Affirmation and Denial

"Between the ethics of the Greeks and those of the Hindus there exists a glaring antithesis. The object of the former (though with Plato excepted) is to make it possible to lead a happy life, a vitam beatam, that of the latter, on the contrary, to liberate and redeem from life altogether, as is directly stated in the very first sentence of the Sankhya Karika.
You perceive a similar contrast - a contrast strengthened by its being in visible form - if you regard the beautiful antique sarcophagus in the gallery in Florence on which is depicted in relief the entire ceremonial of a wedding, from the first proposal to the point where Hyman's torch lights the way to the bridal chamber, and then compare it to a Christian coffin, draped in black as a sign of mourning and with a crucifix upon it. The antithesis is in the highest degree significant. Both desire to offer consolation in the face of death; they do so in opposite ways, and both are right. The one expresses affirmation of the will to life, through which life is assured for all time, however swiftly its figures and forms may succeed one another. The other, by symbols of suffering and death, expresses denial of the will to life and redemption from a world in which death and the Devil reign. Between the spirit of Graeco-Roman paganism and the spirit of Christianity the real antithesis is that of affirmation and denial of the will to live - in which regard Christianity is in the last resort fundamentally in the right."

-Excerpted from Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Affirmation and Denial of the Will to Live".

More On Moronic Arts Policies...

The following was written by Margaret Atwood, as published in the Globe and Mail (and brought to my attention by sculptor Tanya Wood):

And no flowers bloomed

Why did the Conservatives take the weed whacker to Canadian arts promotion abroad? asks MARGARET ATWOOD

During the last days of September, I was at a trilingual literary festival in Vincennes, near Paris. It's called Festival America: Littératures et Cultures d'Amérique du Nord. It was Canada's year of honour, so there were 26 Canadian writers there, as opposed to two Cubans, four Mexicans, and 24 Americans. The festival was attended by 23,000 people over three days, and generated a million mentions of Canada in the French press.

The Canadian Embassy staff in Paris did a lot of work for the festival but the embassy didn't spend much money. It couldn't even afford to throw its own reception. Thus it was while attending the U.S. Embassy's reception for its own authors that I first heard an astonishing fact: The Canadian government had just cut every penny once budgeted for the promotion of Canadian artists abroad.

That's it -- every penny, for everything cultural and Canadian, around the world. Some of those pennies have now been "unfrozen" but they're not enough to save the programs and networks that have been built up over the past 40 years (in part by art-savvy Tory cabinet ministers such as Flora MacDonald, Marcel Masse and Barbara McDougall). Staff remain in place, but they can't do much. It's like a dance floor with no more dancers.

Not that there were that many pennies to begin with. The amounts of money removed were minute -- a fraction of a fraction of a per cent of Canada's federal budget. And the Harper government had just posted a $13-billion surplus. So why had they taken this bizarre step?

The axing of culture abroad is even stranger when you consider the following facts: The money generated by Canadian-based artists' works that sell abroad flows into the country and is taxed here, a net gain to the economy. The arts and creative industries in Europe now earn "more than double the cash produced by European car-makers and contribute more to the economy than the chemical industry, property or the food and drink business," according to The Independent of Dec. 26. There are comparable statistics for Canada -- some say $40-billion, but even if it were half that it wouldn't be a number to blow off easily. Or so you'd think.

So why had the Conservatives taken the weed whacker to Canadian arts promotion abroad? Was it just part of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's shoot-first, ask-afterwards habit -- familiar now to anyone with money in an income trust -- of slicing the heads off anything in sight, leaving the mangled stems to be dealt with by later regimes?

Due to the impenetrability of Fortress Harper -- colder than the Kremlin, more secret than the Inquisition -- it was unlikely we'd get any answers. But we are still free to speculate, so here's what I came up with to explain why they did it:

1) Ignorance. The Harperites have no idea how much money the arts generate.

2) Willed ignorance. They've seen the figures, but have labelled them "junk economics" in the same way they once labelled global-warming statistics as "junk science."

3) Hatred. The Harper Conservatives think artists are a bunch of whiners who don't have real jobs, and that any money spent on the arts is a degenerate frill.

4) Frugality. There's lots of arts around. We can get them cheaper from across the border than it costs to make them here, and if you've seen one art, you've seen them all.

5) Stupidity. They thought they were gassing a hornet's nest, not poking it with a stick.

