Items of Interest, Pillars of Civilization Edition

"I was deeply moved by myself."

Peter Joslin, Ledge, 32 x 24 inches, oil on canvas, 2023, courtesy of the artist

Alexander Adams

, Max Beckmann, Ambiguous Prophet. “He was in many ways exemplary. He was technically skilled (adroitly moving between different mediums, exploiting the potential of each to their fullest); he had an eye for the memorable image; he was a big reader and intellectually curious, willing to absorb new influences and change his position, though not capricious; he worked hard and was greatly ambitious for his art, driven by his outsize ego. After all, he wrote upon contemplating one of his paintings in a museum, ‘I was deeply moved by myself.’”

John Burtka IV, American Statesman. “We must take aesthetics seriously. People are not often persuaded by logic. Rather, they are enchanted by beauty. Rational arguments follow later as a means of supporting their views and validating decisions. It’s an epic tale, drama, and romance that capture people’s imaginations and move them to follow a leader.”

Cleomenes, Fractures in the Regime. “There is no logical end point to the intersectionals’ depravity and viciousness, and Jewish Americans are not their final or even primary target. Lincoln and the Republicans understood that once the principle of slavery was admitted as justifiable on any basis, then no person—of any color—could ever be safe. The same logic applies to the intersectionals and their theory of ‘decolonization.’ If it is acceptable to rape, mutilate, kidnap, and murder women, children, and the helpless elderly because of the sins of their ancestors, then no one, anywhere in this country, will ever be safe again (including the intersectionals themselves).”

Elisabeth Condon, Daisy Face, 2023, Acrylic and mediums on linen, 68 x 110 inches, courtesy of Emerson Dorsch

Artist’s Notebook: Elisabeth Condon. “The artist’s influences are near and far, from her eloborately designed childhood home in California to the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Metropolitan Museum and the furniture Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata crafted from industrial materials.”¹

Peter St Onge

, “Four Pillars of Civilization” Under Attack. “The pillars of civilization are cheap energy, meritocracy, Law and Order, and free speech. And all four of those pillars are currently under attack.”

Joel Kotkin, Multi-culti Reckoning. “The explosion of support for Hamas’s assault on human decency could well turn out to be the high-water mark of the progressive Left. The authoritarian multicultural ideology generated on campuses and transmitted dutifully by the established media has reached its apex and may now begin to descend.”

James Cahill, The chaos of Andy Warhol’s legacy. “The queasy pleasure of Richard Dorment’s Warhol After Warhol is in learning just how much ineptitude can lie behind a bureaucratic façade.”

Christopher F. Rufo

, Claudine Gay’s DEI Empire. “Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, [Harvard president Claudine] Gay commissioned a Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, which released a series of recommendations the following year for engaging in the ‘historical reckoning with racial injustice.’ The recommendations included a mandate to change ‘spaces whose visual culture is dominated by homogenous portraiture of white men.’… Who were these white men and why were they honored in the first place? The report does not say—their race and sex alone provided sufficient justification for their banishment.”

Jill Nathanson, Fluid Bridge, 2022, acrylic and polymers on panel, 44 x 78 in. Courtesy of Berry Campbell Gallery. Photo by Michael Chisolm.

Coming quite soon: What We Talk About When We Talk About Abstraction, a panel discussion with Jill Nathanson, James Little, Carl E. Hazlewood, Harriet Korman, and John Mendelsohn, moderated by Mario Naves, tonight at the Art Students League.

Coming Soon: Peter Joslin will appear in group shows at Blue Mountain Gallery and First Street Gallery in January.

Xico Greenwald, Gray Still Life, 2023, oil on canvas over panel, 47 x 54 inches, courtesy of the artist

Enrolling now: Still Life as Gateway with Avital Burg & Xico Greenwald, January 16-26 at the New York Studio School.

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We are (I promise) in the midst of an Asynchronous Studio Book Club reading of Totality: Abstraction and Meaning in the Art of Barnett Newman by Michael Schreyach. Obtain your copy and jump in.

Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.

Preorders are available for Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard. More information is available at the site for the book.

1. Elisabeth Condon: Tempus Fugit is up at Emerson Dorsch through February 3.