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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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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

Manga Catechesis

SOMETIMES I JUST DO NOT KNOW what to think. This is one of them.// A comic book, Habemus Papam, featuring Benedict XVI as a manga-style superhero will be handed out to all the ardent juveniles who show up in Madrid for World Youth Day. It runs about a week, from August 16 to 21. You might think that gives the beardless young enough time to read a real book. But why read if you can get the gist of things just by looking at stylized graphics done in the style of trendy Japanese comics? Continue Reading

On the Grid with Lloyd Martin

LLOYD MARTIN LIVES AND WORKS IN RHODE ISLAND. By no means does that permit anyone to call him a New England painter. There is nothing regional about his painting. His achievement embodies Robert Hughes’ observation—made some twenty years ago—that Manhattan is no longer a creative center. A marketing center, certainly; but vital for the development of a painter’s talent? Not at all. Martin has been exhibiting annually with Stephen Haller Gallery for a full decade. Given the diagrammatic, linear rigor of work that grants no compositional quarter to expressive accidents, it is an impressive production schedule. Continue Reading

Postscript

WHEN A READER HAS TO MAKE MY POINT for me, I know I failed to do it myself. John_L, in his comment to the previous post, has it just right: The true target of that post was the prevailing preoccupation with forestalling, denying or outwitting our mortality. Obsession with hand sanitizer, organic food, and bottled water are just various manifestations of that preoccupation.buy Overnight Drugs generic https://buynoprescriptionrxxonline.net over the counter//// In themselves, there is nothing objectionable about any of these things. Continue Reading

Independence Day

LOST IN THE CHEERY GREETING, “Happy 4th of July,” is the solemnity of Independence Day and the magnificence of our Declaration of Independence. //That came home to me yesterday at the grocery check-out. The young man at the register handed me my change with a mechanical, “Have a good one.” (There is a phrase to set the teeth on edge.) I responded with, “Happy Independence Day.” He looked startled for a second before muttering, “Oh . . . yeah.” So, please, for his sake and that of all his brethren, let us mark the day. Continue Reading
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