"The Voyage of Life: Manhood."

Thomas Cole is one of my favorite American painters. And while his allegorical paintings are not subtle, they are beautifully-composed and always remind you of his mastery of landscapes.

Here is "Manhood," from "The Voyage of Life" cycle.

 

 

Werner Herzog: maybe not the world's most interesting man.

But the German director/actor is definitely a very interesting man.

Once, long ago, he was just another Euro arthouse film-maker, the creator of malarial marvels such as Aguirre, Wrath of God, Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo. Today, he is a brand name, a meme, the mad professor from central casting with his clipped accent, deliberate manner and sudden explosions of Old Testament rage. He must occasionally feel that he’s playing the role of Werner Herzog in someone else’s movie.

“No,” he says. “I play parts in films. And normally it’s villains. I have to spread fear among the audience, that’s what I do. But, yes, I’ve also done more stylised things, like guest roles on The Simpsons. Also, my voice in documentaries is in some ways a stage voice – I’ve found a voice the audience understands and likes. And also I live the life of 20 or 30 different Herzogs out there on the internet. There are a lot of impostors. Voice imitators. If you find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter it’s a forgery, an invented persona. Some are hilarious, some are silly, some are mediocre.” He clears his throat and regroups. “So to answer your original question, no but yes. I understand that the representation of self is not as it used to be.”

The Monument Purge and Artistic Intent.

There is a solution to the monument vandalization wars hinted at here in this piece by Professor David W. Blight, author of a recent and well-received biography of Frederick Douglass.

Blight defends the continued placement of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington D.C. And while I disagree with the declaration that the statue is inherently racist, he makes some excellent points about chronological superiority.

Memory is always about the politics of the present, but the righteous present is not always right.

Do not tear down this monument. I fully understand that protests are not forums for complexity; current demonstrations are the results of justifiable passion and outrage. It is reasonable to clear our landscape of public commemoration of the failed, four-year slaveholders’ rebellion to sustain white supremacy known as the Confederacy, even if it doesn’t erase our history. But the Freedmen’s Memorial is another matter. For those contemplating the elimination of this monument, including D.C.’s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), please consider the people who created it and what it meant for their lives in a century not our own. We ought not try to purify their past and present for our needs.

A huge parade involving nearly every black organization in the city preceded the dedication of the monument on April 14, 1876. The procession included cornet bands, marching drum corps, youth clubs in colorful uniforms and fraternal orders. Horse-drawn carriages transported master of ceremonies and Howard University law school dean, John Mercer Langston, and the orator of the day, Frederick Douglass, a resident of that neighborhood. Representatives of the entire U.S. government sat in the front rows at the ceremony; the occasion had been declared a federal holiday. President Ulysses S. Grant, members of his Cabinet, members of the House and Senate and justices of the Supreme Court all attended.

The $20,000 used to build the monument had been raised among black Americans, most of them former slaves. A former slave woman, Charlotte Scott, had donated the first $5. The sculptor, Thomas Ball, lived and worked in Italy. The model for the kneeling slave, Archer Alexander — a former slave — was photographed numerous times and had his pictures sent to Ball. Ball believed he depicted Alexander as an “agent in his own resistance,” an assumption of course roundly debated to this day.

. . .

 Rather than take down this monument to Lincoln and emancipation, create a commission that will engage new artists to represent the story of black freedom from one generation to the next. Let today’s imaginations take flight. Perhaps commission a statue of Douglass himself delivering this magnificent speech. So much new learning can take place by the presence of both past and present. As a nation, let’s replace a landscape strewn with Confederate symbols with memorialization of emancipation. Tearing down the Freedmen’s Memorial would be a terrible start for that epic process.

I think Bright's argument that we need more monuments is a superb one, and worth implementing. And in-housing it for American artists is ideal. I wish that had been done for the King Memorial, whose Chinese origins are obvious in a stern, distant sculpture more fitting for a Maximum Leader.

Where I think he trips up is in arguing that the sculpture was racist in conception. That seems flatly-wrong, not to mention unfair. It indicts the scupltor, first as a liar, and then with the damning label by assigning motives--and that only after viewing the piece with contemporary (and dare I say academic?) lenses. At a minimum, the emancipated slave is depicted with dignity, preparing to rise to the freedom he received from emancipation.

To assume racism is to give the game away to the vandals.

