Items of Interest, Questions About Pencils Edition
"We desperately need thinkers of all ages to keep the ideas of the Enlightenment alive."
Joe Fyfe, Whistling in the Dark. “[T]here was a rift in Western art that some thought went from about the 11th century up until Cezanne, where the system of representation was so codified that it left the human imagination bereft, without a recourse to exercise true inventiveness. What I have come to think of Josephsohn is caught up in this one idea, which has allowed me an entrance into art of the Romanesque period that I would not have ever known how to understand without his work.”
Justin Murphy, The Billionaire Gentleman Scholar. “Following this heuristic to its limit, could I build a software system that handles all of the mechanical labors of a modern internet writer, in one organized set of pipelines? At the limit, all I would do is live, read, think, and write down the essential ideas, arguments, experiences, concepts, implications, and conclusions that I discover in my research and life—then everything else is lightly edited, chopped up, formatted, and delivered over multiple public channels.”
, Advance: next steps for an art movement. “We talk of parallel economies of commerce; we should also think about parallel collections of art.”, Welcome to the Cluster B Society. “A strange new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated all our institutions, from humdrum bureaucracies to the highest offices. Wherever we turn, that creeping feeling sets in: our society is sick; our institutions are out of balance; our public life has been consumed by a cluster of disorders that appeal to our worst instincts and derange our most vital social functions.”, Civilizational Suicide. “As we have seen this week, the outcome of ‘decolonization’ is barbarism. For Hamas, it means murdering women, children, and the elderly, executing innocent people on the street, and mutilating infants in their homes. For the radical academics, the process is less brutal but barbaric all the same: it means destroying our best institutions, obliterating academic standards, and elevating witchcraft, voodoo, and pseudo-science into positions of prestige.”1Aidan Harte, Sculpture and Story. “[M]ost contemporary critics say that any sculpture that needs a backstory is flawed, that a form is interesting in itself or a failure. A rose by any other name and so on. There’s some truth to that, but for me, names are crucial. I knew who I was meant to sculpt before I hefted a dozen bags of clay up the rickety stairs.”
Alan Pocaro, The Search for New Land. “Now, twenty-three years into the ‘new’ millennium, there’s little, if any, meat left on those sun-bleached abstract bones. That doesn’t stop artists from trying to find some, though. And every now and then, the better ones manage to suck out some career-sustaining morsel of marrow. But the life-giving substances that once nourished abstraction, the formal novelty, the utopian ideals, the quest for individual expressive freedom set against a backdrop of social conformity and constraint, are all dried up.”
, Campus Cowardice and Where the Buck Stops. “Contrast what colleges will tolerate with what they won’t. Microaggressions are met with moral condemnation. Meanwhile, campuses will tolerate—even glorify—the wanton murder of Jews—actual violence. Indulge in this at UCLA and you can get extra credit.”Byron B. Carson, III, What is a Pencil? “All in all, the market for pencils coordinates the myriad decisions of buyers and sellers and accounts for these subjective individual evaluations and costs. In this way, the market process selects for the characteristics that make most buyers and sellers better off. A pencil emerges through a market process.”
Jacob Savage, Can a Donor Revolt Save American Universities? “Liberals and centrists seem to have paid attention to conservative boycotts of Bud Light and Target. Then came the scandal surrounding Ibram Kendi’s antiracism center at Boston University. Having burned through over $20 million, he now faces an inquiry from the university. Kendi’s disgrace cracked the window—and the horrific responses to the Hamas attacks opened the door.”
David Kaiser, Ibram Kendi's Crusade against the Enlightenment. “We desperately need thinkers of all ages to keep the ideas of the Enlightenment alive, and we need some alternative institutions of higher learning to cultivate them once again.”
, Liberalism's Last Stand. All the normies who embraced Black Lives Matter ignored what critics said at the time: that these are not normal civil rights activists, but radicals who want to destroy the normative family, among other insane things. Back in the day, BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors said that Israel must be eliminated for the sake of racial justice. All the decent liberals ignored all of that, because they wanted to show solidarity with black folks. Now what do y’all think? What did you think it meant to align with a Marxist-founded, racial supremacist organization?”2Matthew Stewart, Norway's Monument to Freedom. “Located high above Oslo at the summit of Holmenkollen, the installation forthrightly declares itself to be a ‘project in support of democracy, humanism, and the constitutional state.’ Time magazine has named Roseslottet one of the world’s “100 Greatest Places,” yet it remains little known to North Americans.”
On now: “Day Job,” through October 31 at Metamerarium Art Gallery, a pop-up project by Lara Scott in Hamilton, NY. Artists included are Melissa Davies (Hamilton, NY), Lindesay Harkness (Chapel Hill, NC), JJ Hamon (St Louis, MO), Cole Hodges (Oneonta, NY), Rebecca Johnson (Edmeston, NY), Rocco Malozzi (Brooklyn, NY), Lara Scott (Hamilton, NY), and Early Fern Burlat (Earlville, NY). For more information, contact the gallery at larascottart@gmail.com.
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We are 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.
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.
Decolonization has been an ongoing concern at the museums since the mid-20-teens.
Critics including yours truly. If you were among those duped, I forgive you—come into the light.
Bless you, Franklin, for these important ideas and opinions. They are vital at this time!
Regarding Savage's piece, big-money Jewish donors should be very aware that no matter how avidly their largess is sought and accepted, which is bound to happen, that does not guarantee that the beneficiaries truly appreciate or respect them--especially if they play along with the prevailing game and wind up taken for granted as reliable moneybags who will not be so gauche as to be "unpleasant."