Trivia question: Do you know this girl? Of course you do. But who knew just how contemporary that Mona Lisa smile could be? A stylized, stock expression in Leonardo’s day, it suddenly looks quite current removed from its Renaissance setting and inserted into a post-modern one. The bloody amputation might be a bit over the top, but the figure’s facial mien—part simper, part sneer—would do nicely in a Vogue photo shoot. Not quite as enigmatic as it has been deemed down the centuries. Continue Reading

Gargoyles and Gaffes

Maureen Mullarkey

March 10, 2013

You do not have to be a communicant to adopt one of Milan Cathedral’s one hundred thirty five gargoyles. Any cosmopolitan aesthete with a spare $123,000 can help restore the Duomo’s medieval downspouts. Splendid in its ecumenicity, the archdiocese’s fundraising scheme invites “citizens of the world” to earn an engraved plaque under their very own adoptee. Citizens of the world —a utopian term that has taken on a certain ugliness over time. It runs counter to the principle of subsidiarity that is a core precept of Catholic social thought. Continue Reading

The Serpent Spent

Maureen Mullarkey

March 7, 2013

Earlier ages were better at pictorial depictions of evil because they believed in its existence. Our own therapeutic society prefers to think of evil as an outmoded concept that gives way to material and psychological explanations. A strain of received wisdom has it that the concept of sin is as outmoded as phrenology. Wickedness, properly understood, is an antique construction, a bit of by-gone make-believe. Or so our psychologized, adjustment-crazed culture would have us think. Were he alive today, Albrecht Durer would be hard put to imagine the 7-headed Beast of the Apocalypse. Continue Reading

“Performativity of Gender” on Show

Maureen Mullarkey

March 4, 2013

We tend to think that the drive to abolish distinctions between the sexes is a relatively recent phenomenon. Asked to date its beginnngs, most of us would likely pick the 1970s, coinciding with the first undergraduate gay and lesbian studies classes at UC Berkeley. But no. The impulse goes back further. It was championed by the British Marxist Christopher St.buy strattera generic https://rxbuyonlinewithoutprescriptionrx.net/strattera.html over the counter John Sprigg, writing under the pseudonym Christopher Caudwell.buy sertraline generic https://rxbuyonlinewithoutprescriptionrx.net/sertraline.html over the counter In the 1930s, he defended a vision of advanced society’s ultimate freedom from biological necessity. Continue Reading

CAPC Museé (Cont’d)

Maureen Mullarkey

March 1, 2013

Guide books recommend the cafe at Bordeaux’s CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art. That is as it should be. Every asparagus soup radical expects a good lunch. Gathered for Think . . . And See , they will want more to eat than attitude . Of the nine participants in this series of speakers, eight out of nine are listed as philosophers. When an art museum sponsors a program that looks like a plenary session of the International Society for Philosophers, you know that ideology, not art making, is the purpose at hand. Continue Reading

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Just For Fun

Gargoyles and Gaffes

The Serpent Spent

“Performativity of Gender” on Show

CAPC Museé (Cont’d)

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