6) More hatred. They tried to slash local museums, until too many people screamed. They've cut the Canada Council top-up proposed by the Liberals down to a sixth of its size. They've stuck the knife into the National Literacy Program, perhaps on the theory that they won't be able to set up a working dictatorship if too many people can read. And that's just for starters. If these things can be done in a minority government, lo, I say unto you, what things shall be done in a majority?

The banner under which the Conservatives have been ditching stuff that displeases them has been "waste." They're trashing programs that "don't work." They want things that "get results." (That went for the environmental plans they once binned, and have now hastily revivified.) Arts promotion is like supporting entrepreneurs, or local hockey teams, or school systems. But how do we define "results" in relation to the arts? And what exactly does "work" mean? Does it mean that money must flow back in the same year it's invested? If so, the Conservatives should get rid of all primary education, since no 10-year-old marches right out of Grade Five and gets an executive job.

Typically, cultural money is arranged so that younger artists who need to build their audiences can piggyback on old poops like me who have already done that. That's how you support the next generation, and the one after that. Not to do so is truly wasteful. Yes, you might save a lot of money by killing all the children: You'd cancel those pesky education expenses. But you wouldn't survive long as a society.

But maybe the Harper Conservatives don't want a society in which the arts and the creative industries are important. Maybe they don't want the jobs in those fields to exist. Maybe, as in so many other areas of their thinking, they want to turn back the clock to the good old days -- some time back in the golden fifties, when there wasn't all this bilingualism and multiculturalism, or indeed any lingualism or culturalism at all, and most Canadian artists left the country, and those who remained could be referred to jokingly in Parliament as a bunch of fruits jumping around in long underwear.

That's a lot of maybes. But maybes are all we have in the absence of any coherent cultural policy or even any explanation for the lack of one. Who was it said that there's more culture in a cup of yoghurt than in the Harper Conservatives? Let's hope that person was wrong.

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 40 volumes of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Her latest is a collection of short stories, Moral Disorder.

A Lighter and Brighter Note

The drawing hasn't stopped, even if it was on hiatus during a summer stint as bike mechanic and an autumn job as art mover. Two Bananas is a recent drawing trying out some brand new coloured Sharpies. A couple of lawyers were slouched in droll conversation next to me during lunch break at Three Bananas Cafe.

Moron... er, I mean More On Hector Goudreau

As ahab recently noted, Premier "Nice Guy Eddie" Stelmach's recent appointment as Alberta's new Minister of Strangling Animals, Golf, Masturbating, Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture is an unaccomplished, uninterested, and dreadfully unqualified good ol' farmboy from Falher, AB. Falher, as nobody knows well, is the home of the "world's largest bee" (in your face, Tisdale, Saskatchewan!). 'Nuff said, there.

As noted in the Edmonton Journal:

Hector Goudreau says funding for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts should increase, but is unlikely to double.

"We recognize that AFA funding is probably not sufficient," said the recently appointed minister of the tourism, parks, recreation and culture. "I'm not convinced that doubling is the right number. I need to see what it will accomplish."

Several candidates in the recent provincial leadership race recommended doubling or even tripling the $22-million budget of the province's main arts funder.

On this, Goudreau appears to be suggesting that Alberta's place as Canada's third-most niggardly arts funder per capita (despite our being the richest province in the land) might just be fine and dandy, but, you know, he's just not sure.

Hmm... does he know something all the opposition parties, and several fellow conservative candidates, including the second-place man, for the leadership of his own party, don't? Again, from the Journal:

Hector Goudreau knows farming... His arts background is a little sketchy, but he's a hard-working, sincere man who will figure out what's right, say friends back in northern Alberta.

Well, at least he does know something. Just not anything relevant to his portfolio. Oops. Darn.

This guy is so out of his element, he actually talks in the interview about building "a community hall to encourage our local artists." A community hall? WTF is he talking about? Was he drunk during this interview? From his photo, I must say, it's hard to tell... but from what he says to the Journal:

- On a culture policy

"We've got an aboriginal community in Alberta that's second to none. Support for their particular activities (might be in the policy).

... You'd be forgiven for wondering. What does that even mean, to call an aboriginal community "second to none"? I'm stumped. And this gem:

"Some of my best friends are Chinese, and I really enjoy being exposed to their culture."

OMG! Did he really use the "Some of my best friends are..." line? Yes, sadly, he did. But, perhaps worst of all...

