is an amazing thing.


”Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images, that have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations” Reynolds, Discourse II


Our house is full of books. My studio is full of knickknacks. Both overflow so much that many of these things have been packed up into boxes in the attic, for lack of shelf space. Currently I am re-reading The Divine Comedy (Great Books series, Britannica), and reading for the first time Philosophy and Civilization of the Middle Ages (Maurice DeWulf, Dover Publishing) and Against the Idols of the Age (David Stove, Transaction Publishers, Edited by Roger Kimball). Among the books that I continually reference, just for the joy of the images, are The Prisons (Le Carceri) by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (out of print), Great Medieval Churches and Cathedrals of Europe (Jules Gailhabaud), Medieval Ornament (Karl Alexander von Heideloff) Sturgis’ Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture and Building (Sturgis et al. in three volumes, all these previously by Dover Publications), The Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration (J.G. Heck, Park Lane publishing, out of print) and various atlases, current, historical or antique.


A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. Luke 6:45


Please don’t get me wrong, I am neither a gifted scholar, nor even a particularly swift reader. Just given a choice between reading a book, and just about anything else, you will find me reading the book. In only the last couple of years I have read about church history, Winston Churchill, the expansion of European maritime empires, the Black Plague, the history of superstition, hieroglyphs, numerous artists, Africa, colonial era tools, the history of church vestments, the symbolic origins of the maze, theories on the inequalities in technology and material wealth between continents, the Black Plague, the condition of the environment, the Lord of the Rings and the life of its author, illuminated manuscripts, the Black Plague, pirates, oh… and did I mention the Black Plaque?

On top of all this, I spend inordinate amounts of time searching the Internet for images and information as references for my art, or simply for the joy of reading about one more thing.


”I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.” Confucius


Every artist I have ever known has their own fascinating history of exploration, reading, scholarship, apprenticeship, collaborations, in short, their own personal library of experience that they can then draw on as they create. Of course, the same principle holds true for any profession. The CPA and the plumber, the mechanic and business manager all must train and thoroughly understand their work. As an artist I have a freedom of exploration that I didn’t have when I worked in the corporate world, as I am unfettered by the necessities of keeping up with a single area of expertise. However, I have to say that I can’t hold a candle to the more brilliant people of my acquaintance, attorneys, psychologists, teachers, salesmen and others, in the scope and breadth of their intellectual seeking. Add to that the experience and wisdom of years (which I can’t yet lay claim to, if I will ever be so able) and the collected memories of an individual become a one-of-a-kind museum, never to be duplicated.


”From the age of six I could draw forms and objects. By 50 I had turned out an infinite number of drawings. But I am not happy about anything I did before 70. Only at 73 did I begin to understand the true form and nature of birds, fish and plants. By 80 I had made a lot of progress. At 90 I will begin to get to the root of it all. By 100 I will have reached a Superior State in art, undefinable, and by 110, every dot and line will be living.” Hokusai, (the 19th century originator of Japanese landscape painting, at age 83)


And so, we have here the joy of knowledge, the adventure of seeking, the amazement of the arcane an unusual, and it all becomes wrapped up and stored inside our own heads. Go to the museum, and dwell upon that painting. Sit back and close your eyes as you escape into that symphony. Seek out and dwell in the stories of your ancestors. Open a book and sit at the feet of the wisest who have walked the world. Build up the Cabinet of Curiosities that is within you.


"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." Winston Churchill

Friday Free Ad for Kate


For all those with a sense of entitlement....

"Some say that knowledge is something sat in your lap.
Some say that knowledge is ho-ho-ho-ho.

I want to be a lawyer.
I want to be a scholar.
But I really can't be bothered.
Ooh, just gimme it quick, gimme it, gimme gimme gimme gimme!

Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that heaven is hell.
Some say that hell is heaven.

I must admit, just when I think I'm king,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think I'm king, I must admit,
(I just begin.)
Just when I think everything's going great,
(I just begin,)
Hey, I get the break,
Hey, I'm gonna take it all--
(I just begin.)
When I'm king--
(-- just begin.)

