Art History

El Greco, Messiah of Modernism

Among Platonists, man is mind, intellect, above all else. Man is ordained to think. His province is learning and true wisdom. The rest is flesh and appetite, or, in the phrasing of Timaeus , an Eros of begetting. A common, ignoble thing that resides in the lower precincts of the body and pulls us earthenward, away from our celestial affinity. Christopher Johnson, in the comment section to the previous post, alludes to that ancient polarity. Speaking of El Greco’s St. Martin and the Beggar, he notes that the painting transports the scene from a mere act of charity to an encounter between the mortal and the divine. Continue Reading
Half a Cloak

Today is Veterans Day. It is also the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, patron of soldiers. Martin is my patron saint as well. Back in second grade, when we were asked to pick a saint’s name for Confirmation, I chose Martin. There followed a brief flurry of canonical concern.buy Cymbalta online medstaff.englewoodhealth.org/wp-content/languages/new/ no prescription Was it suitable for a girl to take a male saint’s name? Could she do it? Should she? I was not trying to create a nuisance. Continue Reading
Beauty, the Mantra

Beauty will save the world—a mantra among contemporary Christians issuing from the mouth of a character in nineteenth century Russian fiction. Augustine’s Beauty has already saved the world. Our ransom has been paid. What matters now is whether the world cooperates with its redemption or flouts it. History will tell in the end. The arts of the beautiful are weightless in the balance. They can only scratch at the surface—if that—of moral beauty. But moral beauty is not the artist’s province. Continue Reading
Roger de La Fresnaye, Neglected Knight

Roger de la Fresnaye (1885-1925) painted strikingly personal, luminous, figure compositions between 1912 and his entry into the French army in 1914. They are among the grandest works of the generation of Picasso and Braque. During the 1940s, Duncan Phillips called him a “legendary knight.” Neglected might have been the more accurate adjective, but the noun was apt. La Fresnaye fought on two fronts: in the trenches of World War I, and in the aesthetic battles preceding the war.buy feldene generic https://bloinfobuy.com/feldene.html Continue Reading

The feeling for things in themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures. —Vincent Van Gogh   This is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it. —Psalm 118:24 I love the words of that psalm. They repeat in my heart like a mantra. This is the day —not just today, October 10; not yesterday or tomorrow but the entire span of our days. And the times in which our days are lived. Continue Reading