Eye & Mind

Kahnweiler, Kant and Kubismus (KKK?)

2009-08-22T14:50:00.002-04:00

Working on a little essay to post here. In the meantime, here's a little quote from Kahnweiler's, Der Weg zum Kubismus [translated as The Rise of Cubism] (1920) to whet your appetites:

"At this point, Braque's introduction of undistorted real objects into the painting takes on its full significance. When 'real details' are thus introduced the result is a stimulus which carries with it memory images. Combing 'real' stimulus and the scheme of forms, these images construct the finished object in the mind. Thus the desired physical representation comes into being in the spectator's mind....

"This new language has given painting an unprecedented freedom. It is no longer bound to the more or less verisimilar optic image which describes the object from a single viewpoint....

"Our a priori knowledge of [geometric] forms is the necessary condition, without which there would be no seeing, no world of objects.... Humanity is possessed not only by the longing for these lines and forms, but also by the ability to create them."

Writing and not writing

2009-08-21T11:29:00.006-04:00

I have a paper to write. A big paper. An important paper. Actually, I have severals of these, all due in short order. I am procrastinating the writing of them. I dread writing them. So naturally, it is time to go to the library to gather more research. This is actually necessary... I think. But is doing more research and reading an excuse to avoid the pain of writing? And why is writing painful? Because it forces us to be exact, to pin ourselves down, to commit? And in the end, what is the goal of writing? Who benefits from writing? Is it primarily the writer, as either an act of either intellectual rigor and personal growth or confessional purgation? Or is it for the reader who can cannibalize the writer's knowledge or voyeuristically feed on his or her life? But already this veers towards the turgid, and away from the polished exterior of the ideal self-presentation of writing.

A Map of Art History

2006-06-28T17:21:00.000-04:00

The most recent issue of Drawing Magazine has published "The Flowering Staircase: 1435-1935," a genealogical chart of artists from Michelangelo to Thomas Eakins and Robert Henri. Somehow they bothered to list Norman Rockwell and Howard Pyle (illustrators), while Picasso is palpably omitted. Obvious biases aside, it has some value for the student of art history.

(Here's the link to the author of the Staircase.)

"Art is whatever the artist says it is" and other quotable quotes

2006-04-03T09:53:00.000-04:00

After discovering that I have this blog, a friend of mine Googled me last night in order to find its URL, which of course, was not possible since my full name does not appear here. However, he did find the MySpace page of one of my former students, who, surprisingly enough, actually took notes on the things I said in class, and then posted the pithy bits to her blog. As it turns out, I think that they are both funny and pointed. If you follow the link, I recommend first muting your speakers so as not to be subjected to the horrible rock 'n' roll music that she has blaring on her page. You'll also need to scroll down a bit. My quotes are on the right-hand side. And, by the way, I don't condone any of the other content on her site. Here they are.

2006-04-03T09:45:00.000-04:00

And in the "art" vein, this:

[Thomas] Kinkade testified in a deposition that excessive drinking and "some normal rowdy talk" had taken place, but he denied touching the woman. "But you've got to remember," he said, "I'm the idol to these women who are there." In the recent arbitration case, he also testified that he had never claimed to be perfect.

Via Amy Welborn.

Color Theory and Perception

2006-03-14T16:29:00.000-05:00

Go to the Apple web site to see this interesting little video that explains some of the more basic aspects of color and perception theory. I guess most everyone is probably familiar with this stuff by now, but it never fails to fascinate me.

Incidentally, a more detailed—but equally accessible to the layman—discussion of these things can be found in this book by Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone, titled Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. I came across this book half on accident the other day in the library while doing some research for my prof on a tangentially related subject and have been pretty absorbed by it ever since. It's really a useful book for just about anyone who is interested in art or design on some sort of practical level. I remembered that I heard an interview with her a couple of years ago on NPR discussing her ideas, which you can listen to here.

There are some problems with Livingstone's ideas. She is a neurobiologist afterall and not an artist or art historian, but still there are certain mechanisms of vision which relate to the visual arts, and which are about as close to being as objective about art as you can possibly be. For instance, her statement that artists are people with poor stereopsis (ability to perceive three dimenions) and this enables them to create convincing perspectives is really stupid, but then again, as someone who has never been able to "get" one of those Magic Eye pictures, there may be some truth to it.

Cézanne in Provence

2006-01-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen From Bibémus, 1897, by Paul Cézanne

The art Cézanne made in Provence, especially his last convulsive images of Mont Sainte-Victoire, ultimately shook painting to its core. It effectively destabilized centuries of representation to reach a deeper, fuller, nearly hallucinatory kind of realism. In the early 1900's, when Cézanne's paintings began to be known to younger artists like Braque, Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian, these works provided the foundations for Cubism and the multiple strands of early Modernism.

So writes critic Roberta Smith in the New York Times in her exceptionally cogent review of the exhibition "Cézanne in Provence" opening January 29 at the National Gallery of Art.

It was the landscape of Provence, more than anything else, that pushed Cézanne to make his particular changes. It prodded him to unhinge painting from conventional representation, to create breathing space between his brushstrokes and what they described. The proof is in the making. He brought a new equilibrium to painting's essential trifecta — the act of seeing, the psychic and physical process of painting, and the finished work — that gives the medium its novelistic richness and, even now, its firm grip on the imagination.

It is interesting to consider that although many of the artists that were affected by Cézanne's painting at the beginning of the twentieth century were political radicals who desired to overthrow the established institutions of Church and State and wanted a "modern" art that, in its rupture with the past, would express this radical agenda, Cézanne was conservative in his beliefs and a devout Catholic. Although it also happens, as his dealer Amrbroise Vollard tells us, that when the light was good for painting on Sundays "the curate had to get along without Cézanne."

I hope that everyone will make the effort to get to the exhibition. It should be more than worth it.

While you're there, be sure not to miss the exhibition of sculptures on tour from the Orasanmichele by Ghiberti, Nano di Banco and Verrochio, a rare opportunity to see monumental Florentine sculpture in the U.S.

Ora et Labora

2006-01-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

The painter Balthus at work

With apologies to WB+, I have borrowed the title of one of his recent posts, because in part, Whitehall has been the impetus for this post. (Be sure to read his follow-up post, too.)

The notions of Ora (Prayer) and Labora (Work) have been very much on my mind lately, not least because I have been laboring in many areas lately toward many, but overlapping, ends. On the one hand, there is the on-going struggle to finish my M.A. thesis. Then there are my classes, my research assistantship, some service work for the university, my catechism class, dabbling with my paints, and lastly, this blog. And at the same time, I have endeavored to implement a greater degree of discipline in my prayer life, to which end The Garden of the Soul has been most helpful.

But they have also been on my mind because I have turned to painting icons, which being both paintings and devotional aids seem to be the epitome of ora et labora. I recently hunted up a quote by one of my all-time favorite artists, and devote Catholic, Balthasar Klossowski, known as Balthus. In his memoir, Balthus says,

I always begin a painting with a prayer, a ritual act that gives me a means to get across, to transcend myself. I firmly believe that painting is a way of prayer, a means of access to God.

Sometimes I've been reduced to tears, facing the challenges of a painting. Then I hear a godly voice speaking to me from within: "Hold on, resist!" It's a certain kind of grace, as in the libretto of Mozart's Magic Flute. These words, whenever I hear them, make me continue with my work. Follow the path until life is over.

What Balthus points out to us is not merely that the activity of painting can be an act of prayer. He also points us back to the divide that exists between the artist's intentions and the realization of the same. The work is a struggle towards an unattainable perfection. His Holiness, John Paul II, noted this condition in his 1999 Letter to Artists:

All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however, successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpture, their creating is not more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.

The romantic concept of the artist as a tormented genius, which albeit needs nuancing and contextualizing, is not entirely off the mark. To make art—but I don't limit this strictly to art—is to enter into an uncertain half-way place between where one is and where one wants to get to, a place where the getting-to becomes more unlikely as one proceeds. It is the existential crisis tout court.

The crisis is insurmountable for anyone who does not have access to prayer. Because while art is a deliberate immersion in one's own perspective of the world, that is, one's subjectivity, prayer is the opposite. Prayer demands that one look at the world and oneself through the eyes of God. Prayer is the perfect complement for the work, because the work has usually only the glimmerings of the goal in mind and is entirely concerned with the striving, but without knowing how to get there. Prayer, on the other hand, has the goal so firmly in mind, but without the least concern for how the goal will be accomplished. It is the act of faith that the goal will be accomplished, and indeed has already been secured by divine intervention.

It must be this security which transforms the labora into ora, and vice versa. Because the work becomes a willingness to submit to the divine will and a way of communing with it; the work rests not only in the assurance of our being made complete in the image of Christ, but also a way of participating in that process as it unfolds.