"Inasmuch as I respect and appreciate art, I don't make it a study,"

Well, it's about time you did, Mr. Goudreau... and fast. Ignorance is NOT a virtue. Again, from the Journal, his pals back home come to his defense:

As for the culture portfolio -- "I would say any position he gets he's going to put his 150 per cent into it and he's going to learn whatever he has to," said Gary Doran, an accountant and close neighbour.

I'm no accountant, but I'm pretty sure, 150 percent of nothing, is still nothing.

Art Horse Culture Racing

The Culture section of last weekend's Edmonton Journal featured two articles by Elise Stolte on new Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach's appointed Minister of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture: Hector Goudreau. This ex-backbencher ascends to administer the portfolio that rounds out a list of eighteen provincial concerns deserving categorical governance; notice how Culture sits forlornly at the very bottom of that last barrel. Besides being last in the order of precedence for Albertan Tories, the growth, funding and promotion of the arts in Alberta has been entrusted to a rural MLA who claims no "all-time favourite artist."

Mr. Goudreau, University of Alberta agriculture student and "district agriculturalist," can't be an attractive choice for Culture Minister, at least not to serious studio artists. From Ms. Stolte's interview, he says: ""On the one side is our cultural groups. The other side is the expression of their skills, hobbies, their likes. And when I say likes, that's all Albertans. We all have individual hobbies and some of those hobbies may be sports, some of those hobbies may be doing additional work, some of those hobbies include volunteering for the Bissell Centre.".... Asked how the arts fit into [the development of a culture policy], Goudreau replied: "Well, part of it is certainly the expression of individual cultures, whether it be in song or in dance or painting or sculpturing. Certainly we recognize the beadwork the aboriginal community does. We recognize the dance of the Ukrainians and the sash of the French-Canadians and the culinary foods that they have."" One might hope that Deputy Minister Fay Orr and the opposition MLAs will put him on track, but their online credentials don't delineate a redeeming passion for the arts.

What I understand to be a deficiency in Mr. Goudreau's sense of culture can hardly be held to account for the entire rest of the province's entire lack of interest in the topic. His boss has given him such a vague and irrelevant mandate that it'll be no wonder if management of the horses (a source of income that TPR&Culture has long been heavily reliant upon) takes precedence. After all, why can't horse racing be art too - it's an "Albertan like," right up there with "doing additional work."

In light of Mr. Goudreau's shallow approach to art appreciation, it is difficult to treat his appointment with anything but snide contempt. I wish I could dredge up a little graciousness.

Image: Marino Marini - L'idea del Cavaliere, 1955

Is Happiness Still Possible?

"All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science. He has an activity which utilizes his abilities to the full, and he achieves results which appear important not only to himself but to the general public, even when it cannot in the smallest degree understand them. In this he is more fortunate than the artist. When the public cannot understand a picture or a poem, they conclude that it is a bad picture or a bad poem. When they cannot understand the theory of relativity they conclude (rightly) that their education has been insufficient. Consequently Einstein is honored while the best painters are (or at least were) left to starve in garrets, and Einstein is happy while the painters are unhappy. Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable. If his powers are of the first order, he must incur one or the other of these misfortunes – the former if he uses his powers, the latter if he does not. This has not been the case always and everywhere. There have been times when even good artists, even when they were young, were well thought of. Julius II, though he might ill-treat Michael Angelo, never supposed him to be incapable of painting pictures. The modern millionaire, though he may shower wealth upon elderly artists after they have lost their powers, never imagines that their work is as important as his own. Perhaps these circumstances have something to do with the fact that artists are on the average less happy than men of science."

-Another excerpt from "The Conquest of Happiness" by the great scientist/artist Bertrand Russell.

The (Sculpture) Garden State

Burlington County College in Pemberton, NJ, invites sculptors over 18 years of age to submit works for the 20th Annual Sculpture Garden exhibition. Works must be free-standing and able to withstand changing weather conditions. There is a $10.00 entry fee for three pieces, and artists may submit up to three views of each work.

Selected sculptures will be exhibited for a period of one year, with installation in August, 2007. Artists will receive a $250.00 stipend plus travel expenses and sales of the works will be encouraged. An exhibition catalog will be printed. The competition will be judged by Mary Salvante, Independent Curator in Philadelphia, PA. Submission deadline is April 2, 2007.

For prospectus, contact Leslie Kaufman, Burlington County College, 601 Pemberton – Browns Mills Road, Pemberton, N.J. 08068. Telephone 215-413-9126. E-mail: lesliekaufman@verizon.net.

