Shards
Often as I read through my emails, my RSS feed, and the many other places I get news, I come across something that is interesting or alarming but about which I don’t really have enough to say for a whole post here. So this is a post of news shards.
News from Texas. What kind of person defaces petroglyphs? I am tempted to blame dumb-ass teenagers, but other, even more sinister explanations could be made.
Given how scuzzy the trade of actual, physical artworks is, why would anyone want to “invest” in an NFT? The fact that there are fictional Italian pump-and-dump collectors on Instagram suggests that investing in art is a mug’s game. Buy art because you love it!
The post-George Floyd racist backlash continues. How dare an artist portray a pieta where Jesus is black and bears a resemblance to George Floyd?! Icon painter Kelly Latimore painted Mama (see below), a copy of which was installed in the Law School at Catholic University in Washington, DC. It has since been stolen twice and students have started a petition to have it removed. The image in the law school was not the original—it was a printed copy, hung with the permission of the artist. On his website, Latimore says that the original ended up at The Episcopal Church of Holy Communion in St. Louis, MO.
Just out of curiosity: how do you build a “traditional” skyscraper? The call for a return to “traditional” classical architecture styles seems utterly bizarre in a world where we no longer build office buildings with load-bearing walls. As Robert Bevin puts it, “This time around, the traditionalist lunatics have succeeded in taking over the asylum. Reactionary ideas hostile to the cosmopolitan, to Modernism, to modernity itself, are in the ascendant.”
Last, I want to end with something positive. There is a lot to complain about in this world, but this classic short film from the late 70s is not one of them. Made by Charles and Ray Eames (two of those modern architects so hated by the reactionaries mentioned by Robert Bevin above), it’s probably been shown to high school science students a million times since it was made.