I was going to write a short review of James Elkins' book What Painting Is, which I just finished, but I have decided against doing this because the premise of the book can be summed up fairly neatly: Elkins' sees alchemy and its belief that base substances (the prima materia, in alchemical-speak) can be transformed into the mythical, supernatural philosopher's stone as a metaphor for painting. In painting, it is colored muds that are miraculously transformed by the artist's labor into a transcendent object; through the process of painting they are made meaningful.

But perhaps this is taking the wrong end of the stick, or brush. Painting, and art in general, ought to be regarded as a metaphor for the very real work of transformation which the Holy Spirit is working out in the lives of every Christian. Like painting, it is slow, and works with imperfect, intractable elements made of mud. But unlike painting the end is certain.

The BBC discusses Relativism

2006-01-20T09:51:00.000-05:00

"Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of educating is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own "ego"." Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech given last June, showed that the issue of relativism is as contentious today as it was in Ancient Greece, when Plato took on the relativist stance of Protagoras.

Relativism is a school of philosophical thought which holds to the idea that there are no absolute truths. Instead, truth is situated within different frameworks of understanding that are governed by our history, culture and critical perspective.

Why has relativism so radically divided scholars and moral custodians over the centuries? How have its supporters answered to criticisms that it is inherently unethical? And if there are universal standards such as human rights, how do relativists defend culturally specific practices such as honour killings or female infanticide?

You can download or listen to the piece here. Thanks to a reader on Amy Welborn's blog.

Some thoughts on two views of art history

2006-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post, I put up a link to Roger Kimball's post reproducing the text of his talk at the Studio School on the New Criterion blog Armavirumque concerning his head-to-head with the art historian Michael Fried. Kimball's talk takes on the themes of his book—which I have not read but have been vaguely intending to, The Rape of the Masters—in which he lays out his criticisms of current academic art history, namely in its concern with "theory." Kimball concludes his post with this summation as to the role of the art critic:

In my view, it often happens that the most a critic can do is to remove the clutter impeding the direct enjoyment of art. True, that clutter sometimes includes the debris of ignorance or insensitivity, and in this respect art critics and art historians can provide useful guideposts that make it easier to see the work for what it is. But at bottom, their function is a humble one: to clear away the underbrush that obscures the first-hand apprehension of works of art.

Of course, this modest task has an ambitious corollary motive: namely, to help restore art to its proper place in the economy of cultural life: as a source of aesthetic delectation and spiritual refreshment.

This de-cluttering role is the approach that Kimball opposes to Prof. Michael Fried's "academic" art history which rather than clarify, supposedly obscures the work of art under a variety of interpretations—interpretations which expose supposed gender and power relationships or Freudian psychoanalytic undercurrents. Prof. Fried's art history isn't really concerned with anything so mundane—and perhaps more importantly—so subjective as appreciation, but instead is concerned with the arguably more "significant" task of interpretation.

I would like to agree with Mr. Kimball. Lord knows it would probably make my life somewhat simpler. But I find myself in the somewhat unfortunate position of agreeing neither with Mr. Kimball nor with Prof. Fried. Let me attempt, before proceeding further, to summarize what I perceive to be each their basic points of view: On the one hand is the "modernist" view held by Kimball, that the central goal of art history and criticism is apprecation and enjoyment. The connoisseur, that person of ultra-refined tastes and sensibilities leads you, the unrefined viewer, to see what he or she sees and thus identify that work of art with a certain degree of value and worth.

Fried takes the other, so-called "postmodernist" view wherein all systems of value are considered to be relative. Therefore, the art historian cannot possibly undertake the task of encouraging the viewer's appreciation. So instead it sticks to more, if not objective, at least impersonal task of interpreting what the work means. This method is not at all concerned whether or not an artist is "good" or "bad" but rather what the symbols in a given work of art means and where these symbols come from historically and how they relate to other works of art. This works on two levels: On one level the artist employs a set of signs within a work of art that allow it to be understood, for instance two intersecting perpendicular lines can make a cross can refer to aspects of Christian belief; and on the other level, the appearance of crosses in multiple works of art allow them to be grouped together and understood both in terms of similarity and difference.

If this were all that postmodernism was up to, it could hardly be supposed anyone would object. It's purpose is even more ostensibly more humble in so far as it proposes that it is more "scientific" than Kimball's. It is not concerned with saying which work of art has more value than another or even to help the viewer to evaluate (which, by the way, is what appreciate means), but merely to categorize and identify, to apply, so to speak, genus and species to works of art.

The connoisseur is almost always concerned with technique and manufacture; the hisorical critic with symbols and meaning, since they are more classifiable than the vagaries of paint application.

But the guise of science has allowed broad liberties to be taken within the field of art history. Often times, the task of interpretation, as Kimball rightly points out, becomes one of torturing works of art by casting them entirely in terms of psychoanalytic Freudianism. In fact, much of art history is steeped in psychoanalysis—Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian seem to be the most popular—probably because both came of age at about the same time and both were concerned with the interpretation of symbols, and both, though circumscribed by subjectivity, like to posture as objective. Fried's approach is colored by psychoanalysis which allows him to make amazing intellectual leaps in his interpretations of painting and allow, him to, apparently, leave the work of art behind all together as he dives deep into the depths of the painter's psyche. It's all fine and well if you believe that psychoanalysis is true, but if you don't then the results of the psychoanalytic approach appear laughable at best, pernicious at worst. Perhaps the worst thing about the psychoanalytic approach is that it forecasts results. It assumes that whatever the work of art is presumably about, is in fact, a screen for another—usually seedier—meaning.

So, it's possible for the art historian to impose a false interpretation on a work of art. But this suggests that the only right interpretation of a work of art assumes that the work of art is a true and complete representation of the artist's intentions and that any symbolic content ought to be taken at more or less face value. If, then, a work of art becomes an accretion of collected meaning as the Mona Lisa has become, then the work of the art historian is to exhume its "original" meaning.

But this is problematic too. The original meaning and the intention of the artist are, practically speaking, just as speculative as Fried's psychoanalytical interpretations. But more significantly, the artist's intentions even when known and understood often don't account for the obvious fact that works of art partake of systematic conventions, perpetuating received ideas about what art is and how it functions. Sometimes these conventions, which are powerful forces sometimes inverted or parodied but rarely if ever absent, are at work despite the artist's stated intentions. Sometimes, the artist's intentions and the conventions of art exist butted up one against the other within the work of art in conflict with one another. In those cases, the work of the art historian is to uncover this state of affairs and present it to the audience. In this case, it would be intellectualy dishonest and wrong to merely "unclutter" the work of art for the viewer, when what it needs instead is precisely a good cluttering up! The temptation exists, doubtless, as Fried is testimony to, find and present such clutter in every work of art. But perhaps it is not wrong to say it is there, when really, the complex of events which produce works of art preclude the romanticized economy of the artist in his or her studio engaged in "self-expression."

Because I do not believe in psychoanalysis, I can't really agree with the intellectual assumptions which underpin most of the thinking of contemporary art historians and cultural critics. But because, works of art are more complex than mere objects of aesthetic enjoyment, I can't really take the modernist-connoisseurship position either. More on all this as it develops.

The Garden of the Soul

2006-01-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

Because I was in Portsmouth over the weekend, I went to the Episcopal church down the street on Sunday. One of the things that I must say I will miss tremendously once I have finished converting to Roman Catholicism is Rite I in the Book of Common Prayer. The fact that, as far as I know, there doesn't seem to be anything really equivalent to it in the Catholic church has always been a bit of a mystery to me and a source of aggravation, since the BCP is both an exceptional piece of literature and a convenient devotional guide.

Anyway, all that has changed now. One of the other reasons that I go to this particular Episcopal church when I am in town is that one of my very good friends attends there as well: George Tussing. George is without doubt one of the most important and influential people in my life. If there is anyone I have to thank (or to blame) for my decision to go in for art history, it is him, since he was my very first art history teacher and one of the few who really understands and cares about art (and is himself an artist). So when I saw George at church on Sunday we got to talking about the Episcopal church and my conversion and he told me that he had this book he wanted to give me.

The book, as it turns out, is this book, The Garden of the Soul, by an English bishop named Challoner and originally published in America in 1776. It's a very beautiful book, with morning and evening devotions, prayers, supplications, hymns, the ordinary of the mass and a bunch of other stuff. It's even illustrated with woodcuts (take that, BCP!) Needless to say, I am extremely excited about it. I'll have to put it next to my bed, so that I don't forget to use it.

Is there even such a thing as "Protestant" art?

2006-01-14T17:46:00.000-05:00

Friend MM has posted an interesting observation about the lack of depictions of Christ, especially crucified, in Protestant churches. In my own experience they are becoming rarer and rarer. You can view my comments there and leave some of your own.