The Lady and the Centaur

The NESW studio has a sculpture in progress that's not so very different from Rodin's Lady on a Column, which is my unconfirmed translation of the Italian Donna su una colonna. The image came from a pretty good sculpture image bank, La Scultura Italiana. Another piece on the go in the workshop has a little common with Giambologna's Ercole e il Centauro. Death of the Centaur, maybe?

Question: "Where Does Artistic Freedom End...?"

Answer: In a democracy like ours, basically, it doesn't.

According to Canada's Human Rights Program...
"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms... is founded on the rule of law and entrenches in the Constitution of Canada the rights and freedoms Canadians believe are necessary in a free and democratic society. It recognizes primary fundamental freedoms (e.g. freedom of expression and of association), democratic rights (e.g. the right to vote), mobility rights (e.g. the right to live anywhere in Canada), legal rights (e.g. the right to life, liberty and security of the person) and equality rights, and recognizes the multicultural heritage of Canadians. It also protects official language and minority language education rights. In addition, the provisions of section 25 guarantee the rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada."

U.S. readers will see an analogue to these "Charter Rights" in their own U.S. Constitution, specifically the First Amendment. In both countries, a "Bill of Rights" protects artistic expression, just as it protects one's right to protest someone else's expression, just as it protects the "Freedom of the Press". It is always ironic when citizens (sometimes even newspaper writers) seek to limit the freedom of expression of others, without realizing that they are attacking the very freedom that they themselves enjoy (luckily, I quite enjoy irony).

For all humanity, in fact, these rights are enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN's General Assembly back in 1948. As the Wikipedia article notes, "When the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany became apparent after the Second World War, there was a general consensus within the world community that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently clarify rights it protected. Rather, a universal declaration that articulated and codified the rights of individuals was necessary." The Article itself is very straightforward, simply stating

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Ain't freedom grand...

Speaking of Hindu Blasphemy...

"When people in the West think of "blasphemy," they probably think of it in the context of Christianity or Islam - but it can also occur in the context of other religions, like Hinduism. That's what Paul Courtright, interim chair of the religion department at Emory, is facing in the wake of reactions to his book on the Hindu god Ganesh (Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings).

According to the Emory Wheel:

The publisher, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, withdrew the book from the market in India Monday after a petition started by a member of the Hindu Students’ Council at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette demanded the “author and publisher to give an unequivocal apology to the Hindus” and asked that the publisher immediately withdraw the book from circulation. The petition insists that Courtright stop using the book in academia, rewrite the passages they consider offensive and issue a new publication with revisions and clarifications. After withdrawing the book, the Indian publisher issued a public apology, promising no such “lapse” would occur in the future.

The widespread objection to the book surrounds its overtly sexual themes and its cover, which depicts a nude Lord Ganesha. The book was first published and circulated in America in 1985 by Oxford University Press. In 2001, Motilal Banarsidass circulated it in India. ... [Subash Razdan, a member of the local Hindu community] ... said Courtright’s views are inaccurate because he does not practice Hinduism.

This is not a new book - it was first published in America in 1985 by Oxford University Press; only in 2001 did Motilal Banarsidass pick it up and start to circulate it in India. It's a shame that they are now taking it out of circulation in India because some Hindus in America object to it; but the demands that he republish and change his interpretation simply because some Hindus are offended is just outrageous. If they want people to read a more Hindu interpretation of Ganesh, they should take the time to go and write a book themselves instead of expecting someone else to write it for them.

And what can be said of dear Razdan? The less the better, I suppose - to think that someone would argue that a person's interpretation of a story in a religion is wrong because they don't practice that religion is absurd in the extreme. And of course, a person cannot convert to Hinduism which, in Razdan's universe, means that no one outside of Hinduism could ever produce an accurate interpretation of anything within Hinduism. That's a nice little closed system - it certainly prevents any outsiders from offering alternatives and critiques, doesn't it? But that's just a coincidence I am sure. "

-From the pages of "about.com".

From Frankfurt, to Salem...

"We came across a picture of Lord Ganesha at this link with the subtitles: "Two participants walk past a hand-painted billboard featuring the Hindu god Ganesh, on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair. India is the guest of honour at the world's largest book fair which opens 04 October 2006 (AFP/John MacDougall)."