It reminds me of the discussion of some of the works of one of my favorite American artists, Thomas Hovenden. Hovenden was a 19th Century painter of Irish extraction, and he did a large number of portraits on subjects historical and contemporary. He is most famous for "The Last Moments of John Brown," which has become iconic. Portraits of African-Americans became popular at the time, and Hovenden did his share. Below are ones called "Contentment," and "Dem Was Good Ole Times." Remember to click for better detail.

I can hear you cringing at the title of the second one, and I do, too. And there are those who got tense with the first one:

"Contentment"? In a time of increasing legal restrictions and the reversal of the gains of Reconstruction?

But let's bracket those reactions for a moment and look at the subjects.

The persons in each portrait are that--persons, depicted in moments of domestic life.

The cringe-inducing Joel-Chandler-Harris-esque titles (yes, plural--there are others, alas, in Hovenden's oeuvre) aside, there is nothing dehumanizing or caricatured about the figures themselves. Their garb is different, but it was accurate for the time. And each one appears like a real person--caught in a quiet or happy moment.

You can argue that they were depicted in poor, threadbare clothes, but Hovenden portrayed Breton peasants similarly. Poverty is no respecter of color.

And even though explanation and context are usually met with righteous howling, I'm going to give you them anyway:

Hovenden's black models were his neighbors in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. It was the home of his wife's family, and a renowned hotbed of abolitionist sentiment before the War. Which would neatly explain the presence of African-American neighbors. And Hovenden instructed, among others, Henry Ossawa Tanner, a pioneering African-American painter, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

So while the horrid caricature of the happy black man or woman who allegedly fondly remembered the allegedly-benevolent age of slavery would grow and be eagerly spread by the same folks who gave us Lost Cause historiography, that's not remotely what Hovenden did.

Nor was it remotely what Thomas Ball did with the sculpture based on Archer Alexander. By calling each artist's work "racist," there's really no reason to spare their works from the dustbin any more than there is to spare a Confederate monument.

And say what you will about Confederate monuments: every last one of them is innocent of the charge of racist depictions of black men and women.

The Transfiguration.

Again, embiggen by clicking, if you are so inclined.

The Gospel passage is obvious, but it's essential to remember the theophanies involving Moses (here also) and Elijah.

See also 2 Peter 1:3-4.

 

I like this icon.

Allegory of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Tree of Life by Father Andrew Tregubov.

You can click to embiggen.


For the curious, it is cropped from the cover of this book. See also Rev. 22:1-2.

Hipsters annoy me.

But I have to admit, this Renoir protest is funny--if annoyingly stupid:

On Monday, beginning around noon, Max Geller led six friends and a couple strangers in a protest at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The target of their ire? The art of the celebrated French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who’s been dead since 1919.

“Rosy cheeks are for clowns, do your job take them down,” they chanted as they stood at the end of the museum’s horseshoe driveway on Huntington Avenue for about an hour. Signs they held read: “Treacle harms society! Remove all Renoir Now,” “God hates Renoir,” “Renoir sucks!”

...

Amidst the satire are provocative questions: Who gets to decide what gets featured in museums? What sort of standards should museums follow? How does the judgment of art change over time?

If you probe Geller’s dislike of Renoir, he says Renoir was not only a mediocre painter, but also a bad, anti-Semitic person. He alleges that wealthy, powerful people collected Renoir’s art to whitewash dirty deeds they committed to amass their fortunes—hiring private police forces to violently suppress union organizing, real estate practices that excluded African-Americans from neighborhoods. “They use Renoir to placate the public into not taking action against their usury and avarice,” Geller says. “I want people to know that’s not going unnoticed.”

But to make that point, Geller accuses the Museum of Fine Arts of not being elitist enough.

So, it's more a protest of the people who like Renoir, then? Yep--that is elitism. Ultimately, I'm left wondering what Geller would replace Renoir with. I imagine it would be utter crap.

Thought for the day.

"Reality" TV is professional wrestling for people who think they're too classy for professional wrestling.

There are certain advantages...

...to not giving a crap.

Home Fields, by John Singer Sargent.

I think I need a hobby, and I'm leaning towards woodworking, with an eye to eventually making furniture. Seriously. The last is a long term goal, but I'm interested in just the rudiments of working with, say, oak or maple.

Anybody have suggestions/tips for starting up?

A truly superb use for your television.