The Future is (almost) here

2006-01-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

Levis is making iPod-compatible jeans. They're coming out in the fall.

Something worth watching

2006-01-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

I started watching the TV show "Monk" because there was a free promotional episode on iTunes. If you have not seen this show, I highly recommend it. It stars Tony Shaloub as the obsessive-compulsive private investigator, Adrian Monk, and Traylor Howard as his assistant, Natalie Treeger. The basic premise is that Monk's neuroses, which inhibit him in about every other area of his life, give him an accute attention to detail, allowing him to detect clues that other people miss. But the show is extremely enjoyable, funny, well-written and extremely gentle and warm in its portrayal of its characters and their relationships. It's even won a bunch of awards. It airs Friday nights at 10pm on the USA network (of all places).

Charlie Finch on the new religion, Art

2006-01-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

My friend ES sent me the link to this article on Artnet yesterday, concerning the quasi-religious aspects of contemporary art. Truth be told, I am pretty out of the loop in terms of the contemporary art scene. I have caught up with art history about as far as the '60s and after that things get pretty blurry (perhaps, then Donald Kuspit's forthcoming book, A Critical History of 20th-Century Art will fill a void, who knows). Anyway, Charlie Finch's article is interesting and worth a scan, which doesn't take more than a few moments.

The more important question, however, is is art a substitute religion? As someone aligned with a full-fledged mainstream, tax-exempt religion, I hardly think so, or at least, it is not a substitute religion any more than a host of other substitutes, like politics or money or popular culture.

I suppose this is the logical result of a conceptual shift in terms of what art is that happenedhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif around the turn of the last century. Art and aesthetics were seen as a path to the transcendent apart from any other mediating body. Or at least that's what Kuspit seems to be suggesting (see above link). There are certainly people, who exhausted of the scientific positivism and materialism of the nineteenth century sought refuge in the subjectivities and vagaries of art. But that doesn't really account for the apparent religious response to art today. Not altogether, anyway.

I guess your response to this situation depends on whether or not you think it is a problem and if so, what the solution might be. On different days I feel differently about it, ranging from deep concern to benign unconcern to total indifference. If you do think that there is a problem, then the only solution to offer is to propose that art be put in the employ of interests outside itself. Art would have to be commissioned and useful, e.g. portrait commissions, religious pictures, etc. Abstract art would probably become solely the province of corporations seeking non-objective, and therefore not objectionable, wall decorations.

Honestly, this is an impossible alternative. Art will remain, as far as I can tell, insular and self-reflexive for the time being. Although, there will always be dissenters.

Courbet, Modernism and Postmodernism

2006-01-07T23:44:00.000-05:00

Roger Kimball has posted the text of a talk given at the Studio School on Armavirumquein which he lays out his critique of current academic, postmodernist art history. It's lengthy but worth the read, I'd say. I have my own set of thoughts on the matter which once I have sorted out I hope to get posted.

Merry Christmas

2005-12-24T12:44:00.000-05:00

For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to men.

Seminarians Sing Lessons and Carols

2005-12-21T20:59:00.000-05:00

Get it here! Thank Zadok the Roman here!

2005-12-21T17:21:00.000-05:00

O East, splendor of light eternal, and sun of justice: come, and illumine those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Antiphon for the 21st of December

Mel Gibson's New Movie

2005-12-21T09:12:00.000-05:00

Here's the trailer.

War on Christmas

2005-12-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

Hendrik Hertzberg probably ought to be given some sort of award for smugness. His article debunking the "War on Christmas" follows a fairly standard line of self-satisfied pseudo-reasoning--all those right-wingers who are complaining about the secularization of Christmas are just the most recent in a long line of people who complain about the how Christmas is under attack by the secular world. He puts up a few straw men—Henry Ford, the anti-Semite, and Bill O'Reilly, his own worst enemy—slaps a gloss of unsubstantiated historial reference on it and calls the typesetter. I got to this sentence here, "Just as Christmas itself evolved as a way to synthesize a variety of winter festivals, so the War on Christmas fantasy is a way of grouping together a variety of enemies, where they can all be rhetorically machine-gunned at once," when I realized that he was full of it.

What really bothers me about Hertzberg's article is—obviously—the sentence I have highlighted above. That on the one hand he poo-poos the self-appointed culture warriors for their unwarranted counter-attack while subtly undercutting the Christmas celebration. What absolute rot! (Frankly, I'd use stronger language, but my mother reads this blog.) Christmas was not a convenient way to celebrate a whole bunch of "winter festivals." No celebration based on such a notion would have persisted over 1700 years nor would it explain why Hannukah and New Years are still celebrated more or less concurrently. The origins of Christmas lie solely with the Church and not with any attempt to justify any pagan holidays. Not that it would matter if they had. The point of Christmas would still have been to commemorate not merely the coming of Christ, but the specific way of his coming, which is what makes Christianity what it is, that the God-head came "veiled in flesh."

People probably are being a little too paranoid about the state of Christmas. It does not seem likely that it will cease to be celebrated any time soon. While the holiday is being subjected to a slow neutralization of its essential message ("good tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. ... Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will towards men"), I have no reason to think that this attempt to denature Christmas will succeed.

It does not, however, help the cause when Christian denominations of any stripe decide that Christmas is somehow an optional celebration, especially churches committed to evengelization, especially on one of the two days a year when they might expect to actually have non-Christians going to church. Such an action as these Churches who think that they do not need to have church on Christmas on a Sunday do lend credence to the appearance that Christmas is losing its focus.

On the other hand, it seems most people I know are planning to celebrate Christmas, people who 1) know full well what its "about," and 2) who do not believe what it is about. Friends of mine who are deeply athiestic have decorated their house more extravagantly than anyone else I know and have even set up a small creche in one corner (that they have deliberately set a small photograph of Elvis Presely behind it does not entirely negate their small acknowledgment of Christmas' real meaning). And while anecdotes may not count as hard proof, I even heard my local NPR affiliate (enemy of all things Christian) broadcasting a "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" and "Joy to the World" this evening in their full gender-essentialist and God-centered language.

I don't believe that the controversy that Christmas elicits is in fact overshadowing what Christmas is all about and its message of un-looked-for redemption. Because the controversy draws more attention to it in the first place, and second of all, because underneath it there is still a steady current carols, movies, books, trees, presents, decorations, and so on and so forth which continually emphasize the miracle which Christmas celebrates. If and when Christmas really does need someone to defend it tooth and nail, I hope it will be someone other than Bill O'Reilly.

Are you going to Heaven? Take the quiz and find out!

2005-12-20T07:18:00.000-05:00

You can take the heaven quiz here. Be careful, some of the questions are deliberately misleading. Incidentally, according to the quiz, I am not going to heaven. Oh well. Guess I'll have to find a different quiz.

Oh, and by the bye, the Messiah has returned, is in China, and has said over a million words.

What Rodney Stark says about Christianity

2005-12-16T04:27:00.000-05:00

I found this over at Amy Welborn last night. There was another post about him yesterday but it has disappeared from her site with a bunch of other posts:

Rodney Stark in the Chronicle of Higher Education - How Christianity (and Captialism) led to Science

Supposing that capitalism did produce Europe's own "great leap forward," it remains to be explained why capitalism developed only in Europe. Some writers have found the roots of capitalism in the Protestant Reformation; others have traced it back to various political circumstances. But, if one digs deeper, it becomes clear that the truly fundamental basis not only for capitalism, but for the rise of the West, was an extraordinary faith in reason.

A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred origins. Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all of the other major world religions.

I Googled Stark because I had never heard of him. He is a sociologist at Baylor University. He has several books in the works which are apparently revisions of academic approach to early Church history. To me his views don't sound particularly new. GK Chesterson was saying this kind of thing a hundred years ago (has it been that long?), but it is unusual that Stark is a full-fledged academic and can say these things--which to avoid confusion, I think is great. Anyway, I can think of a few friends who might want to add Prof. Stark to their reading lists.

Thanks Amy.

...Perceptions...

2005-12-15T17:21:00.000-05:00

My friend Metafiz over at ...Perceptions... received a host of unpleasant commentators attacking his cost of the war in Iraq counter. Please visit his blog and leave him an intelligent, thoughtful comment to restore everyone's faith in humanity.

A trip down memory lane

2005-12-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

While some of us trepidatiously await the inevitibality of purgatory, others among us are taking the bull by the horns and subjecting themselves, knowingly, to public humiliation. One such of these is Emily Yoffe, who can now add nude art model to her resume. Having been to art school and having been in on any number of "life" (read, buck naked) drawing classes, Yoffe's story not only rings true but answers some of my questions about the kind of people who think that nude modeling is a good way to make money. Hilarious, although it makes you think twice about any invitation to a cocktail party at which Ms. Yoffe will be in attendance.

