Tag Archives: Gustave Courbet

three way street: la “swell” province

A three-way street is how the Quebec election finished showcasing the strengths and pitfalls of third parties and fairly vigorous identification with the democratic process. All three top finishers, who had a near even separation of popular vote, are going … Continue reading

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the importance of bad art

Bohemia is beyond saving. The lesson being that a basically worthless and mediocre piece of literature can achieve more ill than a good book can ever achieve good. It is a paradox; and there is little power in the art … Continue reading

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saving bohemia from the yuppies

Its too late to save Bohemia.Perhaps a worthless book can achieve more ill than a good book can ever achieve good. At any rate it is upon this seeming paradox that it is worth dwelling on, in the effort to … Continue reading

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grotto of iniquity

The end of the innocence. Monotheism completely changed the aesthetics of the Roman Empire and art in general. Tiberius was at the cusp of those changes, but even he could not foresee its impact… It began as a construction project … Continue reading

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goncourt recollections

…As it turned out, however, it was none of these things that rescued the Goncourts from “oblivion.” It was, rather, their Journals — the scandalous, vain, vengeful, brutally honest diaries in which the two brothers, and then Edmond alone, wrote … Continue reading

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goncourt: red-hot scalpel

The bothers Goncourt, Edmond and Jules, were nobly born. They were rich. But they had the misfortune to be intelligent. Therefore, they were unhappy. They wanted to be famous; they longed to be eminent authors, princes in the realm of … Continue reading

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modernism: press the refresh button

Modernism as a ready made. The break with the past; the discarding of tradition. The shock of the new. Modernism struck at the heart of the conventional wisdom in the arts which meant that an aesthetic of plot, dramatic incident … Continue reading

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couch sweet potatoes

Two undraped ladies; each with troubles enough of their own. Not only look-alikes but contemporaries, each of them took a prominent part in a minor revolution. Adah Menken was a kind of nineteenth-century Marilyn Monroe, and like her a peripheral … Continue reading

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proceeding by learned recollection

Finding the point at which the same and the other are indiscernible. It is where the center of thought is a blurry area characterized by discontinuity where Marcel Duchamp said the impersonality of artistic action can affirm itself. The ready … Continue reading

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two faced value

Threatening complacency and self-satisfaction. Wallowing in the glory of inertia. Taking a pass on disturbing entrenched assumptions. By extension, not resisting to conformity means a negation of what is regarded as the uncannily human, meaning one ventures onto the slippery … Continue reading

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