The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
Timeless advice.

Michael Snow, La région centrale

Hans Holbein, Dead Christ “In 1522 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497 – 1543) painted a disturbing picture: The body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. The painting represents a corpse stretched out by itself on a slab covered with a cloth that is scarcely draped. Life size, the painted corpse is seen from the side, its head slightly turned toward the viewer; the hair spread out on the sheet. The right arm in full view, resting alongside the emaciated, tortured body, and the hand protrudes slightly from the slab. The rounded chest suggests a triangle within the very low, elongated rectangle of the recess that constitutes the painting’s frame. The chest bears the bloody mark of a spear, and the hand shows the stigmata of the crucifixion, which stiffen the outstretched middle finger: Imprints of nails mark Christ’s feet. The martyr’s face bears the expression of a hopeless grief; the empty stare, the sharp-lined profile, the dull blue-green complexion are those of a man who is truly dead, of Christ forsaken by the Father (“My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”) and without the promise of Resurrection.” Julia Kristeva, Holbein’s Dead Christ.

Hans Holbein, Dead Christ

“In 1522 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497 – 1543) painted a disturbing picture: The body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb. The painting represents a corpse stretched out by itself on a slab covered with a cloth that is scarcely draped. Life size, the painted corpse is seen from the side, its head slightly turned toward the viewer; the hair spread out on the sheet. The right arm in full view, resting alongside the emaciated, tortured body, and the hand protrudes slightly from the slab. The rounded chest suggests a triangle within the very low, elongated rectangle of the recess that constitutes the painting’s frame. The chest bears the bloody mark of a spear, and the hand shows the stigmata of the crucifixion, which stiffen the outstretched middle finger: Imprints of nails mark Christ’s feet. The martyr’s face bears the expression of a hopeless grief; the empty stare, the sharp-lined profile, the dull blue-green complexion are those of a man who is truly dead, of Christ forsaken by the Father (“My God, my God, why have you deserted me?”) and without the promise of Resurrection.” Julia Kristeva, Holbein’s Dead Christ.

George Kuchar’s Hold Me While I’m Naked (via sigeretli) “There’s a lot of things in life worth living for.”

What Is Art For? – Lewis Hyde

What Is Art For? – Lewis Hyde
Thinker-politicians like Jefferson, Adams and Madison were just as familiar as we are with the metaphor that likens created work to physical property, especially to a landed estate. But they thought of that landed estate in a new way — as the basis of a republic. An American’s land was his own — he owed allegiance to no sovereign — but his ownership imposed on him an almost sacred moral requirement to contribute to the public good. According to Hyde, this ethic of “civic republicanism” was the ideological engine that drove the founders’ conception of intellectual property, and to his mind, it undercuts the ethic of “commercial republicanism” that dominates our current conception of it. Our right to property is not absolute; our possessions are held in trust, as it were. Seen through the prism of early civic Republicanism, Hyde asks, what might the creative self look like? Do we imagine that self as “solitary and self-made”? Or as “collective, common and interdependent”?

Someone posed the question, who is writing poetry today that knows visual art as well as Frank O’Hara. Good question.