Related is her aspirations as a lounge act.

New Comment Requirements

2005-12-15T14:54:00.000-05:00

Due to some unwanted comment spam I am moderating all comments. We will see how this goes, and if it is a real problem, then I may relax the restrictions. Fortunately, my blog is not a free country and there is no such thing as free speech here.

The Turn of the Tide

2005-12-14T19:33:00.000-05:00

David Hartline thinks that the Church (already, of course, Triumphant) is becoming once again Ascendent. He says, "While there have been many ebbs and flows in the history of Catholicism, perhaps we are now beginning a new and promising flow of faith."
It's here. Via Amy Welborn.

The How-To Book of the Mass

2005-12-14T17:01:00.000-05:00

I was poking around the Internet a few days ago when I cam across this book, The How-To Book of the Mass. Since it promises on its cover "Everything you need to know but no one ever taught you," I was very excited. You see, despite having attended multiple confirmation classes on my way across the Tiber, they have yet to cover all the crucial details of how to participate in the mass. Most of what I have learned has just come about through regular attendance and sly glances at neighbors to see what they are doing and attempting to follow suit. So, I had hoped I had finally found a book that would give me all the answers I needed.

I haven't read much of it yet, but I think I have mixed feelings about it. Certain things I wanted to know are there (like does one bow/genuflect towards the altar or the tabernacle: as it turns out, it depends), but the text does not reproduce the text of the liturgy except in certain places, so it makes it a little hard to follow.

Perhaps I am being premature. I should probably read it to find out how helpful it will be. But there are many things that I want to see/do at mass, and don't know if the protocol for doing them is the same as in a good ol' high Anglican church. Can one make a profound bow to the processional cross? I have yet to see a Catholic do this, but the Episcops do it all the time.

If anyone else has read this and has an opinion or has read something of similar nature that they have found helpful, of course, let me know.

Not sure what this means

2005-12-13T15:27:00.000-05:00

You are Kermit the Frog.
You are reliable, responsible and caring. And you have a habit of waving your arms about maniacally.

FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
"Hi ho!" "Yaaay!" and "Sheesh!"
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"How Green Was My Mother"

LAST BOOK READ:
"Surfin' the Webfoot: A Frog's Guide to the Internet"

HOBBIES:
Sitting in the swamp playing banjo.

QUOTE:
"Hmm, my banjo is wet."
From Andrew Cusack. Which Muppet are you?

Everyone has something to say about Narnia

2005-12-09T10:50:00.000-05:00

Roger Ebert gave it three stars.
If you live in the same little corner of the blogosphere that I do, you have already read and commented on Polly Toynbee's wild-eyed, spittle-spraying, God-hating rant.
The Pontificator is very excited about the movie and has posted a link to this article by Frederica Matthewes-Green.

At one point Matthewes-Green writes,
Aslan's heroic act [of self-sacrafice] is aimed at the Witch, not the Emperor, and he defeats her by using information she does not have. This sounds like the understanding of salvation that held sway for the thousand years before Anselm, still preserved in the Christian East, which echoed the earlier story of the Exodus. According to this understanding, God does not require any payment for our sins, but forgives us freely, just like we're supposed to forgive each other. We are helpless in the grip of evil forces, like the Hebrews in Egypt and the beasts in Narnia. God rescues us by a mighty act, by his power alone.

And of course, MM has asked us to find ways to use the movies as a tool for evangelization.

Frankly, I am a little trepidatious about going to see this movie. The Chronicles of Narnia are among my favoritestestest books of all time. I hate it when they turn these books into movies because they have a tendency to kill the book. This doesn't happen because they do a bad job. No a bad job--like the BBC miniseries rendition--is so bad that can have no purchase in one's imagination. You forget about it quickly. But when it is well done, like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, it has a tendency to supplant the source in one's imagination, even when you reread them. I grant that in thirty years people will probably have forgotten all about the Lord of the Rings movies and the Chronicles of Narnia and that the books will regain their independent life (at least I hope this is what happens).

I don't want to use the movie as an evangelization tool. I think that most Christians don't because we have such few explicitly Christian imaginative outlets these days. I am glad that this movie is going to be popular. I am glad that many people will see it and be edified by Lewis' thoughts and his faith. I hope that people who have not read the book do so after this movie. For me it was one step from the Chronicles to Lewis' theological writings (and I have yet, I admit, to break into his writings on Renaissance literature), so perhaps it will be the same for these other people. And thus, the movie, whether people intend it or no, will be a means of spreading the Gospel.

I'm just still annoyed that they made it. That they have successfully mediated every part of my childhood. Anyway, the movie opens today.

Mega-Churches cancel Christmas services

2005-12-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

"What we're encouraging people to do is take that DVD and in the comfort of their living room, with friends and family, pop it into the player and hopefully hear a different and more personal and maybe more intimate Christmas message, that God is with us wherever we are," said Cally Parkinson, communications director at Willow Creek, which draws 20,000 people on a typical Sunday.

Amy Welborn had a post about this a couple of days ago, but when I saw it on the NY Times I guess it has become something of general interest. Basically, since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, the churches are cancelling services so that families can stay home together. That may be all fine and well, of course, but you can't worship a DVD, even in the comfort of your own home. And Christmas is not about the imminence of family in our lives (although, those are good things) But it is about the imminence of Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Long and short, go to church on Christmas!

Apophis is coming! Apophis is coming!

2005-12-08T20:28:00.000-05:00

There is an asteroid on a collision course with earth. It is called Apophis. Estimated time of arrival: 31 years. Chances of survival: 1 in 5,500. WE...ARE...ALL...GOING...TO..DIE!

If this really is the Apocalypse, just remember, you heard it hear first. Or not, if you knew about it already.

It's an interesting thought, though. If you knew you were going to die in 2036, how would you spend the next thirty years of your life?

I got into an old-fashioned aesthetics debate at Shrine of the Holy Whapping

2005-12-07T09:01:00.000-05:00

The post at the Shrine concerning Benedict XVI's call for liturgical-musical improvement has yielded some interesting comments, which I wanted to re-post mine below for my own readers:

Writes Hieronymous:
An aesthetic sense is like a conscience - it needs to be properly, vigilantly formed. Although everyone had an inherent knowledge of what is beautiful and what is ugly, just as he has an inherent knowledge of what is good and what is evil, his ability to apply it can be distorted or destroyed.

The greater task than restoring proper music to church (which is necessary, obviously. I will attend no Mass accompanied by soft-rock/pop OCP drivel) is to restore an appreciation for good music to the culture at large.

To which I responded:
I still think it is problematic to say that certain art forms are "objectively" better than others. Some are certainly more intellectually complex than others and demand a great more out of their hearer/viewer than others and these greater demands usually result in greater satisfaction and therfore greater enjoyment.

But another point is that works of art are subjective sensory experiences that we experience in a temporal way--this is integral to the definition of a work of art--and there is nothing "objective" about that at all. Each viewer will respond somewhat differently to a work of art, because each viewer is a different person.

Then again, works of art are fashioned by the artist to work on the viewer's sensory faculties in a certain way with the hopes of achieving a certain effect. Thus, the experience of Bach is different, vastly, from the experience of rock and roll. Bach is far more intellectually sophisticated than rock and roll, but rock and roll achieves vastly different effects which Bach's music cannot.

The question, then, is not what kinds of music are objectively right or wrong for the mass, but which are appropriate to the desired effect on the worshipper, namely reverence? Within that framework we should have a great deal of freedom to tweak things around.

Incidentally, I think that the only "objective" things which do take place during the mass are the sacred mysteries, but those are the very things that we can't comprehend. It is the things that "deliver" those mysteries to us that we can comprehend, and those are temporal and subjective. The problem is is that the line between what is necessary to the mysteries and what is accidental (the form which those mysteries take) is indistinct to us (not, I think, to God).

To my problematizing of objectivity, Emily (the original poster) responded:
The more I've thought about that over the years, the less convinced I am that it's true. I'm don't have time to go into detail on it, but think about the profound connection between truth, goodness, and beauty. There are objective standards for goodness and truth, so I find it hard to make the case that there isn't for beauty. Granted, it's of a different type, but I still think it has to be objective in some sense.