In my dome of ivory,
A home of activity,
I want the answers quickly,
But I don't have no energy. "

(UPDATE: original video was removed from the web, it's been replaced by one from YouTube.)

'NETFEED/ART: Artistic Suicide Challenge
(visual: Bigger X at Toronto arraignment)
VO: A guerrilla artist known only as No-1 has challenged the better-known forced involvement artist Bigger X to a suicide competition. No-1’s broadside against Bigger X, which calls him a “poseur” because “he only works with other people’s deaths,” suggests a suicide competition between the two artists, to be broadcast live by “artOWNartWONartNOW.” The one with the most artistically interesting suicide would be judged the winner, even though he or she would not be around to collect the prize. Bigger X, who is wanted by the police for questioning in a Philadelphia bombing, has not been available for comment, but ZZZCrax of “artOWNartWONartNOW” called it “an intriguing story.” '

[Fictional news blurb from the beginning of chapter 21 of “Mountain of Black Glass” copyright 1999, by Tad Williams (Volume Three of “Otherland”, a four volume SciFi novel).]

There has been a lot of commentary about the Aliza Shvarts/Yale Shock Art Thesis incident. Roger Kimball has an essay well worth reading, Yale, Abortion, and the Limits of Art. There is another piece at The American Digest. The Volokh Conspiracy has an excellent post on Yale's attempt to close the barn door after the horse left.

One thing in the comments section on that last really struck me. "Dre", responding to an earlier commenter, posted the following;

"I think this Yale thing is terrific. The artist's work has provoked wild-ass reactions all over the place, just as much of our art must do. "

It is only a short distance to this:

Karlheinz Stockhausen on the 9/11 attacks: “What happened there is—they all have to rearrange their brains now—is the greatest work of art ever. . . That characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of, that people practice madly for 10 years, completely, fanatically, for a concert and then died. That is the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos. . . I could not do that. Against that, we composers are nothing.”
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number14/Minor.htm "

The passage at the top of this post is from a science fiction book written in 1999, but is a follow-up on a passage in an earlier volume of the series (I think volume one, [I'm not sure, I lent it out] City of Golden Shadow released in hardback in 1996) where Bigger X causes a car wreck with fatalities as a type of "forced involvement" performance art. This fiction predates the Stockhausen quote by at least five years.

The nihilistic direction of modern performance art (and the avant guard in general) has been easy to predict for a long time. That knowledge has in fact been a part of the popular culture.

Too bad that the artists haven't noticed it. It tends to put the lie to their "groundbreaking" and "transgressiveness" if everyone can see it coming.

Keep the Christ in Christmas...
...but take Him out of Easter

Apparently the story of Easter is too brutal to teach in Sunday School.



Well, for those of you who actually want to believe in something,

Happy Easter


And may you have the time to quietly contemplate the true meaning of sacrifice.

Saddam Supported At Least Two Al-Qaeda Groups: Pentagon Report

When the mainstream media reported earlier that "Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and Al Qaeda" were they reading the same Pentagon report as everyone else?


How can you tell when a Network News reporter is lying? Their lips are moving.

Another of the Infinite Number of Reasons Why We Home-School

Student Suspended For Buying Skittles In School

Lets think about this... we'll ruin the school record of a kid, who looks to be pretty bright (honor student, class vice president), negatively impact his chances of getting into top colleges (maybe even impact his chances of getting scholarships), thus potentially lessening his potential career options and/or earning potential...

...all for a bag of skittles.

You know, I don't like Tort lawyers, they're pretty much all vultures and ambulance chasers in my book. But if somebody puts together a class action suit against all these draconian, zero-tolerance, all-kids-must-be-punished bureaucrats, I will stand up and cheer!

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Winston Churchill

If It Hasn't Got A Tail It's Not A Monkey*


Two interesting essays on the conundrum that is Evolutionary Theory.

