THE ARTS ARE AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF CHEAP GRACE. Like the ancient Celtic myth of Dagda’s cauldron, it is the pot that never empties. The most recent ladleful of pop spirituality is Dean Radinovsky’s Chapel Americana, a roughly 13 by 17 foot warehouse version of one of the sacred caves the artist had seen on a trip to Crete. Radinovsky completed his site-specific meditation space in 2008. His faux chapel is lined with formless abstract paintings, as vague and spacey as the word spirituality when it shows up in press releases. Continue Reading

The Pathos of the MFA, part I

Maureen Mullarkey

June 23, 2010

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

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Chapel Americana

The Pathos of the MFA, part I

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