My wife and I have an insane nightlife: after the kids are down, we frequently spend our time together watching DVDs from The Teaching Company's "Great Courses" catalogue. What is TTC? Basically, TTC offers a college-level lecture series in CD, download or DVD format on a variety of subjects. The lectures last 30 minutes each and range from six lectures to 48 for the more massive surveys. Depending on subject matter, some are offered only in video format (especially those involving the arts, visual sciences, math, and the like).

Yeah, we also have six children, so...

But anyhoo. Every year, about tax return time, we pick up a deeply discounted video set or two from TTC. Don't let the list price deter you--they are frequently offered at 70% off. Fair warning, though: once you buy from them, you are on their mailing list forever. "We want you back!" is a frequent missive--most hilariously sent right after a purchase. They're rather like Sports Illustrated that way--with the exception that TTC is worthwhile whereas SI no longer is.

We have just about finished Professor William Cook's 12 hour lecture series on The Cathedral.

It is magnificent. Prof. Cook's course surveys cathedrals from their beginning as re-purposed secular Roman basilicas up through the late "flamboyant" Gothic era, with a few modern gothic structures in the New World thrown in. Cook is able to pack a lot of information into a half hour, and he has a superb eye for detail. Also, he's a practicing Catholic and is able to deftly and correctly convey the theological significance of the art and architecture. There is considerable focus on France--immortal Chartres gets three lectures--which makes sense given that France was the birthplace of Gothic. But he is careful to visit other regions as well, and helps you to see church art and architecture in a new light.

If you have the opportunity, see it--it is well worth your time.

The crossing tower of the medieval gothic masterpiece 

that is Ely Cathedral, featured in the lecture series.

Pleased to meet you--I see you've met my favorite cartoon man.

I never would have imagined, but guess who does the voice of Phineas and Ferb's father from the titular animated series?

Richard O'Brien, the creator and star (Riff Raff) of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Not Gorbachev in a Pizza Hut commercial, but on that side of the Head Asplode meter.

And in royal news...

...and sorry, House of Stuart legitimists, it has to do with the descendants of the "Import-A-Kraut" policy the English used in the bad ol' days...

...the Duchess of Cambridge's official portrait was revealed.

To less than universal acclaim, he says with English understatement.

It looks like it is getting a slightly--but only slightly--better reception than Graham Sutherland's official portrait of Churchill ("It makes me look like a half-wit," he grumbled), which the Missus eventually destroyed.

I dunno--it doesn't look that bad.

You're still visiting!

Well, thank you. Since I'm as reliable as a rain dance in the posting department.

Just when I think I can go at a steady clip, something of higher priority jumps in. Speaking of which: prayers for my mother-in-law would be appreciated, as she had a health scare, and has since transitioned from independent living to life in a decent group home. It was a turbulent couple of weeks in late November-early December.

I recently de-activated my FB account for an indefinite period, so that should be one less screeny distraction.

I have found another, but it is more pragmatic: I'm indexing the Price Book Archives, and it is a daunting task. I am using LibraryThing, which is superb.

But, Lord--I have a lot--a LOT--of books. Here's my start, which I update with great frequency. Please note it is by entry, which can (and does) mean that there are sometimes multiple volumes (encyclopedias, etc.) grouped under one entry.

And, yes--my Much Better Half has correctly diagnosed that part of my motivation is "a d-ck-measuring contest." Sure--I'm bragging, to a certain extent. But it is nice to have the ability to sort, categorize and just flat-out keep track of books.

It's still a wonderful life.

But Sean Dailey points out in a fine piece that it's not as simple as it appears:

Such an analysis may strike fans of the movie as a bit off, given that, on a certain level, it is a cornball movie. It’s a Wonderful Life has corny dialogue, corny humor, slapstick, hijinks and low-jinks. But beneath all that, it also is a very dark film. Opening with George’s friends praying that he can be found before he does the unthinkable, death hangs over it, and each death, even the deaths George prevents, sends him in directions he does not want to go, pulling him further and further from his dreams and ambitions, turning him into every bit the “warped, frustrated young man” that Mr. Potter says he is.

Read it all.

It's the Artists!

Some are describing this as "vandalism" or even "violence":

A truck driver from Montana who is accused of destroying a controversial piece of artwork at a public art gallery in Loveland was scheduled to appear before a judge through a video link on Thursday afternoon.

Kathleen Folden allegedly screamed "How can you desecrate my lord?" on Wednesday at Loveland Museum and Art Gallery just before breaking some plexiglass surrounding the print of "The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals" with a crowbar. She then allegedly tore the print and sat on the floor until police arrived.

