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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Chords and Discord

Today we hear conga drums, trap sets, bongos, and other drums played not in the style of Monteverdi processions, or Masses by Haydn or Mozart. Instead we hear them just as we would hear them in a bar or dance hall. They are used just as they are in the secular world: to keep a […]

More Fragments on a Motif

Belief in the congruity of aesthetics and morality is widely shared. The conviction presupposes that a developed aesthetic sense points, by some means, to the Good. Or, at least, to an expansive analogy to it. But on the ground, aesthetic impulses exist independently of goodness—which is as close as quotidian reality gets to the Good.buy […]

Time Out for the Ugly

I promised to get back on the subject of beauty. And I will keep the promise, but not today. This is just a demi-post to get us through the weekend. Herewith, a contrarian thought to consider from France’s wildly popular pop singer Serge Gainsbourg: “Ugliness is superior to beauty because it last longer.” We cannot […]

Beauty: Fragment on a Theme

I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher. I am simply a painter whose faith takes color, tone, and bearing from the Catholicism into which I was born. But even a cat can look at a king. From my place—well beneath the box seats of beauty-minded theologians and theological esthetes—I wonder if Hans Urs von […]

Aesthetic Drive

Art is the clearest and most immediate reflection of the spiritual life of a people. It exercises the greatest conscious and unconscious influence on the masses of the people . . . . In its thousandfold manifestations and influences it benefits the nation as whole. ~ Adolph Hitler Hitler was an aesthete. He would have […]

On Keeping Powder Dry

“Woe to me if I do not evangelize” 1 Cor 9:16   You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em Know when to fold ‘em Know when to walk away know when to run You never count your money When you’re sittin’ at the table There’ll be time enough for countin’ When the dealin’s done. […]

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