The picture shows Lord Ganesha standing on a structure like a keyboard with eight hands and with items like a laptop computer, CD, floppy, mouse, dish antenna etc in his hands. This is a very disgusting denigration of Lord Ganesha which has hurt our religious sentiments very badly and caused disrespect to our beloved deity of worship.

Lord Ganesha is a very popular deity of the Hindus and the Ganesh Festival is widely celebrated in India with great splendor. The use of a deity for a commercial event like a book fair, that too, in a distorted manner is very highly objectionable. In the Hindu religious ‘stotra’ of ‘Atharvashirsh’ Lord Ganesha is described as one with four hands with weapons like paash (noose), ankush (goad), and a sweet (modak) in his hands."

This, from Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, a hard-line right-wing Hindu nationalist group in India. Prominent features of their activist-oriented website include a wide-reaching "Denigration Section" ("Lunchboxes.com is an online lunch box store, which produces different types of lunch boxes. The Store has produced several blasphemous lunch boxes depicting Hindu deities on them."), with a separate section devoted entirely to their ongoing "M. F. Hussain [sic] Campaign".

Maqbool Fida Husain, according to Wikipedia, "is a well known Indian artist. After a long, successful and largely uncontroversial career, his work became enmeshed in violent religious controversy in the late 1990s, to such extent that he was forced to leave India because of threats to his life." His works, currently on display at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, continue to draw the ire of the HJS, who (beneath their banner image photographically caricaturing Husain with devil horns) contend that "exhibiting Hussain's [sic] paintings will be monetary help to a criminal."

Whose side are you on?

Frankfurt, continued...

"The problem with ignorance and error is, of course, that they leave us in the dark. Lacking the truths that we require, we have nothing to guide us but our own feckless speculations or fantasies and the importunate and unreliable advice of others. As we plan our conduct, we can therefore do no better than to spin out uninformed guesses and, shakily, to hope for the best. We do not know where we are. We are flying blind. We can proceed only tentatively, feeling our way.
This mindless groping may work well enough for a while. Inevitably, however, it will lead us finally to blunder into trouble. We do not know enough to avoid, or to overcome, the obstacles and the dangers that we are bound to encounter. Indeed, we are doomed to remain entirely unaware of them until it is too late. And at that point, of course, we will learn of them only by virtue of our recognition that we have already been defeated."

-Another excerpt, from Chapter IV, of Harry G. Frankfurt's "On Truth".

(Image: Destroyer of Obstacles, rebuilt and on display 'til October at the Shaw Conference Centre, in Edmonton.)

More "On Truth"

"It is not enough, however, for a society merely to acknowledge that truth and falsity are, when all is said and done, legitimate and significant concepts. In addition, the society must not neglect to provide encouragement and support for capable individuals who devote themselves to acquiring and to exploiting significant truths. Moreover, whatever benefits and rewards it may sometimes be possible to attain by bullshitting, by dissembling, or through sheer mendacity, societies cannot afford to tolerate anyone or anything that fosters a slovenly indifference to the distinction between true and false. Much less can they indulge the shabby, narcissistic pretense that being true to the facts is less important than being "true to oneself." If there is any attitude that is inherently antithetical to a decent and orderly social life, that is it."

-Another excerpt, from Chapter II, of Harry G. Frankfurt's "On Truth".

(Image: "Mendacity", 1997, Ryan McCourt)

The Bullshitter's Enterprise

"Not very long ago, I published an essay, entitled On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005). In that essay, I offered a provisional analysis of the concept of bullshit: that is, I specified the conditions that I considered to be both necessary and sufficient for applying the concept correctly. My claim was that bullshitters, although they represent themselves as being engaged simply in conveying information, are not engaged in that enterprise at all. Instead, and most essentially, they are fakers and phonies who are attempting by what they say to manipulate the opinions and the attitudes of those to whom they speak. What they care about primarily, therefore, is whether what they say is effective in accomplishing this manipulation. Correspondingly, they are more or less indifferent to whether what they say is true or whether it is false."

-An excerpt from the introduction to Harry G. Frankfurt's On Truth.

