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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Palm Sunday, Then & Now

PALM SUNDAY COMMEMORATES JESUS’ ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM and marks the beginning of Passion Week. It observes the triumphal prelude—so misleading—to bloody days ahead, a time of betrayal, torture, and death. While portrayals of crucifixions continued well into the 20th century, Palm Sunday has largely been ignored by all but a few contemporary artists. Jacob Lawrence is one of the few. He framed the gospel story in terms of a black pastor greeting his flock, with particular tenderness toward the children: // // Romare Beardon, too, phrased the event in terms of the black community. Continue Reading

Censored in United Arab Emirates

CONTEMPORARY CENSORSHIP IS A FUNNY THING. Art that mocks Christianity or displays hostility to Israel, is fine, thank you. But our institutions walk on eggs not to offend Islamic sensibilities. So it is cheering, to a point, to see a petition circulating on the internet to protest the dismissal of Jack Persekian, director of the Sharjah Art Foundation. He had the poor taste to include in the 10th Sharjah Biennial an artwork offensive to the religion of peace.// The artist is Algerian. Continue Reading

David Lynch: Artist as Entrepreneur

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CONTENDER for the title “Full Service Artiste.” At least, H. Niyazi thinks so. Niyazi is the invaluable art history maven and pundit behind Three Pipe Problem, a lively blog aka 3Pipe.net. He nominates David Lynch, included on 3PP’s posted list of key topics—Caravaggio, Georgione, Titian, Vermeer, et alia. (Just why Lynch is sneaked in to the pantheon is something to take up with 3PP. I am just telling.) If you are old enough to remember Twin Peaks,  a top-rated TV serial in the 1990s, you should know Lynch. Continue Reading

James Franco, Artiste

I NEVER WATCH THE ACADEMY AWARDS, not necessarily out of scruple but because I can’t. There is no working TV in my house. (Part scruple, part laziness, on that point.) So I had no idea who James Franco was until I came across Joe Queenan’s description of him in The Weekly Standard:
For decades, Hollywood has been waiting for the full-service artiste—writer, director, producer, screenwriter—who can lay claim to the scepter of Renaissance Man once held by Orson Welles. Woody Allen couldn’t quite pull it off.
Continue Reading

Dolls, Dames and Scholarship

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION features an article on an instructional project by a Hamilton College sophomore. She put some minimal geometry to work to create a life-sized Barbie scaled to the original. The result is a sculpted tutorial intended to let us know that female eating disorders have little to do with food. Just in case we did not already know. //// Still, two things are worth noting. First, the over-sized, over-endowed Barbie is better suited to a Whitney Biennial than an institution of higher play learning. Continue Reading
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