Announcing the the Art of the Beautiful Lecture Series. The Catholic Artists Society and the Thomistic Institute present a series of lectures on a Catholic understanding of the Arts. Eminent artists, theologians, and writers will be exploring the nature of art and its role in society. Continue Reading »
The motives for tattoos are many, but they all have a common subtext. A tattoo can mark a group identity—sailors, soldiers, inmates, gangs, motorcyclists. It can memorialize a person or event, as in a virtual archive of snapshots of tattoos showing names and faces of deceased loved ones (I attended a presentation of the archive by two academics in Toronto last year). Sometimes they happen by blunt peer pressure, a set of 20-year-olds on Saturday night getting drunk, knowing not what to do until one of them blurts, “Let’s go get a tat and a ring!” (a good friend tells me of pulling out just as his turn came up). Continue Reading »
The irony of Jeff Koons is that there is no irony. Continue Reading »
Piet Mondrian’s paintings reflect a hostility to nature in favor of an ideal world where mathematics and beauty kiss each other. Continue Reading »
“Anything is an artwork to the extent that it looks made,” writes Daniel Albright. Continue Reading »
Historically, “aesthetics” has had an accidental relationship to art. Aesthetics, from aesthesis, referred to perception through senses. In this sense, an “aesthetic” theory of art is a theory with a particular focus on the sensory experience of art.If we put aside the . . . . Continue Reading »
The essays on art collected in Tikkun Olamoriginated from Gillian Rose’s “broken middle,” writes editor Jason Goroncy. He includes a long quotation from a Rowan Williams essay on Job to explain.Williams writes, “Mere resignation is a betrayal; structuring and explanation . . . . Continue Reading »
“Street art—you mean vandalism? No, thank you.” That was the response of a friend when I invited him to join me at the Museum of the City of New York for their recent exhibit, “City as Canvas.” His scruple was understandable but a little out-of-date.” Continue Reading »
Garrison Keillor gives Norman Rockwell a spirited defense in his NTYBR review of Deborah Solomon’s American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell . Rockwell, Keillor , writes, “believed that a painting was more than color and form, that it needed to carry a story ‘The story . . . . Continue Reading »
Diderot begins his entry on “Art” in the first volume of the Encyclopedia with a brief for artisans: “Let us at last give artisans their due. The liberal arts have spentenough time singing their own praises; they could now use what voicethey have left to celebrate the mechanical . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