And I rebutted:
I rather hope you will when you have the time. But without taking up wild examples such as "modern" art, what is one to say about the differences between Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art? On one level they all testify to what we understand to be the objective truth of Christianity, but do so in radically different ways. It is facile (I think) to say that the Renaissance was "more beautiful" than the Gothic or vice versa. It can be said that they represent that truth in different ways. Maybe different sides of the same truth. But if someone says "I think that the Renaissance produced art more beautiful than the Gothic period," they are pronouncing personal subjective judgment--a judgment of taste. To what standard could someone appeal such a statement? Throughout the history of art, people have repeatedly attempted to establish objective rules for beauty, and then these rules have been deliberately broken by others to show that they are arbitrary. But this is getting off track. It is not necessary for mass to be beautiful, objectively or subjectively. If it is, it is; if not, it doesn't fail to "take."

To my last sentence Franklin Jennings responded thusly:
While absolutely true, I don't see how this lessens our obligation to render the Liturgy beautifully.

But then, I also don't see how the fact that men cannot agree on an objective criterion for beauty should prove to seperate beauty from goodness and truth, when men also cannot agree on objective criteria for either.

And Sam with great erudition said this:
... it seems the discussion over catholic liturgical music sounds a bit elitist, classist, or at least exclusively Eurocentric ....What I mean to say is that the development of such nuanced and sublime taste in music or things beautiful necessitates exposure to the material deemed beautiful. In this way, aesthetic sense is not developed as a moral conscience. The inherent givens of goodness and truth are not as accessible to the universal church as Beethoven, Mozart, and Palestrina are....those seven, old ladies who sing their a capella, folky-mexican devotionals out of key every morning at 5 a.m. and sound terrible - but sincere; and the mountain community in Honduras who is visited only 4 times a year by a cleric where they come together and sing out in joy with unsophisticated instruments (like guitar) and less sophisticated melodies (probably the same ones of the seven, old ladies), yet the essence of reverence and holiness… indeed beauty is in the person seeking unity with God via song.

If Keats is right, and the relationship between beauty and truth is tautological, then why worry too much about the mass. What we need to do is to worship in spirit and in truth not aesthetic splendor. Or maybe there is more to it than that....

There's a lot of ideas here, which is partially why I wanted to preserve my comments here on my blog. But please see the Whapping and post there, too!

Reforming the Liturgy

2005-12-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

What with recent posts at Pontifications on a new translation of the Latin rite and one at the Holy Whapping on words of encouragement from Benedict XVI to composers of sacred music (see entry for Dec. 6), it seems like the so-called "reform of the reform" of Vatican II is gaining speed/ground (depending on which metaphorical usage you prefer).

This is a topic which clearly have some people fired up, that is to say, ire is high (read the comments on the post at the Whapping for a good example). I wonder, what should the new liturgy look like? Is there an essential expression of the liturgy that is valid versus one that is invalid (given that the normative parts of the mass are followed, etc.)? Specifically, can we say that there is a "Catholic" art form which should be utilized in the mass, versus a "non-Catholic" form which should be repudiated? If Bishops, under the supposed aegis of V2, are incorporating contemporary music and modern languages and taking down altar rails, are they attacking or distorting the substance of the mass? Opponents of the changes, of course, say yes, while proponents seem to think that they are just making it more accessible. I have heard both arguments and they both have convincing points.

If there is something "essentially Catholic" in the liturgical expression, music and language, then it means that we cannot use in church Bach, Beethoven and many of the "great" composers. Possibly we should not even listen to them in our spare time, since no doubt these would corrupt our fragile faith in God.

If on the other hand, Catholicism is able to incorporate and sanctify to its use things of secular origin (Roman architecture, for instance), then isn't it possible to sing songs that are more "contemporary" in style?

But clearly, not all of the reforms introduced have been seen as healthy, and some are apparently harmful. I for one, loathe the fact that the cathedral where I attend has taken out their altar rail and added this peninsula so that the altar may be out in the space of the people. Every time I am there I think, "They raped the building." And I really wish we'd stop singing those insipid songs by M. Haugen. (I feel vindicated by my dislike of these songs seeing who does like them.)

I personally haven't yet formed a clear position on this matter. I probably never will come up with a definitive answer for it either, and I am deeply suspicious of people who have a set-in-stone answer. The Church, as a living institution, is able to incorporate organic change (this is sometimes called growth). Some things, however, are not to be tampered with. We cannot continue to be Catholic Christians if we abandon core doctrines concerning Christ's identity and mission, most obviously.

I would, however, like to know what people think about this.

In the meantime, this is some of the liturgical music that I have been listening to:
Choir of King's College Cambridge, O Come All Ye Faithful
The Choir of Tewkesbury Abbey, Christmas Carols

Alberto Turco and Nova Schola Gregoriana, Adorate Deum

I got all these, by the way, off iTunes, where they can be had cheap.

Snow in Richmond

2005-12-05T14:27:00.000-05:00

It snowed today. Not enough to close school for the week or anything (sigh.)

Art & Art Criticism

2005-12-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have been following my meagre attempt to break down the situation of contemporary art, there is a related article in this month's The New Criterion by James Panero. The article requires registration to read it, but registration is free until December 31 (after that your registration will expire and you will have to pay for access).

The New Criterion is a rather interesting publication, which is self-admittedly modernist in its orientation. I have a strong admiration for their often curmudgeonly slant, but I find their perpetuation of the modernist position somewhat difficult. The article partially addresses this concern, as you will see if you read it.

For people such as myself seeking to get away from both modernism and postmodernism, there don't seem to be many options. I think that there is a rising laissez-faire attitude where everyone is allowed to do what pleases them best and the result is often a hybrid of modernism and postmodernism. I find this position, if not outrightly intellectually dishonest, at least intellectually facile.

But here's a thought: Maybe the problem lies not with the artists, the critics and the art historians, but the patrons. More on this to come!

Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis

2005-12-04T18:08:00.000-05:00

Ave Maria

2005-12-04T00:29:00.000-05:00

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum;
benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

Clarifying the moment of clarity

2005-12-03T23:17:00.000-05:00

JM, in his comment on the post below, has asked me to expand on my comment on the state of contemporary art. This may not be an expansion, but it may be at least a crystallizing of what could have been a moment of brilliance, or alternatively, total balderdash (to deploy an under-used word).

First of all, I think I need to clarify the premises of that post and what I perceive to be the premises of contemporary or postmodern art. It all goes back to modernism: Modern art is based--I think, and I grant that these could probably be further enumerated--on two assumptions, and of course, they are probably interconnected. The first of them is the strong historical sense with which modern art perceives itself. The notion that there can be "avant-garde" or "advanced" art stems from the belief that history unfolds not only linearly but with a purpose. This purpose is typically revolutionary, e.g. it seeks to overthrow the old order and set up a new one. The second assumption is that the out of the world can be elucidated essences of meaning or being. The revolutionary character of modernism is, to my mind, an outgrowth of the desire to uncover the essential order. The reigning order is seen to be corrupt, flacid, and decadent; too far removed from the primary meaning or purpose of life, it cannot be reconciled to the needs of society and must be discarded. I don't want to get too much into the sources of these assumptions. Let it suffice to say that a lot of it is rooted in the 19th century and that a lot of it has to do with Hegel.

But given these two underlying ideas--historical sense and the search for essences--we can comprehend much of modern art. If we take Abstract Expressionism, for instance, we can find these two notions everywhere. On the one hand, stylistically, there is the need to push the boundaries or envelope of technique, praxis, into where it has not gone before. There is a powerful need to do something "new" because art is understood as a historical progression towards an undisclosed end point, but that that progression has been interpreted by art historians as a series of technical inventions in art media called styles. [I ought to take out the tautology of the last two sentences, but I will leave it because it may illustrate something which at this moment eludes me.] So novelty for its own sake, regardless of what that novelty is, can be revered as artistic innovation or advance. I think that Duchamp understood this pretty clearly and his ready-mades are a prescient skewering of that novelty-for-its-own-sake attitude.

But in another sense, Abstract Expressionism was also after uncovering or revealing or making manifest some essential truth of the universe. For Jackson Pollock, this seemed to be the Jungian Collective Unconscious, which he ultimately depicted as a miasma or cloud of the primordial psychological state out of which consciousness arises. Or, we have the essentialism of Clement Greenberg, defender and critic of AbEx who believed that they were reducing painting down to its fundamental components--paint on canvas--and had therefore jettisoned any extraneous referential matter.

Postmodernism attacks these two modernist positions. It attacks, on the one hand, the historical notion by saying that there is no historical will (a zeitgeist, for instance) inexorably and impersonally fulfilling its intentions over time. In other words, history has no end goal; there is only events taking place in space and time. It also rejects the notion of essences. Things do not have any primary state of being, they only have their accidental appearance in the world, the accidences of which are contingent on space and time and therefore also changing. It rejects modernism's belief in an existential ground of being partially because it is (I guess) unprovable--or rather, because it is based on preconceived notions of how things are/ought to be rather than on lived experience; and also because such notions as essences and historicity are believed to be chauvanistic--they tend to privilege and lionize and then mythologize the time and place of the people who have conceived of the category of modern art--when in fact modern art is only one category of art among many, and in fact art itself is only one category among many kinds of equally possible human activity.

