The “Most Bizarre” Patron Saints
July 31st, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Courtesy of cracked.com. HT: Michael Dubitzky.
Archive for July, 2008
“Art That Does Not Hide Itself”
July 24th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
My review of Idol Anxiety at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum appears in the Forward (link here). Here’s a selection:
Most of the works that appear in the exhibit Idol Anxiety, at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, feature Christian and pagan content. But exhibit curator Aaron Tugendhaft credits the “heightened awareness” he developed from studying the Talmud as a child with helping him discover “valuable distinctions not seen by others” in the process of how objects avoid becoming idols.
Electric Cars and a Genealogy Website
July 24th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Two of my articles appear in this week’s Washington Jewish Week (neither is art related):
Painting the Great Mother
July 23rd, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
On the work of Meinrad Craighead, 72, who says, “From the beginning, I had a safe container in which to dream, inside the arms of my mother and my grandmother and then out into the imagery of the Catholic church.” Craighead also talks about connecting to the Mother rather than “the remote ‘Father’ I was educated to have faith in.”
“Anything is possible with God”
July 23rd, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Says Calvin Carter of the boy in his painting Texas Baptism, who stands “waist deep in an impossibly deep puddle.” Article and image of Carter in front of the painting: The Jasper Newsboy.
“A Confrontation Between Image and Text”
July 23rd, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Read my review of Panim el Panim: Facing Genesis, Visual Midrash by Debra Linesch and Evelyn Stettin here.
Here’s the lede:
What do you get when you mix a Jesuit publishing company, a Reform Jewish scholar, an Orthodox Jewish painter, and a thesis on human-divine encounters?
In Panim el Panim: Facing Genesis, Visual Midrash, the product is a surprisingly coherent collaboration of image and text, which not only examines the book of Genesis, but also seeks to uncover real-world lessons and advice from the biblical passages that are accessible to all sorts of readers.
Former Forward Arts Editor Alana Newhouse Named Editor of Nextbook
July 22nd, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Nextbook is very lucky; expect even greater arts coverage from it. Story here.
A Jewish Angle on the New Batman Movie
July 21st, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Of course Rabbi Simcha Weinstein is the one to find it.
Is There a Such Thing as Kosher Art?
July 21st, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Ben Schachter, an assistant professor in fine arts, seems to think so, and he has won a Saint Vincent College Research Grant to work on a project called “An Aesthetic Application of Jewish Dietary Laws upon Painting, Drawing and Printmaking.” Here’s some more info:
“Kosher Art” will apply the Jewish traditional dietary laws of Kashrut to the creation of art. Each step of the process including the tools and materials will follow these rules. In so doing, the project will find a new solution to the challenge that is inherent in all Jewish Art, namely the prohibition against graven images.
I am interested in hearing more about the project, but the last line is not encouraging in the least. There is no challenge “inherent in Jewish art,” and to simplify the second commandment in this way reflects a poor grasp of Jewish history. Further, aside from symbolic discussions about the building of the Temple and the Tabernacle, Jewish artists have readily created works that used non-kosher animals. If Schachter wants to break new ground in this regard that is very exciting, but one wonders also how this will offer a “solution” to the alleged challenge.
SERMON: “In my opinion, some of the best Muslims in the world live in America”
July 18th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
“And some of the worst Muslims in the world live in America,” says Siraj Wahaj in the podcast “You can have the family you want” (audio at Muslimmatters.org).
“Most of the great ideas, art, and culture of the world were produced by theists”
July 18th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
“Or within cultures sustained by a theist population,” writes John Mark Reynolds in “Sad News for Extreme Atheism.”
Louvre Lays First Stone of Arts of Islam Gallery
July 17th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Which is supposed to open in 2010.
Sermon: Mike Breaux on Rabbis Talking to Women
July 15th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Jon Weece, senior minister at Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, is a great preacher, who regularly tackles important material with an accessible approach and a sense of humor.
In the recent series, “Seriously?!” Southland’s former senior minister Mike Breaux pinch-hit for Weece on the topic of “some of the more unusual phrases in the Bible,” particularly, Jesus’ instruction to “Eat My flesh.” (E.g. here, verse 54.)
Breaux’s talk was compelling, and one of my favorite parts of his sermon was when he talked about the Etch A Sketch he keeps in his office (next to a Tupperware ball) to remind him of how he hands the scribbles of his life to God, who returns a clean slate. What a great religious art metaphor! (You can read more about the toy in his book Identity Theft on Google Books here, page 159.)
But Breaux also said something about Jews, particularly rabbis, that is simply not true, and I think it’s important to point this out.
You know how some parents think their children are simply perfect, and though you want to tell them their kids are great, but not that great, you think it’s really sweet that they take such pride in their kids? Religious people should feel that sense of pride about their God (or Gods); it’s what you are supposed to feel if you are a person of faith. But when that pride comes at the cost of putting down others, it’s important to step back and wipe off the boundary between propaganda and religion.
