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Monthly Archives: January 2010
STRANGE AFFINITY
More than half a decade before Chaplin was to ridicule Hitler’s spectacle of charismatic greatness in the Great Dictator, Walter Benjamin already emphasized the strange affinity between the comedian and the politician. Accordingly, Hitler and Chaplin appear as products of … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Miscellaneous
Tagged A Dog's Life, Ballet mecanique, Benjamin, Beowulf, Cain and Abel, Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin, Fernand Leger, Grendel, John Gardner, Michael Leonard, The Circus, The Great Dictator, Tom Gunning, Walter Benjamin, William Paul
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MYSTERY BEYOND THE GOLD RUSH
When one writes about Chaplin, discussion of a ”best” work inevitably results in his most ardent supporters agreeing to disagree in choosing his best feature length work or short film. Less contentious is the selection of a favorite example to … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance
Tagged Arthur Koestler, Chaplin, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Georgia Hale, Koestler, Mack Swain, Martin Buber, Maurice S. Friedman, The Eureka Process, The Gold Rush, Tom Gunning
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FAMILIAR TRUTHS IN ''A PIMP'S PROFESSION''
“I never knew of but one artist, and this is Tom Eakins, who could resist the temptation to see what they think ought to be rather than what is.” – Walt Whitman. If the self-portrait below does not appear especially jubilant, … Continue reading
EMPIRE BURLESQUE:ANATOMY NOT GEOGRAPHY
For centuries the principal ingredients in the popular Western image of the Middle East have been spirituality and sex. As early as the sixteenth century, European writers were using the second half of this irresistible combination to describe and define … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Music/Composition/Performance
Tagged Belly Dance, Egypt belly dance, Flaubert, Gloria Swanson, Gustave Flaubert, Henry Adams, isadora Duncan, Jean Leon Gerome, Little Egypt, Maude Allen, Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss, Salome, Sol Bloom
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PRIMAVERA AND THE HERMETIC OCTAVE
Interpreting the mythology of a work of art may fall under the domain of the art sleuth, and an intrepid one at that.Take for example Sandro Botticelli’s masterpiece, ”Primavera”. Those who are willing to settle for a poetical tableau and … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc.
Tagged Botticelli, Chloris, E.H. Gombrich, Edgar Wind, Florence, Giorgio Vassari, Hamilton Reed Armstrong, Leonardo Da Vinci, Medici, Michael Hayes, Neo-Platonism, Pico, Pico della Mirandola, Pico Oration, Plato, Plotinus, Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli, Savonarola, The Hermetic Octave, Walter Ulmam, Zephyr
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JOY OF COOKING
” give me a thousand acres of tractable land & all the gang members that exist & you’ll see the authentic alternative lifestyle, the agrarian one”. ( Bob Dylan, liner notes, World Gone Wrong ) Food for thought. Second helpings, … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Cinema/Visual/Audio, Feature Article, Miscellaneous
Tagged Aaron Woolf, Allen Ginsberg, Aztec Corn, Bob Dylan, Charles Patterson, Curt Ellis, Eric Shlosser, Food Inc., Henry Ford, Ian Chaney, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kafka, King Corn, Marie Monique Robin, Michael Moore, Michael Pollan, Monsanto, Paul Mangelsdorf, Quakerism, Quakers, Robbie Robertson, Robert Kenner, The World According to Monsanto, Theodor Adorno
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BE SURE TO WEAR SOME FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR
” If you’re going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”. The same could be said for Florence,which, in the fifteenth century was a permissive, liberal society. The pendulum of the permissive revolution swung the … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Miscellaneous, Visual Art/Sculpture/etc.
Tagged Alessandro Botticelli, Botticelli, Burning of the Vanities, Florentine Italy, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, G.K. Chesterton, Italian Renaissance, Lorenzo Medici, Medici, Michelangelo, Piero Medici, Renaissance Art, Savonarola
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ELUSIVE FORTY-FIRST SEAT
A language police and literary garbage removal squad.Painful protocol for a poet to swallow.The Academie Francaise was created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 as the official agency of linguistic formalism. It began as a reaction against female domination of the … Continue reading
Posted in Art History/Antiquity/Anthropology, Feature Article, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous
Tagged Allen Ginsberg, Balzac, Beaumarchais, Camus, Cardinal Richelieu, Charles Baudelaire, David, Diderot, Flaubert, Gregory Corso, Herman Melville, Jack Kerouac, James Redfield, Jean Cocteau, L'Academie Francaise, Leon Vincent, Leon Vincent The French Academy, Proust, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Valentin Contrart, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, William Burroughs
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BEFORE THE LAW WITH GHOSTS ON TRIAL
The outbreak of the French Revolution, and the Reign of Terror, made reforming ideas suspect among the English governing class. Jeremy Bentham allowed his time and energy to be dispersed among a number of different projects. Among them was one … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Literature/poetry/spoken word, Miscellaneous
Tagged Before The Law, David Mairowitz, Edwin Muir, Etienne Dumont, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Orwell, Jacques Derrida, Jeremy Bentham, Kafka The Castle, Kirchberger, Nietzsche, Project Mayhem, Robert Crumb, The Trial, Willa Muir
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