"Romantic Cannibals" was a 12-panel lithograph that depicted Jesus involved involved a sex act and it also included comic book characters, Mexican pornography, Mayan symbols and ethnic stereotypes. It was part of an 82-print exhibit by 10 artists that opened in mid-September and was scheduled to run through late last month.

"Criminal mischief." Feh! How narrowly bourgeois. How typically philistine.

Nay! Miss Folden is an artist herself! Mischief? Nonsense! She was engaged in a transgressive dialogue with Prof. Chagoya, expressing her interpretive viewpoint via sound, motion, blank verse, creative impact and metaphoric exploration. Clearly Chagoya is suffering from a cramped, narrowly conventional viewpoint which needs to be shaken up by bold new approaches and vistas. Open your mind, Chagoya! Shatter the mental shackles of your quaintly upper middle class academic lifestyle, and interact with the real working class, as exemplified by daring avant-gardists like Folden! If you dare.

Okay. Sarcasm off. If only Chagoya could take off the clown nose for five seconds:

Chagoya told CBS4 by phone he was upset to learn the news that his art had been attacked. He says his work is a critique of corruption in religious institutions, not people's beliefs.

"I don't expect people to agree with me but let's have a civil discussion, you know. I've been getting a lot of hate mail that doesn't have any logical discussion behind it," Chagoya said.

Yeaaaah. He was not trying to attack beliefs by portraying Jesus in a sex act, but rather attacking institutions. That might work on Anne Rice, but if you are getting more oxygen, it's bullshit.

Let's try it this way: I want to dialogue with Chagoya about his Mexican clown pr0n, using his approach. I'll have to open the "civil discussion" with "Hello, Professor. I understand your mother was the town bike before she died of syphilis and your dad was an energetic molester of dairy cattle. What were you thinking when you barfed up that crap you miscall 'art'?"

Interesting...

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Your mileage will vary.

An artistic discovery.

We made another excursion to the Detroit Institute of Arts yesterday. Whilst chasing Louis around (Wide! Open! Spaces!), I stumbled upon this find by Thomas Hovenden in the DIA's matchless American art wing, In Hoc Signo Vinces:


I double-took, and recognized exactly what period of history it depicted.

No Googling/Binging/Asking/etc.

How about you--from what almost universally forgotten event in history is this painting based upon? Here's a hint: look carefully at the sign being sewn on his jacket.

It's a spectacular work in person. Hovenden was a great one--he's also responsible for the powerful and more-famous Last Moments of John Brown.

Update--Here is the insignia being stitched to the man's vest:

Answer: The Revolt of the Vendee, and the subsequent genocide, the first of the modern era, done in the name of a secular ideology. The first of a very, very horrific string.

I'm suffering from the sin of envy.

Jay Anderson gets way, way better weirdo commenters than I do.

This is a symphony of Catholic-bashing purple prose and a thundering fanfare of tinfoil-hattery.

These are actually consecutive sentences--or at least clauses--[WHIPLASH WARNING]:

NYC top drop outs: Hispanic 32%, Black 25%, Italian 20%. NYC top illegals: Ecuadorean, Italian, Polish. Ate glis-glis but blamed plague on others, now lettuce coli. Their bigotry most encouraged terror yet they reap most security funds. Rabbi circumcises lower, Pope upper brain. Tort explosion by glib casuistry. Hollywood Joe Kennedy had Bing Crosby proselytise. Bazelya 1992 case proves PLO-IRA-KLA links. Our enemy is the Bru666elles Sineurabia Axis and the only answer is alliance with Israel and India. They killed six million Jews, a million Serbs, half a million freemasons, a quarter million Gypsies, they guided the slaughter of Assyrians and Armenians, and promoted the art of genocide throughout the world.

He's trying to say something, I just know it.

It's like a glittering chandelier of crazy, and there's plenty more where that came from.

Come on, folks, step it up--I need a better grade of Bizarre around here, and the occasional flamethrowing driveby from VN contributors just isn't going to cut it any more.

"Because it's become art. I call it Entrope': With Gourds."

"It's a statement about how all things are passing."

"Daddy, mine has a river of mold and dirty water in it."

"Dead mold, sweetheart. The freezing weather's almost certainly killed it."

"Eeeewwww."

Fine, I'll get rid of the jack o'lanterns on the stoop.