ROGER SCRUTON’S HANDBOOK OF ESSAYS, Beauty (2009), is more appealing in its parts than in the overarching thrust of his argument. His insistence that beauty—the quest for and recognition of it—is a function of the rational mind rings off key. Few of us are unfamiliar with the experience of being overwhelmed by beauty of some kind. At the same time, what moves one of us, however deeply, does not necessarily move another, equally rational, fellow. But setting argument aside for the moment, Beauty, like everything else Scruton writes, is worth reading, worth owning. Continue Reading

Sacred and Profane, Mainly

Maureen Mullarkey

February 20, 2011

HOW TO BEGIN? Objects of Devotion and Desire: Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art does not make it easy. I could take the high road and start this way: “Memory of the sacred lingers even among secular moderns who proclaim themselves celebrants of a totally profane world.” Or I could be up front about the unbearable shallowness of being (an academic in the arts) that skews its subject into a myopic caricature of religious culture. The exhibition concerns itself with correspondence between certain contemporary artworks and ancient reliquaries. Continue Reading

French Pictorial Art in 1500

Maureen Mullarkey

February 18, 2011

SATCHEL PAIGE WAS THE GREATEST PITCHER in the old Negro Leagues before he graced the Major Leagues in 1948. He was fond of advising younger ballplayers: “Don’t look over your shoulder. You might see someone gaining on you.” That comes to mind every so often in Chelsea where it is impossible not to meet waves of artists watching what the next guy is doing. Time out, fellas, please. Monitoring one’s contemporaries has certain career uses. But in today’s anything-goes production climate, there is little for the spirit to feed on. Continue Reading

In the Tonalist Mood

Maureen Mullarkey

February 2, 2011

Tonalism developed from two European springs: the French Barbizon School, by way of its American disciples, and Aestheticism. Practiced from the mid-19th century into the early 20th, it was less a coherent movement than a shared sensibility among Europhile American artists. Chief among these were George Inness and his followers and James McNeil Whistler, American expatriate and evangelist of tonal harmony. Whistler’s low-toned atmospheric arrangements, those ethereal nocturnes and harmonies, were a prime impetus behind the spread of a loose convergence of styles that did not even have a name until 1890s. Continue Reading

Women & The New Moon, Still

Maureen Mullarkey

January 25, 2011

WALPURGIS NIGHT IS STILL A WAYS AWAY, but already the witches are out. Some weeks back, I mentioned an exhibition in a community art center in the Berkshires. My reward for that is to have been placed on the mailing list of an organization that calls itself Gathered Resources of Women (GROW). //// To herald the January new moon. a broadcast arrived announcing the advent something called Red Tent Temple, scheduled to land in Pittsfield on January 8th. It was for all women, ages 13 and up. Continue Reading

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Roger Scruton’s Olympia

Sacred and Profane, Mainly

French Pictorial Art in 1500

In the Tonalist Mood

Women & The New Moon, Still

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