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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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View Through the Fallopian Tubes

For connoisseurs of civilizational decline, the delights keep accumulating. Contemporary art is especially generous in building the case that Spengler had it right. If only he had been an art critic. The ignorance and terminal vulgarity of what passes—still—for feminist art disqualifies most of its practitioners from any claim on civilized attention.Newly arrived is a press release from Ceres Gallery, a women’s not-for-profit collective in New York, announcing a not-so-unique exhibition Meet My Uterus. Vaginas have been over-exposed, laid bare every which way from Sunday. Continue Reading

That Beleaguered Cross Again

JUDGING FROM EMAIL RESPONSES, the accidental cross-shaped form left standing at Ground Zero rouses great ire. All my mail has been sympathetic to the lawsuit against it on the grounds that the cross is not a secular symbol. (I never said it was. I said it resonated beyond sectarian distinctions. Quite a different thought.) It was erected “by CHRISTIANS,” one reader screeched. Some of the mail considers wariness toward Islam “defamatory” and, in the main, just plain not nice. For clarity’s sake, let me take these one at a time, beginning with the (Christian) origins of America’s enthusiastic sectarian religiosity. Continue Reading

The Cross at Ground Zero

ATHEISTS ADMIT THAT ATHEISM IS A BELIEF SYSTEM. It is about time. Atheism is as much a faith-based system as any God-centered religion. The existence of God can neither be proven nor unproven, no matter all the effort expended on debate. Unbelievers assert their own beliefs as ardently as any church-goer. That is the single, dominant thread running through the law suit, filed by pious atheists, against the cross to be raised at Ground Zero. The cross, an accidental formation of steel beams left standing in the 9/11 rubble, is intended for display in the proposed 9/11 Memorial Museum designed for the site.  // NBC covers the suit briefly here:
“This cross is now a part of the official WTC memorial.
Continue Reading

Post-Bollocks

Randy Pausch gave good advice to his computer science students at Carnegie Mellon: When you know you are in pissing contest it, get out of it as fast as you can. So in the Pauschian spirit, I offer this delicious cartoon, sent by Mr. Eyeballs as both a free gift and a chastisement.The previous post grew, in some curious way, out of Arty Bollocks, the earlier waltz over artistic pretension. Just how things sidled into corporate greed, is a bit murky. Continue Reading
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