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The ‘Big Lie’: A Cautionary Note

It is a mistake to believe that the long nightmare is over. Over the last five years, Donald T**** has injected a slow-acting venom into the American consciousness, the effects of which will continue to manifest, even after he micro-manages his ’emperor has no clothes’ exit on the 20th of January. On this eve of a new administration, it is useful to remember some history, recognizing that while events may not repeat themselves, ithey often rhyme (thank you, Mark Twain). I’ve been recalling a Wesleyan University seminar I chaired in 2017, just months after the last election. Entitled: Rise of the Right: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and the Age of Extremism, the day- long event was intended to alert conference goers to the through-line betwween past and present and–at that particular time–our uncertain and perilous future with a known autocratic despot at the controls. I dug into my files, to find the attached handout, which I had prepared for that event (a scan of the original).

A Virtual Vernissage: ‘Google Arts & Culture’ Unveiled

When a friend raved about Google Arts & Culture, I nodded evasively. The awful truth was I only vaguely knew about this platform—I had heard of it, but had never used it. I wasn’t alone. As I began to explore, I came across a recent piece by Washington POST chief art critic Philip Kennicott where he admitted, “Before the pandemic shut down, I almost never visited the vast trove compiled by Google’s Art & Culture platform. I wrote about it when … it was announced in 2011 and then never paid it a second thought. Today, I find myself slinking back and enjoying parts of it thoroughly.” (Kennicott, WashPOST, 5/29/2020)

Tucson Arizona Yun Gee Park Gallery, with Contemporary Art Exhibition

Artists for decades have been interested in exploring the sculptural and reflective properties of light and how it affects an object within the space it occupies. Larry Bell, one of the artists associated with the West Coast group, “Light and Space,” best known for his glass boxes and large-scaled illusionistic sculptures, created a wide range of work based on the theme of light and reflection beginning in the 1960s. Throughout his oeuvre Bell used the language of minimalism and geometric abstraction to construct his illusionist fabrications where the existing space became part of sculptures. The exhibition “Transparent, Translucent, Reflective, Refractive” at Yun Gee Park Gallery, in Tucson, Arizona, displays the work by Collen Quigley, Zak Timan and Moira M. Geoffrion who continue along this path of investigation.

“Art is the reasoned derangement of the senses.”

~Kenneth Rexroth

Left: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Roman Widow (1874)

WWWWD?

It’s the silly season again in American politics. Wide-ranging intolerable rants, invectives and urgent pleas are being aimed at the most vulnerable members of our community, marginalizing and vilifying many for simply for not being “one of us,” while seemingly animating others to demand accountability for the actions of the “one-percent.” This Age of Exclusion seems to strike a chord with alarmingly large numbers of people on both sides of the aisle—those fed up with the system, with died-in-the-wool politicians and with a feeling of powerlessness—who then, historically, act on a sense of disempowerment and disenfranchisement to take notice, rise up and agitate for change. This particular essay is not a call for some ill-defined new world order, or even for an upending of our historically-stable republican (small-‘r’) system. Yet, this current state of affairs is all too reminiscent of a passage by William Butler Yeats, who fretted in his 1919 post-apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.”

On Film & Stage: A Legacy of Madness among Us

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily “updates” have become must-see TV these days. Cuomo gives factual descriptions of coronavirus developments in his state with straight-forward clarity. Like a favorite teacher, he reminds us often that the pandemic brings out both the best and the worst in us. Our best are the medical, rescue, grocery, and delivery people—they are our heroes. The worst are those spewing rage-Tweets and flinging responsibility to others. Witnessing angry tantrums on the national stage made me think of famous mad scenes I’ve seen over the years. Donald Trump can’t hold a candle to Maria Callas!

Freud believed that humor and artistic expression are really displaced anger. The New Yorker cover showing Trump wearing his face mask as a blindfold gives me a chuckle. COVID-19 has unleashed a deluge of internet humor offering a micro-blip of relief. For the cynically inclined, go to You Tube for “Social Distance” set to “Sound of Music,” or “We Must Fight the Virus,” to the tune of “The Sounds of Silence.” I send and receive them from family and friends. The other day, I noticed that my laughter had acquired a hollow undertone.

?A Stunning Exhibition (and Quagmire) at The Mattress Factory,“Factory Installed 2019”

The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh is internationally acclaimed for showcasing some of the most innovative and divergent selections of installation art in the United States. Its co-founders, the late Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk, very early recognized the importance of Installation art that celebrates a shift in focus from object-hood and what art visually represents to what site-specific work could communicate about a place while providing unique experiences for viewers. Since 1977, this institution has given over 600 artists the opportunity to experiment, take risks, and explore the creative process while engaging with the community through its residency program.

?How Many Tears Are Enough? An Installation by June Ahrens

June Ahrens’ installation How Many Tears Are Enough? is a contemplative work that slowly reveals its intricate symbolic, emotional content. It is comprised of various types of shape defining wires and ropes suspended from the ceiling, all hovering just above long sheets of highly reflective silver Mylar. While the main expression of three-dimensional lines dominates most of the space of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford Art Gallery, there is also a back wall covered with unadorned black, knotted rope that creates a waterfall-like backdrop. When seen together, these two works give gallery visitors a basis for establishing personal links that may be viewed by some, as a dramatic field of ascending souls.

New York Gallery, Elga Wimmer PCC, with: ‘Pink Dreams in a Land with No Name’

On view at Elga Wimmer PCC, the exhibition “Pink Dreams in a Land with No Name,” curated by Roya Khadjavi, presents nineteen visual art works comprised of twelve mixed media pieces and nine laser cut canvas collages, created by Iranian born artists Sara Madandar and Shahram Karimi, who both currently reside in the U.S. The show explores the strategies the artists have conjured in order to come to terms with their experiences as immigrants living a demanding cross-cultural existence, intensified by the anti-immigration political climate in the U.S. and the social constraints inherent in Iran. Through the creative process of confronting, sorting, and clarifying painful memories and impulses, elucidating notions of place, nation, gender and self, the artists forge the essence of their inner identities and current personas, in works that speak to the feelings and difficulties of displaced people worldwide.

?Three Washington, D.C. exhibits: Women’s Suffrage at 100—Equal Rights Delayed

In a letter written to her husband John on March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams enjoined him to “remember the ladies” as the Founding Fathers defined the rights of Americans under independence. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands,” she continued, for women did not want to be “bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Adams and his cohort didn’t abide by Abigail’s words, and even as we currently celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment’s passage this year—and ratification next summer—Suffrage remains but a landmark in the ongoing fight for equal pay and equal rights for women.