We call it postmodernism, however, because it preserves the language of modernism, abstraction or non-representationalism, in order to parody or expose modernisms assumptions. The line between them is never clear. There are some kinds of art (such as Duchamp) which seem very postmodern, and yet came long before postmodernisms formulation, while there are certain kinds of art which have been made since postmodernism which seem modernist in conception.

So what was the moment of clarity? Precisely (I hope) this: that postmodern or contemporary art has taken up a purely critical position in the world today. It has used the reductionism (or essentialism) of modernism to exlude from itself all traditional modes of artistic production--such as oil painting, unless it can do so with exteme irony--in order to isolate its critique. Furthermore, its critique has expanded beyond the bounds of mere modernism to encompass all modes of visual production--movies, pop culture, television, etc. Because it has excluded artistic production, there are very few fine artists who are equipped with what is conventionally called "talent" or "skill" because such things are irrelevant to their taking up a critical position, and, probably, would be inhibitory.

And I mean critique in its least productive sense. Postmodern art--in this context--is primarily a negation, a cancelling out. It is cynical, snide, self-aggrandizing and bland all at the same time. But I think that often it is those things on purpose. No, I am sure it is those things on purpose. Perhaps postmodern artists believe that in the context of the gallery a double negation can occur where the original banal snideness of their work is transformed into a positive affirmation of a certain world-view. But I am not so sure.

So when I said that postmodernism takes place after the end of history I wanted to suggest that it does so after the collapse of the modernist historical urge, but also in a way that sustains that historical sense within it. Postmodernism seems accutely aware of its post-historicity, which itself is a kind of historical sense of self and one that sustains its increasingly esoteric and irrelevant avant-garde identity.

But there are some serious problems with all this. First of all, I have lumped a number of artists of different stripes together while not identifying any of them or justifying my assertions with any one in particular even. A lot of this would probably deflate when contextualized with a real person.

Secondly, I purport to have a solution. My solution would be that art, to reinvigorate itself must transcend all historical notions and work for an end outside of any purely artistic goal. I imagine medieval icon painters painting not with the end of virtuoso paint application but with producing a representation of something they know is unrepresentable: the Divine. But within that, it seems, art is able to become a position of extreme humility; its insufficiency bound up with its purpose and made part of that purpose, in much the same way that we human beings serve some unknown and mysterious Divine purpose, or as weak vessels serve a known purpose insufficiently.

I say purport to have a solution, because my solution as I have conceived it is--however ideal--escapism. Barring a cataclysm of universal proportions, it is not possible anymore to detach ourselves from the historical fabric which we have constructed for ourselves. What will happen, only time will tell.

The Name of the Rose

2005-12-03T22:48:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Wow! What a really cool book. It is one of those books which reminds me of why I love to read and how enjoyable reading is and why I ought to read more than I do. And clearly, it was a joy for Eco to write. It has also opened up the world to me again in that way in which great works of art are capable of doing. It makes the world an exciting place, a place to be lived in and enjoyed and savored precisely because it cannot be understood; because the rich tapestry of experiences and signs which make up our lives cannot be completely reconciled (and here to insert a note for myself, I wonder if this is what TS Eliot means by the "tattered arras woven with a silent motto" in East Coker; no matter, Eco would say that it is because I the reader have made a meaning from the juxtaposition of two unrelated signs). It also reconfirms in me the belief that works of art are ways (one way among many) of living life, of experiencing it in the fullness of its mystery and complexity; of life's refusal of any self-disclosure of definitive meaning.

It reminds me that one of my students told me the other day that he was trying to construct a definitive system; to understand through art the interlocking structure of the universe. That is not what he said; that is what he meant. He wanted, what was it?, he wanted to uncovers some fundamental, constitutive principle of life which would allow for the interpretation of existence--or some such thing. Or maybe it wasn't a student; maybe it was me. I have certainly thought that in the past. Now I realize--more and more--that such an undertaking is the Tower of Babel. It is hubris--overweening pride. The discovery of any such principle is in fact the accidental meeting of coincidental events. It will prove illusory and any such more fundamental conception entirely ellusive.

It is not to say that there is no such principle, but that the uncovery of it is beyond human reach. The attempt is beyond human limitations for such a fact, such a primitive ontological state lies only with God beyond temporality. Thus, I am not sure that the Christianity uncovers for us any of the secrets of the universe at all, as such it would not be a religion but a science. Instead Christianity is a mystery to guide us through the mystery and darkness of temporal being.

All I meant to say was that the Name of the Rose was so fascinating because it made me realize that there is no pressure on me from the outside to construct a comprehensive, definitive world-system. Any such system would not only be necessarily false--if only in its partiality--but would become a tomb, a restraint in which all conclusions are foregone and therefore with it the mystery and joy of life, of faith, of art, of scholarship are expelled, even if they are still paid lip service.

Let's see if I still think this tomorrow. I hope so. It is an exhilerating thought.

Is that Baby Jesus as a baby marshmallow?

2005-12-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

The crazy kids over at The Whapping have linked to the uber-hilarious Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. Irreverent isn't quite the right word because it's not stong enough.

Rant: Grinches stealing Christmas

2005-12-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

MM has posted a call for the defense of Christmas. It seems that there are people out there--people who claim to be Christians--who are not celebrating Christmas. It seems that the main argument put up by these people is that since the Bible does not explicitly institute the feast of Christmas (nor, for that matter does it institute the feast of Easter) that therefore Christians should not engage in celebrating this holiday. If further proof were needed of Christmas' badness, these people will also claim that it is a pagan holiday that has been "converted" into a Christian one to please the crowd and that these pagan origins are still evident in such things as Christmas trees, gifts, etc.

Now, I can understand to an extent, the other reaction against the over-blown materialism that has crept up and threatens to choke out the "real meaning" of Christmas--Christ's incarnation. I say, to an extent, because frankly, I find that to be reactionary as well.

But to the first crowd, it is clear that these people are just legalists. We all know how our Lord felt about legalists because he regularly chastized the Pharisees for following the letter of the law and not its spirit, esp. in regards to the keeping of the Sabbath. But on the other hand, they are merely exercising their private judgment on a Church-instituted day of celebration. They are repudiating on the one hand sacred tradition, and on the other hand they are deeply impoverishing and limiting the expression of their faith by not celebrating it, and with gusto. We all know Our Lord loves a good feast. For starters, His first miracle was to supply booze for a party and there is a tendency in Christ's teachings to describe his coming Kingdom not as a Quaker meeting but as a wedding feast to which we are all invited and to which we must show with a good will and ready to celebrate. These people in what seems to me self-righteous pride have missed the very heart of the Christian mystery--that our union with God through the incarnation (Christmas) and death and resurrection (Easter) of his Son is something to be celebrated with pomp and joy.

To the anti-materialists, I would say that the above might mean spending some money. I for one plan on spending Christmas both giving and receiving and eating and celebrating and singing and drinking and decorating and all of those things because until Christ's coming again these are concrete reminders of what being a Christian is all about and they can't be gotten by just reading the Bible.

A moment of clarity in regards to the present situation

2005-11-30T10:29:00.000-05:00

By "present situation" of course I mean the present situation of contemporary art. My guess is not many of us spend a great deal of time--if any--contemplating what is going on with art these days (to those of you who take exception to this, it only means that I did not know you were reading my 'blog). This is because contemporary art, like contemporary academia, is opaque to the layman and what is opaque usually becomes ignored. But saying that contemporary art is a rarified field was not the moment of clarity.

The moment of clarity came to me while glancing through Jim Lewis' commentary on the artist Mike Kelley. Kelley's work finds itself in the company of a slew of other artists who make art out the detritus of modern life. I suppose that because this has been ratified as a legitimate mode of artistic production since at least Picasso and Duchamp, Lewis is justified in awarding Kelley the moniker of "the last great 20th-century artist."

But when you look at Kelley's work you realize how bland and cynical the art world is today. And if Kelley is indeed the "last, great 20th-century artist," then the 20th-century was not about art's redefinition or expanding that definition but about art's self-immolation.

I would hate to say this and be labelled as an unreflective, out-of-touch philistine, one clearly outside the coterie of the art establishment (which I may be anyway, but no matter), because to say that contemporary art is bland and cynical or that it has sought the destruction of its ownself in terms of itself is not really to attack contemporary art, but to understand it in the way it wants to be understood. Blandness and cynicism are taken up by contemporary art as an apparatus, or better still, as weapons, by which it does not produce images but rather it attacks or critiques a culture in which image prodcution has been democratized to every quarter or life.