Breaux turns to John chapter four to discuss Jesus’ unique ministry to a “a woman of Samaria” at a well in Sychar. Breaux praises Jesus for addressing the “really broken” woman, “even though Jewish rabbis were not supposed to speak to Samaritans, they were not supposed to speak to Samaritan women, or women in general in public.” Yet, Jesus talked to this one, “because he knew she was broken … he was always breaking rules, in fact they weren’t really rules, they were just barriers people had put up.”
Perhaps Breaux knew of the passage from Ethics of the Fathers that states, “One who speaks excessively with a woman brings evil upon himself, neglects the words of the Torah, and will go to hell.” (See here, number 5.) But frankly, I’m not so sure he knew the reference, and if he did he’d know to dig a bit deeper. The Talmud is packed with references to rabbis counseling women, and intelligent readers would know not to confuse the sense of modesty in Jewish scripture with any kind of censorship of coed conversations. There is just no reason for this cheap shot at Jews in an otherwise great sermon (save another reference to Jews as “spiritually blind”) and the audience deserved better.
“There’s only so much ‘Jewish art’ to go around”
July 15th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Says Margot Layland of a Jewish center in West Nashville in a great article on “God and art.” [Image: The Tennessean]
IslamExpo Shows “How Beautiful Islamic Art Is”
July 14th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
One person involved said he hopes “the number of Jew and Christian participants would increase.”
British Minister Advised Not to Address Islamic Art Conference
July 14th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
The culprit is an “interdepartmental row.”
U.S. Gives $1m Grant to Repair Hindu Temple
July 14th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
“The funding … is important because the US is among the countries known to have received looted Khmer antiquities in recent years,” reports The Art Newspaper (HT: ARTINFO).
Three Idolatry Headlines
July 14th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Even as one rabbi says it is scarce in today’s major religions, idolatry is “far more widespread than one may think” among Catholics, and a rabbi tells a kid to tear up an idolatrous photograph in a new film.
9 Buddhist Monks to Create Mandala in Hampton, Va.
July 11th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
To suggest “the impermanence of everything that is on Earth.”
“A Microcosm of the Afterlife”
July 9th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
My review of Four Seasons Lodge, a documentary about Holocaust survivors who vacation at the same bungalow colony in the Catskills, appears in this week’s issue of The Jewish Press.
Here’s a selection:
“Four Seasons Lodge” is not your typical Holocaust documentary. On the one hand, there is the plot of the people who survived the death camps now struggling to save their summer camp, which they call “our paradise in the mountains.” Meanwhile, these individuals are straight out of the “Twilight Zone”: a quickly fading demographic clinging to a summer lifestyle that seems to have outlived its usefulness. Though bungalow communities initially offered New Yorkers a way to flee the city’s hot summers, today’s air conditioning and more globalized travel ambitions have left bungalows to become ghost towns. But ghost towns apparently are very welcoming to people haunted by ghosts.
Israel’s Last Supper
July 9th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Adi Nes’ version of Leonardo, from the Israel Museum’s (Jerusalem) “comprehensive survey of contemporary Israeli creativity from the past ten years,” called “Real Time: Art in Israel 1998-2008.”
From Nixer of Shows that “Really Push the Envelope” to Digital Protector of Everything
July 9th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
The story of Anne-Imelda M. Radice.
Vijay Kumar (in Part) Critiques Islamic Art Education
July 8th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
The Republican running on an “anti-Sharia” platform tells FrontPage:
Our education system is bankrupt at all levels. Our universities do not prepare our young minds to see anything bad about Islam. Here in Nashville at Vanderbilt University you can get a degree in Islamic Studies and never read the life of Mohammed—and never read the entire Koran. You study Sufi poetry, Islamic art and Islamic history viewed as a glorious triumph. No kafirs suffer in this program and there is no history of Jew, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist suffering under Islamic rule for the past 1,400 years. A graduate from this program then goes out into the world professionally trained to be an apologist for Islam, a dhimmi. And this program is standard at all schools, not just Vanderbilt.
Jewish Art Dealer in de Kretser’s “The Lost Dog”
July 8th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Is initially a flop, but later becomes a better character, says Dara Horn.
French Churches “Increasingly a Target for Thieves”
July 8th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Money quote on protecting the artifacts:
In the churches, the artifacts are alive … Putting them behind glass would take them out of their environment. It would be like putting them in a museum.
Going to Museums “For the Air-Conditioning”
July 7th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Terra cotta warriors in an image accompanying Holland Cotter’s NY Times review of Chinese art.
Christian Art Meant to Support a Granddaughter
July 7th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
But so far there are no buyers.