First, from Lee Harris at TCS Daily, Why We Are Still Arguing About Darwin

And from New Wineskins, The Myth of Time + Chance = Mankind


Both pose interesting observations about the Theory of Evolution. Excellent quotes, "Thou shalt not act like a monkey—this is the essence of all the higher religions, and the summation of all ethical systems." from the first essay.

And What’s glossed over in that budding scientific understanding of complex and self-organizing systems, fractals, chaos theory and the like is whether all types of ordered complexity can be created this way. from the second.


Personally, the issue is a non-starter for me. If you really believe in a Sovereign God, then that God is sovereign over all things, and questioning his methods is an exercise in hubris. You weren't there, so claiming one method over another as correct is silly. I am not smart enough to tell God what to do, especially in retrospect.

Besides, if you really are tied to a literal reading of the first two chapters of Genesis, then the "lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night,... [that] serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years..." were made on the fourth day. If the Sun was not made till the fourth day, then a literal reading of Genesis precludes the creation happening in seven 24 hour periods, because there was no 24 hour day before the "fourth day".

To stake all faith on the ability to precisely understand one small passage is counter-productive. If you perfectly understood everything, you wouldn't need faith.


* with apologies to VeggieTales (click the middle title, "Monkey")

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

Charles Johnson put up a quote of Euripides last night, Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

That quote put me in mind of two verses from the Book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 26:4-5

4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.

5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.

This is as close as the Bible comes to saying that, in dealing with the folly of men, there are indeed "No-Win" situations.

I am tempted to make snarky remarks about politics, but I will refrain.... (No you didn't! ed.)

Best Public Service Announcement You'll See Today

Kim du Toit posts today's must read.

And there is nothing I can add to that, except maybe, say "Thank you."

Hmmm....

Some guy with mental problems walks into a Hillary campaign office and makes a bomb threat. Hillary bugs the authorities on the phone till the situation wraps up, then makes a press conference.

This makes her look "Presidential."

Some guy speeding in a tanker truck flips over at 1:30 or so in the morning, igniting a neighborhood in Everett Massachusetts. Three multi-family homes are lost, dozens of cars go up in flames, a home for the elderly is evacuated. A lot of people got out with just their pajamas. The next day, as they are preparing to tear down two of the buildings, which the fire made structurally unsound, and one of the residents tells one of the emergency workers that he had ten grand in his freezer. Said emergency worker walks into the unsafe building, finds the mans cash, and gives it to him.

His name isn't even mentioned by the reporter.

What's wrong with this picture?

Following up on a post at New Wineskins I took a web-based 'Spiritual Type Test'.

I came out as a Mystic.


No surprises there, I suppose.

The first thing I look for when considering a new home is the existence of home owners associations and historic districts.

This is why.

My wife and I want to get out of the People's Republic of Kennedy-Kerry-Catsup.
Badly.
Communities that prevent me from doing reasonable improvements to a house WILL NOT GET MY TAX DOLLARS OR INVESTMENT.


Sorry to shout....

I grew up in a 250 year old post and beam New England farmhouse. In order to heat it (in the middle of the woods with no winter road access for at least a half a mile) my dad used coal and wood. I love old houses, and if I get to buy one, my hope is to return it to its original glory in as practical a manner as possible. 17th or 18th century drafts and entrances for mice and other vermin, as well as smoke and soot belching heating systems are right out.

I'm sorry. If you want to legislate moral behavior, you gotta choose between saving the world from pollution and anthropogenic global warming or keeping your neighborhood a perfect example of 18th century building techniques. You're not going to get both.

Many zoning regulations end up being anti-home owner. You add "historic preservation" and homeowners associations on top of that, and you have (a not very) soft totalitarianism.

No, I don't want a strip mall or a strip joint right next to my house. I don't blame anyone for fighting those in an established residential only neighborhood.

However, I don't want drafty windows and the constant smell of burning oil or sulfur either.



Somebody go out and slap these people, please!

An excellent reply to the hand wringing healthscare socialists.

Filmmaker Stuart Brown provides real information behind the scare-statistics used in the healthcare debate. Clip here.

Via the ever popular Dr. Helen