Cultural Sensitivity Revisited

Culture is simply the way in which people live. The culture of the cave man meant sitting on a rock gnawing a bone. The culture of Germany between 1935 and 1945 involved making soap out of Jews. One of our difficulties in Canada is that too many of us insist on thinking of culture as a kind of lacy frill which is attached to the edge of life, whereas to be worth anything it must be the whole fabric of life. We have a culture now which is in some respects remarkable, but which has not given rise to any art of a stature which commands the attention of the world. We may perhaps do so, but there is no reason why we should not absorb and make the fullest use of the art from other parts of the world. As Dr. W.A. MacKintosh of Queen's University said to the Royal Society last June - "A national culture is not a direct object of endeavour. It is not created as a gown by a designer. It is a by-product. Further, a country can have a truly national culture, incredibly bad. Canadians should aim at what is excellent intellectually, aesthetically, socially. If it is real, it will ultimately prove to be Canadian but its justification will be that it is excellent."

Excerpt: Robertson Davies, Discoveries: Early Letters 1938-1975, from a 1958 letter to the editor of a student newspaper.

Image: googling "robertson davies artwork" images eventually led me to the Bewcastle Cross c.700-800AD.

Relay for Life

My brother Jon's torture and death in 2005, in the form of advanced esophageal cancer at age 31, came as a devastating surprise, and remains an inconceivable mystery.

"In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain of a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear. For to him who does know, children can sometimes seem like innocent delinquents, sentenced not to death but to life, who have not yet discovered what their punishment will consist of. Nonetheless, everyone desires to achieve old age, that is to say a condition in which one can say: 'Today it is bad, and day by day it will get worse - until at last the worst of all arrives.'"

-Arthur Schopenhauer

"The "worst of all" snuck up on Jon and beat the living shit out of him, for no good reason. I say, we chase the bastards down, and give 'em what's coming to 'em."

-Ryan McCourt

The Canadian Cancer Society Relay For Life is an overnight non-competitive relay that celebrates cancer survivors and pays tribute to loved ones. It's a night of fun, friendship and fundraising to beat cancer.

I will be participating as a member of the Jimmy Coole #1 team, in the Edmonton event on 25 May 2007.

You can be part of a community that takes up the fight. Please pledge me now and help make cancer history.

Online pledging is secure and it saves the Society money by reducing administrative costs (more about how your donation helps).

Thanks for your support!

"Flat" Pack

The cans of which the pieces are constructed can be narratively imagined as the peripheral artifacts of creation, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the traditional painter’s empty, crushed tubes of oil paint. In the context of the "Flat" exhibition, the crushed spray cans give a nod and a wink to Jules Olitski’s spray paintings (from which his selected serigraph draws its inspiration, too), while also bringing to mind the shaped canvases, riotous colours and metallic reflections of Olitski’s (and notably, Clement Greenberg’s) esthetic successors: “New New Painters” such as Edmonton’s own Graham Peacock.

But, unlike Peacocks laboriously crafted works, in an unexpected conceptual twist, these pieces are in fact what ‘Duchampistes’ would call “objets trouvé”, or ‘found objects’. This fact could be interpreted as an artistic rejection of a Greenbergian aesthetic; however, it should be noted that Greenberg himself often wrote and spoke appreciatively of some of Duchamps “Readymades”. It is clear then, that an aesthetic consideration of the found object is not in conflict with the so-called “Formalism” we are so accustomed to the 'art world' vaguely referencing...

(Images from top: "Shop Talk"; "Fast Action"; and "Vernissage".)

Hale Māla Ōma'oma'o

.... which, as all literate Polynesians know, means "House of the Green Garden". Given the location in Edmonton, the "Māla" outside the "Hale" is none too "Ōma'oma'o" this time of year. Oh, but just you wait... In the meantime, Nola Meme's new blog will document artwork, textiles, and other inspiring elements of the sweet life.

Cultural Sensitivity

"Athorism is enjoying a certain vogue right now. Can there be a productive conversation between Valhallans and athorists? Naïve literalists apart, sophisticated thoreologians long ago ceased believing in the material substance of Thor's mighty hammer. But the spiritual essence of hammeriness remains a thunderingly enlightened relevation, and hammerological faith retains its special place in the eschatology of neo-Valhallism, while enjoying a productive conversation with the scientific theory of thunder in its non-overlapping magisterium. Militant athorists are their own worst enemy. Ignorant of the finer points of thoreology, they really should desist from their strident and intolerant strawmandering, and treat Thor-faith with the uniquely protected respect it has always received in the past. In any case, they are doomed to failure. People need Thor, and nothing will ever remove him from the culture. What are you going to put in his place?"

-Excerpted from "Let's Hope It's A Lasting Vogue", by Richard Dawkins