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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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The Pathos of the MFA, part I

I RECEIVED THE OFFER OF A TEACHING JOB, accepted it, and resigned all in the same day. Yesterday, I opened my computer to find an invitation to teach a graduate class called Art and Culture in a New York art school’s MFA program. It meant leading a weekly 90-minute seminar on assigned readings and attending, together with students, guest lectures by artists chosen by the department. Sounded good. The opportunity to guide and play devil’s advocate to young artists in their twenties and thirties who are committed to painting the figure appealed to me. Continue Reading

The Art of Saving the Planet

THE ARTS ARE SHORT ON PRACTICING CHRISTIANS AND JEWS but long on vegetarians. Even longer on environmentalists. The two go together, like a statue of Mary on one side of a Catholic altar and Joseph on the other. Earlier in May, Victor Davis Hanson wrote that “radical environmentalism died this year. ” Well, why not. If Philip Larkin could place the beginning of sexual intercourse at 1963, this is as good a year as any for the death of Gorism and vegan piety that attaches to it. Continue Reading

Louise Bourgeois, Dead at 98

COMING IN OVER THE TRANSOM LAST NIGHT, and again this morning, were various expressions of pious regret at the death, yesterday, of Louise Bourgeois. “Yet another great loss in the arts” intoned one e-mail. “She will be missed,” said another. Not as an artist. And not by me. Louise Bourgeois has passed into mystery. To that, we rightly bow our heads. “It is meet and just to pray for the dead” was the motto posted in my grade school classroom during November, the month of the Poor Souls. Continue Reading

The West’s Last Sacrilege?

MOST LIKELY, YOU HAVE READ ALL ABOUT the recent theft of five big-ticket paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art. If not, you can catch up here.  And here. Britain’s Daily Mail does well with this sort of thing. Lots of pictures. Its online edition is one of the few sites that illustrated each of the paintings stolen: Picasso’s Pigeon with Peas, Matisse’s Le Pastorale, Braque’s Olive Tree Near Estaque, Modigliani’s Woman With a Fan and Still Life with Chandelier by Leger. Continue Reading

Early Stage Zoophilia?

The Savannah College of Art is known for its no-nonsense commitment to hands-on studio practice. So their most recent broadcast, announcing an open studio night on May 8th, contained a surprise. There were the expected offerings: wheel throwing demos from the ceramics department; an exhibit of new work from the painting faculty; a print making demonstration.  Slipped in was “Animal Logic,” a student exhibit devoted to “investigating human desire to construct relationships with animals.” The show goes on to explore the use of animals as “a paradoxical metaphor” for humans in contemporary art. Continue Reading
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