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Apologies for the lateness, the morning was given over to putting up a new kitchen ceiling at an apartment (obviously, no internet... )

Oh England, My Lion Heart - Tour of Life 1979


I remember reading somewhere than Lionheart was the artist's personal favorite...

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Eat the Music



From "the Line, the Cross, and the Curve" (album, the Red Shoes), so the first bit is a little surreal, but then again, it's Kate, so that's redundant...

The day after Thanksgiving, what could be better than people dancing in fruit?

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King of the Mountain

To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape

Through March 1, 2009 at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Massachusetts



Aurora Borealis, 1865, Frederic Edwin Church, 56 x 83½ inches, oil on canvas

Capturing the high drama and stark beauty of historic polar expeditions, To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape presents more than 50 works by prominent artist-explorers, from monumental romantic canvases to early modernist works in pastel — all rarely shown in a single exhibition. The exhibition offers a range of artistic responses to the unique landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic — from the documentary to the sublime and existential, by renowned painters such as Frederic Edwin Church, Rockwell Kent and Lawren Harris.

(from the PEM website)


My Wife and I had the opportunity to go to the opening of the new exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum, entitled “To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape. I’ve posted on things related to exhibits at PEM before, and it is always a joy to go there. This new exhibit is no exception. I believe this is the largest exhibit ever to focus on Polar landscapes in art. The works, covering a century of exploration and styles in painting are really remarkable. For those (like me) who collect exhibition books or catalogues, the companion book is not only complete with all of the exhibited paintings, but is excellently done and inexpensive. (Though those, again like myself, who have an eye for a more permanent personal library, may wish for a hardback version).

The larger works follow the grand scenic painting styles of the nineteenth century. As such, if you are not familiar with early modernist painting, the transition to the twentieth century works can be anticlimactic. I would strongly suggest perusing the numerous books on the topic that the PEM has at the bookstore, and will probably have strewn around the seating areas throughout the exhibit (not there for the opening, but usually feature at past exhibits). Especially look to materials on Rockwell Kent. There was a special film shown on Kent at the opening, which is not listed on the website, but if it is available I highly recommend it. These materials will help the viewer understand the stylistic transitions, and to see the change in the early twentieth century where artists began to represent these regions in their inherent drama and beauty, and not as a backdrop for human adventure. With the big dramatic canvases, it would also be easy to overlook the various notebook sketches and smaller works. Take the time to dwell over these, as they are absolutely marvelous. I was especially drawn to the pastels of David Abbey Paige (1901-1979) in which he recorded many different atmospheric phenomena.

The PEM posts a PDF file for printout with information on the works, a list of references, and brief biographies of the artists and explorers, which would make a handy pre-visit read.

If you are in Eastern Massachusetts between now and 1 March 2009, To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape would make for an excellent excursion.

For additional information, see the Press release.


(links good at time of post) UPDATE: bad link coding fixed (my bad)

The Glorious Return of -- Friday Free Ad for Kate

Sensual World

This Is Why You Should Curb Your Dog

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Wuthering Heights, classic very early Kate.

Warning, the big eyes and mascara may take a bit of getting used too.

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)

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Kate covering Rocketman

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.

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Them Heavy People from a 1979 Christmas Special

Friday Free Ad for Kate (a little late in the day)



Hounds of Love from the album of the same name.

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.

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OK, it's been an extra slow week on the blog. I've been trying to get stuff done in the studio. More on that later... now here's Lily from the Red Shoes




And if you want more in the way of bloggy goodness, take a look at all the links in David Thompson's regular Friday Ephemera, including a link from The Thin Man for some Kraftwerk

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Love & Anger

UPDATE

David Thompson links to this incredible piece, LA to NY compressed into 4 minutes!

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)

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Kate and David Gilmour, live, 18 January 2002, Royal Festival Hall, London -- Comfortably Numb. I didn't know she had ever done anything with Gilmour... quality isn't so hot, but... just wow, what a concept.

With extra bonus, "God Bless the Child" from Blood, Sweat & Tears.



Two great British artists, and a band named from a famous Churchill speech. (ok, that's a stretch to relate the two, ed.)

Roman Funerary Art at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston

FUNERARY PORTRAIT RELIEFS

During the late Republican and Augustan periods (about 70 B.C.-A.D. 14), funerary reliefs with portraits of the deceased and members of their families were popular. Almost without exception the portraits are of freed slaves (liberti) and their offspring. The portraits are frequently accompanied by inscriptions that indicate the professions and family relationships of the people in the relief. Occasionally, a slave's former owner was also shown. The reliefs were inserted into the tombs that lined the roads leading out of Rome. This use of funerary portrait reliefs saw a resurgence in the second century A.D.
(from the display card for Funerary Relief of the Publius Gessius Family)

The MFA has many wonderful Roman antiquities. Here are some of the Funerary Portraits, Cinerary Urns, and Sarcophagi that they display.

long post, with complete transcribed display information, just keep scrolling





Funerary Relief of a Mother and Son
Roman, Imperial period, about A.D. 110-120
Marble

This panel came from a tomb that, as the inscription records, Petronia Hedone made for herself and her son as well as her fredd slaves and their descendants. The resemblance of Petronia's hair to that of Martiana (died A.D. 112), Emperor Trajan's sister, suggests the relief's date, though the use of drilled holes for the pupils of the eyes rarely occurs before the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138).

Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 1899 99.348

Inscription
Petronia Hedone fecit sibi/et L(ucio) Petronio Philemoni filio/et libertis libertabusquae/posterisquae eorum

Petronia Hedone made [this] for herself and for Lucius Petronius Philemon, her son, and for [her] freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants





Sarcophagus with Triumph of Dionysus
Marble (from the island of Proconnesus, Turkey)

Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, was the god of wine and drama. He is one of the most frequently depicted gods in ancient art and is often shown in the company of mythological beings like satyrs, silens, and maenads as well as such animals as lions, panthers, and snakes. The inclusion of an elephant-drawn chariot and a giraffe in the procession identify the scene as the god's triumphal return from spreading his cult to India. Dionysiac imagery frequently occurs in Roman funerary art, and may reflect the beliefs of the deceased.

William Francis Warden Fund, 1972 1972.650







Funerary Relief of the Publius Gessius Family
Roman, late Republican period, about 50-20 B.C.
Marble (probably from Carrara, Italy)

The Latin inscription at the base identifies the central figure as Publius Gessius, a Roman citizen in military costume. He is flanked by Fausta Gessia, a slave whom he had freed, and by their son, R. Gessius Primus, also a freed slave. The inscriptions on the sides indicate that Fausta built the tomb that held this relief with money provided in Primus's will, a common practice in antiquity.

Archibald Cary Coolidge Fund, 1937 37.100

Inscriptions
Lower Edge:
Gessia P(ubli) l(iberta) Fausta/P(ublius) Gessius P(ubli) f(ilius) (tribu) Rom(ilia)/P(ublius) Gessius P(ubli) l(ibertus) Primus

Gessia Fausta, freedwoman of Publius/Publius Gessius, son of Publius, of the Romilian tribe/Publius gessius Primus, freedman of Publius

Left:
ex testam[ento]/P(ubli) Gessi P(ubli) l(iberti)/Primi

From the testament of Publius Gessius Primus, freedman of Publius

Right:
Arbi(tratu)/Gessia[e P(ubli) l(ibertae)]/Fausta[e]

Under the direction of Gessia Fausta, freedwoman of Publius




Cinerary Urn with Offering Scene
Roman, Imperial period, about A.D. 150
Marble (from the island of Proconnesus, Turkey)

In this scene of piety, a man pours an offering of wine over an altar while a woman raises her hands in prayer. A flute player provides music, a frequent component of ancient sacrifices. The side panels show the eagle of Jupiter and the peacock of Juno, each holding a victory wreath. Cinerary urns and sacrophagi were usually produced in workshops near quarries and shipped to urban centers of sale. The faces of this couple were prepared for portraits that were never carved, perhaps due to a sudden death and the need to use the urn immediately.

Museum purchase with funds donated in memory of Emily Townsend Vermeule, 2002 2002.25
(from the display card)




Cinerary Urn of L. Cassius Colonus Colonianus
Roman, late imperial period, about A.D. 200
Marble (from the Greek island of Thasos)

This urn held the ashes of Lucius Cassius Colonus Colonianus, a member of the social class known as the equites (roughly "knights"). The urn is densely covered with figures representing the death of Pentheus, king of Thebes, a story known from Euripides's play 'The Bacchae'. Pentheus opposed the presence of Dionysus in his city and spied upon the women celebrating the god's rites. This scene shows the play's climax, when the women of Thebes, driven into the ecstatic state associated with the worship of Dionysus, tear Pentheus apart. Dionysus, standing on the left, witnesses this scene, accompanied by his thiasos (entourage) of satyrs, silens, and maenads.

Benjamin and Lucy Rowland Fund, 1972 1972.356

Inscription
D(is) M(anibus) L(uci) Cassi Coloni Coloniani eq(uitis) R(omani)/vixit ann(is) XXXV
To the spirits of the dead of Lucius Cassius Colonus Colonianus, a Roman eques; he lived thirty-five years.

That Potter Kid and the Time Waster of Cosmic Hilarity





I've been meaning to post about Sluggy Freelance and the very funny series of lampoons upon the Harry Potter series that Pete Abrams has done. Well worth your time, if you have time to waste, or need a laugh. CLICK HERE and scroll to the bottom for links to the first three parodies (or check out any of the other plot threads on the page). If you wish to continue after that, the most recent parody begins here. You can also click on the Main Page and scroll down for a news blurb and explanation of the series (but as that is a dated news posting, without a direct link, it will eventually go away).

Go have fun!

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King of the Mountain from her latest album Aerial

Aerial is a good album, not her top (which would be the Sensual World in my opinion) but well worth getting, if you like Kate.