Foucault and “Las Meninas”: On Postmodernism and Painting
Not everyone might be familiar with the original Spanish title for Diego Velázquez’s famous painting, The Ladies-in-Waiting (1656). It is arguably the most famous painting by this…
The Transcendent Beauty of Icons
We live in an era in which words are routinely diluted of their meaning. One feels the need, especially around Christmas, to go back to the root…
Smiles from Reason Flow
So wrote Milton, describing the love between Adam and Eve, and its expression in their faces. The smile, for Milton, was proof that we are made in…
The True, the Good and the Beautiful
Let me say a few things about art and truth first of all. The Enlightenment — by which I mean that mass of thinking and idea-mongering that…
Symbols in Painting
“The second fabling-talk [parlare], which corresponds to the Age of Heroes, the Egyptians indicated to have been fabled [parlato] through symbols; to which are to be retraced…
Classical Modernity
Sometimes one hears the critique that classical music is no longer compatible with modernity. What “modernity” is supposed to mean always remains in darkness, as if the…
The Myth of Progress in the Arts
In the last century, very often the concept of “progress” was projected upon the arts as a measurement of quality: “good art” was “progressive art.” If an…
Caravaggio’s Light and the Essence of Christianity
Whence comes light in the paintings of Caravaggio? What is the nature of this light? What does it illuminate and why does it do so? Let us…
Paleolithic Politics: The Human Community in Early Art
Paleolithic Politics: The Human Community in Early Art. Barry Cooper. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Voegelin’s argued that ancient civilizations, like the Babylonians…
Aesthetic Knowledge
Aesthetic subjectivism, or “relativism,” is the view that beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder. The term “relativism” is sometimes used to indicate that beauty…
The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers
The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers. Alison Gerber. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017. In The Work of Art, Gerber shows how the “occupation turn”…
Roger Caillois is a Better Guide to the Sacred Foundations of the West than Giorgio Agamben
The mystery of the liturgy coincides totally with the mystery of operativity - Giorgio Agamben In my opinion, Giorgio Agamben is the most important contemporary European…
Reflections on Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” Relevant to Our Time
Tolstoy’s polemical tract What is Art? took him more than fifteen years to write and contains his mature reflections on the place of art and science in…
Apocalypse in Germany Between the World Wars (Part II)
Redemption Through Art “There are two possibilities: to comment on events with words, and to make events through words.” With this phrase, Kurt Hiller characterized in 1916…
Apocalypse in Germany Between the World Wars (Part I)
Apocalyptic Expressionism in the 1920s During the 1920s Johannes R. Becher and many other expressionists attempted to give shape to the new man by modeling him after…