Since the artist no longer has a monopoly on the creation of images, the artist chooses instead to become a philosopher or a critic. In doing so, the artist only builds a bulwark between him or herself and the larger audience. By retreating back to where popular culture cannot follow, the artist ensures that popular culture remains an entity to be critiqued by forcing it to remain intellectually and spiritually inert. Art and artist become anti-art and anti-artist while our culture becomes more and more kitschy, cheap and self-gratifying. In this regard, if we understand contemporary art as a cultural critique, we must also view it as a failed critique because its purpose is not to transform culture but to sustain the division between art/anti-art and non-art.

Art and culture will only be able to move foward when we abandon the historical terms in which art has been situated, when there can be no more last, great artists, only artists. In such an event, it may seem curiously like moving backwards, but only to the artists.

Fra Angelico at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

2005-11-28T18:20:00.000-05:00

For those of you in the New York-area you may consider going to see what looks like a fabulous exhibition. The rest of us will have to be content with this slide show at Slate.

O Come, Desired of Nations, Come

2005-11-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.

Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.
Mark 13

Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent and thus we begin readying ourselves for the Nativity of Our Lord. I am well underway in my preparations. I have my Christmas blend coffee from Starbucks. I have downloaded some more Christmas music from iTunes and organized a playlist. So as you can see, except for putting up a few decorations, there is really not much left to do.

But Advent is also the beginning of the Church year. Thus, it is not only a time of preparation and waiting and watchfulness--the posture that the Gospel of Mark urges us to--but it is a time for a fresh start. In this regard, I like to think if Advent as a little Lent right before Christmas. (The attitude of fasting and repentence seems to have been lost from contemporary celebrations of Advent. I even just read that some churches are trading Advent purple for blue to distinguish it from Lent.)

In expectation of the coming Lord, what do we need to do to celebrate his Incarnation with due reverence and solemn joy?

Huh?

2005-11-25T22:34:00.000-05:00

Apparently, certain Canadians--the former Minister of Defense in particular--are concerned that the US is going to start an intergalactic war with a military installation on the moon.

Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Read it here. Thanks to No Pasaran.

Why you should go see Pride & Prejudice (despite its deficiencies)

2005-11-25T18:33:00.000-05:00

My family decided to take a break today from lazing by the fire and nibbling on leftover bits of turkey and casserole to see the latest revival of the Jane Austen-revival, Pride & Prejudice, starring the ever-winsome Keira Knightley.

This movie is great. Let me get that out of the way before I launch into my relatively minor nit-pickings. Miss Knightley and cast perform admirably their roles in a movie genre which is really the chamber music of the film world. But perhaps the greatest role in the movie is performed by the sets and scenes. Those are, in my opinion, the funnest parts of these movies to give glimpses of the interior and exterior of a world entirely unknown to the majority of us Americans.

The only real problem with this new movie is that it is too short. The two-hour running time is entirely insufficient to draw out all the subtleties of character and plot. We hardly have time to develop a strong dislike of Mr. Darcy before we are asked to like him very much. And the excressable Mr. Wickham is on screem enough to only be entirely indifferent. Alas, the sublime irony of Mr. Bennet is mostly alluded to by his acrot Donald Sutherland rather than made manifest in his portrayal. Perhaps I am merely spoiled by the BBC version of P&P which at around six hours is able to reproduce every last bit of the novel in majestic (or painful) detail.

To return to its good points, however, it would be remiss of me not to comment on the cinematoraphy, which is both intimate and epic at alternating and appropriate points.

Because there won't be much else worth rushing to at the cinema this holiday season, I heartily recommend this gem. But it is by no means a classic. And I think the Holy Father would entirely approve.

Come, ye thankful people, come

2005-11-24T14:12:00.000-05:00

Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.

All the world is God’s own field, fruit unto His praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take His harvest home;
From His field shall in that day all offenses purge away,
Giving angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store in His garner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quickly come, bring Thy final harvest home;
Gather Thou Thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified, in Thy garner to abide;
Come, with all Thine angels come, raise the glorious harvest home.

This is one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns, which I remember singing in middle school. It was written by Henry Alford in 1844. Happy Thanksgiving, all.

If Benedict XVI Doesn't Want You to See 'Harry Potter' Should You See It Anyway?

2005-11-23T19:11:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to go see the new Harry Potter movie, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.' Generally being ">praised by critics, it has obviously been released just in time for the holiday movie-going frenzy. I saw it last night in a virtually empty theater (it was Tuesday night at 9:30) and I must say, bregrudgingly, I enjoyed it. Or not begrudgingly. I did pay money to see it, after all. At over 2-and-a-half hours long, it moves franticly through the plot to condense 450 pages or so of text into one movie. The plot, of course, centers around Harry and friends' bildungsroman as the learn to become powerful wizards and witches. From the opening scene where a snake slithers out of a pile of human skulls, to the ending scene where one boy dies, this movie isBut should we as Christians be concerned about Harry Potter?

My friend MM was discussing this matter with me in regards to his Holiness. Benedict Our Pope has been thoroughly acknowledged this summer for his praise of a book which condemned JK Rowling's series for damaging the developing moral sense in children by obscuring the line between good and evil. As someone who has read all six of the published books and seen all four of the movies, I am hard-pressed to disagree.

It reminds me though of a conversation I had as a much younger version of myself about the Disney movie The Lion King. I had just seen it with some schoolmates and returning from the theater with the mother of some of these same, we were engaged in a conversation over the alleged presence of "New Age" ideas in the movie. My friends, which were at that time, and I assume still are, ardent protestants, lambasted the movie along these grounds. I, who had enjoyed the movie thoroughly, remained silent, until unable to keep quiet any longer said, "It's just a movie!" Meaning, that the movie was meant to be enjoyed and these philistines had failed to appreciate this. The mother of some of the philistines was in the drivers seat and called over her shoulder to me that a movie is never just a movie but that it is laden with (and here I am paraphrasing) ideological content. If by saying that she meant me to dislike her intensely, she succeeded.

It, is, of course, an old debate. What is the role of art in the Church, and what is a Christian response to art? It is a debate that has raged at least since St. Bernard of Clairvaux attacked the excess of the Benedictine order. The role of the arts are more undefined than ever in the Church. We like to let the secular culture take care of our entertainment and aesthetic diversions. This of course, extends to the upcoming movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

This blog entry has gotten sidetracked. I'll have to pick up all the threads in the future. But we are definitely on to something here.

A New Liturgy

2005-11-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of posts over at Pontifications, one by Al Kimel titled Re-enchanting the Mass and another by Anthony Esolen called On the Proposed Changes to the Roman Missal have given me a lot of hope for the Catholic Church. Supposedly, there is a new translation of the Latin rite in the works which will bring the language of the liturgy more in keeping with the Latin by making the translation more literal rather than "dynamically equivalent." With the jettisoning of dynamic equivalence we will be able to say things like "And with your spirit" rather than the tepid "And also with you." These changes will make it much more like the Rite I liturgy practiced by the Anglican-Episcopal Church in the Book of Common Prayer, which in my opinion, is among the most beautiful of all liturgical expressions. With this change, whenever it comes, I will rejoice greatly, as I deeply regret losing contact with the Rite I when I cross the Tiber.

Equally interesting though is the argument that is being made that the new translation of the rite will bring about more devout responses from the laity, since by taking out the everyday language, the mass will be taken out of an everyday experience and become more deliberate, and hopefully, more pious. The comparison has also been made to the way poetry functions, that it does so by attenuating language making it special, even opaque so that it means more than what it says, so that how it means is as important as what it means.

What it suggests of course is that the content--worship--cannot be separated from the means--words, music, gesture, just like you can't separate water from a water baloon or from a glass and still have a joke and a drink. You have a puddle, which means something else again. Instead forms are being stripped away and nothing is left because the meaning needs the form for it to exist. It becomes incarnate in the form.

It's a heady topic, one that I could only begin to scratch the surface of here. But I am glad to know that changes are afoot. I only want to know when will the new liturgy arrive? And when will they stop making us sing those insipid modern hymns?

Why don't Catholics go to confession anymore?

2005-11-21T08:25:00.000-05:00

Confession.jpg
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Andrew Santella in an article at Slate asks why have Roman Catholics quit going to confession? I'd be curious to know the answer myself. Santella's answer--that it's just too much work--seems reasonable. But why is it too much work? Why is it that in the earlier part of the last century confession was a regular part of Catholic worship and now people don't deem it to be a vital part of their salvation?

Since I am not yet fully Catholic, confession is not yet a part of my spiritual life. I went to confession once at an Anglo-Catholic church and found the whole thing terribly awkward and uncomfortable--rather like going to the dentist, which I also don't enjoy. But necessary all the same.

