Monthly Archives: February 2010

VENETIAN MASKS & DIONYSIAN AMBIVALENCE

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Dave

”An additional street sign reference to an ancient God is the word EROS, written in red neon across the street as Bill is buying entry into Milich’s costume shop. Eros is no less than the Greek god of lust, love … Continue reading →

Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged A Clockwork Orange, Death In Venice, Dionysus, Eyes Wide Shut, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jamie Stuart, Luchino Visconti, Nicole Kidman, Nietzche, Richard Wagner, Stanley Kubrick, Steve Gink, Thomas Mann, Tim Kreider, Tom Cruise, Venetian Masks | Leave a comment

STREET ART DOWN PAVEMENT LESS TRAVELED

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Dave

Jean Dubuffet ( 1901-1985 ) was one of the few artists devoted to ”keeping it real” and this involved a deliberately anti-psychological and anti-personal approach to art.All of his work stands aesthetically somewhere between the beautiful and the awkward, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. | Tagged Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, Claes Oldenburg, Dubuffet, French Pop Art, Frieze magazine, Gary Panter, Gaugin, Jean Dubuffet, Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Maurice de Vlaminck, Mike Kelley, pop art, Robert Rauschenberg, Sophie Berrebi, Van Gogh | 2 Comments

AN EMPHASIS ON MORAL AMBIGUITY

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Dave

Eugene Delacroix characterized Jacques Louis David as the founding father of the modern school of art. His challenging of established aesthetic vision, bold experiments in subject and style, and at the end of his career, mythological compositions that explore complex … Continue reading →

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. | Tagged Charles-Michel Trudaine, David, Eugene Delacroix, French Painting, Jacques-Louis David, Maximilien Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Robespierre, The Oath of the Horatii, The Sabines, Walter Benjamin | 2 Comments

PAINTING ON THIN ICE

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Dave

During the century that followed Jacques Louis David’s death, three forces struggled for position in French art; classicism, romanticism, and realism. But their initial struggle took place in the art of David. His heroic style, suppressing passion beneath a hard … Continue reading →

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. | Tagged Charlotte Corday, Condorcet, French Revolution, Jacobin Terror, Jacques-Louis David, Jean jaques Rousseau, Louis XVI, Marquis de Condorcet, Maximilien Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Oath of the Horatii, Poussin, Robespierre | 6 Comments

TORMENTED FROM WITHIN & WITHOUT

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Dave

It was a turning of the tables and an example of fate changing quickly and hinging on a bureaucratic judgement. Emil Nolde ( 1846-1956 ) was an anti-semite and German jingoist. By an ironic turn of history, he got what … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. | Tagged Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, German Expressionism, Hitler Degenerate Art, modern german art | 2 Comments

HELL BOUND ON A SHIP OF FOOLS

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Dave

Hell, the devils and the torments of the damned. From fire and brimstone Christianity, to the murky byways of Judaism’s deepest recesses, the horrifying separation of moral wheat from the chaff and the swift descent into hell have always been … Continue reading →

Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc. | Tagged Dante Alighieri, Faust, Felix Nussbaum, Francisco Goya, Goethe, Gustave Dore, Hannah Arendt, Hieronymous Bosch, Jerome Kohn, Mad Maggie, Michael Pacher, Paul Chenavard, Pieter Bruegel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Theodor Adorno | 2 Comments

APOLLONIAN TWANG

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Dave

The guitar has never had it so ubiquitous. In its Iberian heydey when, after a battle between Spaniards and Portuguese, the losing army took to the hills, and left, it was said 11,000 guitars upon the battlefield. In the process … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft, Music/Composition/Performance | Tagged Andres Segovia, Apollo, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Django Reinhardt, Fernando Sor, Greek God Apollo, Huddy Ledbetter, Keats, Mauro Giuliani, Niccolo Paganini, Paco El Barbero, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie | 1 Comment

RECURRENCE OF AN IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Dave

Its the presence of the body in a state of decomposition, as locale of transgression that places the tropical tragedy of Haiti at the center of an imaginary contemporary world; marked by its upright and righteous treatment of the human … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous, Modern Arts/Craft | Tagged Felix Guattari, Friedrich Nietzsche, G. Plaisimond, Gerard Valcin, Gilles Deleuze, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Harold St Jean, Joel des Rosiers, Le Devoir, Montas Antoine, Pat Robertson, Suzana Milevka, Wilson Bigaud | Leave a comment

THOSE ELUSIVE WHITE TIGERS

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Dave

” Oh East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…” he wrote. ” But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed nor Birth,/When two strong men stand face to face”. The famous phrase … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Article, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous | Tagged Cecil Rhodes, Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry James, J.G. Riewald, Mark Twain, Max Beerbohm, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Brittan, The Jungle Book, William Strang | 6 Comments

A PIED PIETER OF THE LESS DROLL

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Dave

In Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s picturizations of proverbs and parables, the Netherlandish peasant is employed only as a pantominist, but in the paintings of peasant life he comes into his own as Bruegel’s symbol of significant man. People who are … Continue reading →