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

Papal Tweets, AWOL

Maureen Mullarkey

February 28, 2013

A lively and curious-minded reader of First Things just forwarded a link to an article on CNET News broadcasting the fact that Benedict XVI’s postings to Twitter ended today, the last day of his tenure as pope. The article is here . The writer, Chris Matyszczyk, displays a bit of disappointment: “It’s hard not to think that the decision to remove Pope Benedict’s tweets was taken by a vacant seat, an apparatchik of absolutism.” It is equally feasible to think that the removal of the tweets was done at Benedict’s own request. Continue Reading

The Sixties, Still Breathing

Maureen Mullarkey

February 27, 2013

Once more for emphasis: Contemporary art, properly defined, is simply the art of our contemporaries. The rest is marketing. The trademark product sold under the term contemporary artpromotes an ethos—a posture and set of mental habits— fueled by academia. Contemporary art is the academic art of our time. Its reach is as global as the market that distributes it. And political to the core. Here in my inbox is a press release from CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. A tabernacle for contemporary art, the museum houses six-to-seven hundred works from the 1960s onward. Continue Reading

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The Serpent Spent

“Performativity of Gender” on Show

CAPC Museé (Cont’d)

Papal Tweets, AWOL

The Sixties, Still Breathing

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