The gimcrack sounvenirs are adding to the landfill, the churches will one day crumble to dust, I am forver part of the darkness of the world–but also, I hope, of its light.
ARTS
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THE FEAST OF ST. JOSEPH
Notes Lev, “Despite his ubiquity … he has returned to the sidelines of artistic innovation. The statues go unnoticed; his placement at the Nativity, pro forma; his might and authority, almost forgotten. St. Joseph has become so visible as to have become invisible.”
FIBER SCULPTOR JUDITH SCOTT
Did those straitjacketed, swaddled structures represent the trauma of 35 years of institutionalization? Were they meant to telegraph that no matter how deeply the world tries to bury the human spirit, it will rise triumphant and exuberant?
AUTHORITY AND FREEDOM
A work of art, Perl insists, is “an imaginative achievement to which the audience freely responds.”
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
Arthur Birling crows: “Makes all the difference in the world whether we said it in private or it becomes a public scandal.”
“The girl’s dead and we all helped to kill her,” Eric rejoins bitterly. “That’s all that matters.”
MONICA AISSA MARTINEZ: NOTHING IN STATIS
Her women are sturdy, strong, questing, joyful. Of “Portrait of Sara, Head in Profile, Arms Akimbo” (2017), she observes: “Leonardo da Vinci says: The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”
NURSERY MAGIC: THE VELVETEEN RABBIT
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ ” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“DRESS CODES” AT THE AUTRY
As Yves St. Laurent said, “I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity—all I hope for in my clothes.”
RICHARD DIEBENKORN’S OCEAN PARK SERIES
Take, for example, Ocean Park No. 140 (1985). It may not be a landscape, but its two triangular swaths of gorgeous saturated color—dark green and deep blue—to my eye irresistibly evoke land, sea and sky.
VIVA MAESTRO!: COMPOSER GUSTAVO DUDAMEL
Dudamel’s philosophy, work and life constitute a resounding rebuke to those who maintain that art is a frivolous whim in these dark times.
DEAREST SISTER WENDY
On one level, the book can be read as a dialogue about the active versus the contemplative life.
MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN, SCIENTIST AND ARTIST
Read up on this amazing 17th-c. caterpillar obsessive, butterfly aficianado, explorer and artist!
PILGRIMAGE TO THE MUSEUM
Auth finds much to like in Realism, Impressionism, and modern art. He gives a fair read to Picasso, Seurat, Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. He celebrates Salvador Dali’s 1954 “Crucifixion,” which depicts an ascendant, cosmic Christ.
But he’s also clear that the soul searching for God finds little sustenance in art grounded in atheism and secularism.