I'd be curious to know other people's thoughts on confession.

(Incidentally, my illustration is a detail of Rogier van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, 1445-50)

And your lucky numbers are...

2005-11-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

Lotto nos 11-17-05.jpg
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Your future would be a lot brighter if, say, you won $130 mil.

Today's Fortune is...

2005-11-17T21:17:00.000-05:00

Fortune 11-17-05.jpg
Originally uploaded by tand01.

In case you haven't gotten Chinese take-out this week, here's the contents of my fortune cookie.

Mind-Bending Illusions

2005-11-16T17:39:00.000-05:00

I saw this over at ...Perceptions... and then tracked down the original site. These are some crazy, crazy optical (or "visual," more properly) illusions.

Theology of the Body

2005-11-14T10:13:00.000-05:00

My friend MM has started her own 'blog called Theology of the Body. She has promised to use her virtual internet forum as a medium to bring into the Church. Well done, I say. Her title is intriguing. One wonders if she'll use it to address postmodern ideologies regarding the body as a locus of power relationships.

New Music

2005-11-14T09:58:00.000-05:00

I discovered a new musician this past week--Abigail Washburn. She plays the banjo and her music is sort of Alison Krauss/Appalachian Mountain music meets Chinese folk music. It's pretty enjoyable over all. You can listen to her interview via Podcast from her site or from iTunes, where, of course, you can also buy her album. It's called Song of the Traveling Daughter.

The lyrics are charged with a lot of biblical imagery, but I don't know if that is the residue of the genre she is working in or the result of true belief. She espouses what she calls the New Feminism and deliberately courts ambiguity in her songs/interviews. Let me know what y'all think.

Recent Paintings

2005-11-14T09:55:00.000-05:00

Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Yet another...

Recent Paintings

2005-11-14T09:54:00.000-05:00

Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Here is the finished painting from the one below. I am not entirely sure it was made better by continuing to paint on it.

More Recent Paintings

2005-11-08T08:49:00.001-05:00

More Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

More Recent Paintings

2005-11-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

More Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

More Recent Paintings

2005-11-08T08:48:00.001-05:00

More Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

More Recent Paintings

2005-11-08T08:48:00.000-05:00

More Recent Paintings
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Some recent paintings of my own making

2005-11-07T21:39:00.002-05:00

Some recent paintings of my own making
Originally uploaded by tand01.

This is a work in progress--underpainting, I suppose. Very recently I have discovered what a huge difference good gesso makes. I've been using Gamblin Oil Painting Ground and so far, can't recommend it enough.

Some recent paintings of my own making

2005-11-07T21:39:00.001-05:00

Some recent paintings of my own making
Originally uploaded by tand01.

Some recent paintings of my own making

2005-11-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

Some recent paintings of my own making
Originally uploaded by tand01.

A long time between 'blogs

2005-11-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

It has been too long, I know, since my last blog entry, as members of my (very) small but (very) avid readership have let me know. I am trying to rectify that fault.

October, however, proved to be a busy month, and I am sure that November will be no different. October centered primarily around preparing a paper on Stuart Davis at the South Eastern College Art Conference (SECAC)'s annual meeting, this year in Little Rock, AR. That giant ball of stress has finally unknotted itself from my stomach allowing now for more urgent balls of stress to tie themselves up in its place.

SECAC, though, held a couple of surprises. No less than two people (out of four) in my session presented papers on issues relating to Catholic art in the 20th century--an issue of particular intrest to me, but one which I have had up until now little opportunity to indulge. I also heard a fascinating paper on the use of relics in extreme circumstances during the building of the Cathedral of St. Denis. All-in-all it was good time, but I am gladder now that it is over.

In other news, my conversion proceeds apace, which is to say that I continue at it still. It has been nearly two months since the process began and sometimes I feel it is moving far too slowly for my tastes. Easter still seems a long way off, but not so far off that I feel like that there is much about Catholicism which is not expressed--e.g. many points of doctrine and of faith (like the creed) are not really elaborated upon. It occurs to me that this may be remedied after Christmas when we move from the pre-Catecumenate period to the Catecumenate period.

My experiene with Catholicism so far has led me to the conclusion that many of the "cradle Catholics" I have met are extremely uninformed about what they believe. I find this to be, well, distressing. Protestantism--aside from what I feel are its manifold flaws--has at least gone about thoroughly indoctrinating its members to such an extent that they generally are equipped to answer questions about what they believe. Perhaps my understanding of this will change as time goes on and as I move closer to actually entering the RC Church.

Fresh Air Scrutinizes Gays and the Priesthood

2005-10-05T12:24:00.000-04:00

In light of the forthcoming Vatican ruling to ban homosexuals from Catholic seminaries, Terry Gross of Fresh Air is interviewing two priests this afternoon, one gay and the other a long-time friend of Pope Benedict XVI.

At least on of the interviews will be available online, but both will air this afternoon beginning at 3 PM EST on your local NPR station. You can also listen through iTunes Radio on WNYC-FM at 3, or on WNYC-AM at 7 PM.

What to do with a blog

2005-10-05T09:01:00.000-04:00

When one gets a blog the question inevitably arises as to what one does with said blog. I have decided in part to make my blog an ongoing series of updates on my conversion to Roman Catholicism. I am currently a part of an RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) group at my local parish (the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart here in Richmond, Va.). I hope eventually to outline all of my reasons for converting, but ultimately the only reason that anyone ever "crosses the Tiber" is because the Holy Spirit is leading them to do so. So I feel it must be with me. I was told, however, that the rite of initiation is a process of discernment, wherein one discerns whether or not the Holy Spirit is guiding one into Catholicism. Despite the fact that I want to say that the answer is, "Yes, of course!" I must admit that it is necessary for me to be humble and wait on the Lord for Him to exercise His will in my life rather than attempt to barge into the Church and exert my own will in the guise of obedience. My guess is is that it only seems tricky.

Fixed gear mania

2005-10-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

For reasons about which I myself am unclear, I have decided to get a track bike. For those of you not in the know, a track bike is a road bike with only one gear. This gear is "fixed," which means--as near as I can figure--that the drive train is permanently engaged. You cannot coast on a fixed gear as you might on a regular bike because the pedals will turn of their own volition. Also, track bikes are not usually equipped with breaks, breaking being incompatible with coolness. The rider stops the bike by pedalling backwards. These bikes were originally intended (and are still used) for velodrome racing, but they have also become chic among bicycle messengers. Apparently the stripped down aesthetic appeals to their alternative-culture lifestyle. Or maybe it is more convenient. Or perhaps both.

The stripped down aesthetic is certainly what appeals to me. Also the stripped down price, since fixies are available for like half the price of a multi-gear road bike. I have narrowed my choice down to two, so far as I can see at the moment: A Bianchi Pista or a Raleigh Rush Hour. The difference between the two bikes seems almost indicipherable, although the distinction probably lies in that esoteric bicycling concept, "geometry."

The whole thing has become something of an obsession with me of late. My guess is that once I actually get one of these bikes, then the obsession will really begin.

But in the meantime, these totally crazy people on their fixies should keep you entertained.

Gov. Pataki Bans Freedom (Center)

2005-09-29T08:08:00.000-04:00

The controversy over what to do with Ground Zero continues. Because the International Freedom Center, a museum that was planned to be part of the site of World Trade Center, has not promised to do nothing that would "denigrate America," Pataki has evicted them from the site.

It surprises me that the IFC did not protest and claim a violation of their First Amendment Rights. But what is more mysterious is in what way was Pataki (and presumably others) concerned that the IFC would denigrate freedom/America? By lionizing the terrorists? Unlikely. By presenting a divergent viewpoint from Pataki/Giuliani/Republican party? Possibly. But the fact that the governor can evict a museum devoted to freedom on the possibility that they might exercise their freedom of expression shows what a slippery word freedom is.

What is really troublesome about all this is not that the center was evicted--that may have been for the best, ultimately--but that "freedom" is being used in some sort of neo-Hegelian sense. The NY Times writes that,

The Freedom Center, picked for the memorial site by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was envisioned as a living memorial in which the story of Sept. 11, 2001, would be told in the context of the worldwide struggle for freedom through the ages.

You can read the NY Times article here and let me know what you think.

Richmond makes headlines (unfortunately)

2005-08-19T18:00:00.000-04:00

In this hilarious, but saddenning account of people gone totally berserk, we definitely have to wonder what the world is coming to.

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

Here it is on CNN.com.

Welcome to Eye & Mind!

2005-08-14T23:41:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends:

Welcome to my blog! To inaugurate my entry into the blogosphere, I am posting one of my favorite pictures, a photograph I took of Antonio Gaudi's Church of the Sagrada Familia in 2004.

Stay tuned for more developments!