Know your Caravaggio. Scholars have been contesting two exhibit works authenticity that will be appearing at the National Gallery in Ottawa. Two of the eleven canvases pre-certified as original Caravaggios in the planned summer exhibition on the Italian baroque are apparently “phony works”, with dubious origins being passed off as the genuine article. Are we talking here of Caravaggio’s or the similarly contested pieces of work competing for the central position in another National Gallery known as the Canadian Parliament and its exhibition center, the House of Commons.The links between the pair of dubious Caravaggios and the two political front-runners in Canada’s current election campaign is unmistakable, the only question being which politician is Saint Francis and which is Sacrifice of Isaac? What is known is that Dionysus after the drunken revelry of a senseless, yet not unnecessary election that will sacrifice one or both of the aspirants:
---Gessell:there has been an "inflationary growth in his oeuvre," says the Vienna-based art historian Sebastian Schutze, a co-curator of the National Gallery exhibition and author of a book that questions the authenticity of both paintings. While exact numbers are difficult to pin down, fewer than 100 known and suspected Caravaggios exist. The artist, a brawler frequently in trouble with the law, died at age 38, with art historians citing everything from typhus and malaria to syphilis and even murder as the cause. Both paintings in question are owned by the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation. In both cases, there are paintings of the same name, albeit with different compositions, attributed to Caravaggio and held by other collections. To make matters even more complicated, Caravaggio sometimes copied his own work while other artists sometimes made unauthorized copies of his work.---Read More:http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Know+your+Caravaggio/4518876/story.html image:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Caravaggio_Sacrifice_of_Isaac_I.jpg
Paul Gessell:The National Gallery is aware of the dispute over the origins of these two paintings but has decided they are true Caravaggios and will label them as such in the exhibition Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, which opens June 17. “It is important to note that the two works in question are relatively recent discoveries, in the late 1980s, and important scholars stand behind their attribution to this artist,” Claire Schofield, the gallery’s manager of communications and public relations, said in an email to the Ottawa Citizen. “It is also not unusual for these discussions to continue when an attribution is so recent, particularly with this artist. … The two disputed works coming to Ottawa are named by the National Gallery as Saint Francis and Sacrifice of Isaac….Read More:http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Know+your+Caravaggio/4518876/story.html The attraction of the death-fixated violence of Caravaggio and his tendency to paint the same picture twice, or more, does fit the political cycle of politics as a blood-sport and the constant recycling of genetic election platform tropes.
--Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff are increasingly merging. Ignatieff has even allowed Harper to defeat his own party's initiatives, from Bob Rae's maternal health motion in the lead up to the G20 protest, to John McKay's Bill C-300 that would hold mining companies accountable for human rights and environmental abuses. In fact, Ignatieff is so similar to Harper that he doesn't feel the need to even show up to Parliament: Ignatieff has the worst attendance record of any Member of Parliament, having missed 182 votes between 2008 and 2010. But the Liberal-Tory coalition is not based on the personalities of its leaders, but the composition of its base.---Read More:http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html image:http://www.yorkregion.com/news/news/article/978025
Igantieff’s promise to build a new bridge, rather than “patch” the existing has been the campaign’s best metaphor to date, especially since the liberals have not costed out the project, or undertaken even a draft of a plan regarding the vast public consultation that must be undergone. Still, “its a bridge for Canada” claims Ignatieff. A bridge to far? A bridge over the River Kwai. Our entire political system is based on continually fixing. And Canadians are great muddlers, fixers, putterers and tinkerers, usually based on knowledge twenty years behind. But, there is good reason for this; namely that the issues are far too complex for politicians and their constituencies to understand, yet remotely grasp. As Michael Ferguson said: So they accept and implement a bad solution. It has problems. They argue about it and make …modifications. This solves some problems but creates others. Through this process of successive approximation, we reach a point where the problem is mostly solved. And then, of course, another problem pops up. We would be better at this if we could find a way to create a benevolent oligarchy of Philosopher Princes. However, we have not found such a system and it is culturally unacceptable anyway. So, we solve our problems through a confounding haze of ignorance.
---In an attempt to appeal to the anti-war majority and hide their own complicity, the Liberals are claiming they oppose Harper's $30 billion fighter jet deal. But it is not the jets themselves to which the Liberals are opposed, but the way in which they're procured. According to a Liberal press release, "Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said that to prevent further abuse, a future Liberal government will cancel the F-35 stealth fighter deal and hold an open competition to replace Canada’s CF-18s...'We need an open debate about whether these are the right planes, and to make sure we’re getting them for the right price,' he stated." Furthermore, it's meaningless to oppose fighter jet deals while supporting their continual use, most recently in Libya. It's only a matter of time before Harper uses the war in Libya to justify the fighter jets, exposing the contradictory position of the opposition parties who support the war. ---Read More:http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html image:http://www.globalpost.com/news/regions/americas/canada
But as political allegory, refusing to “patch” a bridge, is even larger than Canada’s staggering urban congestion problems and its contribution to air carbon emissions. As far as Quebec goes, why not just stop patching the relationship and create something new: like a sovereign and independent Quebec? That’s the kind of national infrastructure program that would not displease a large segment of the country. Instead of of pouring money into the province of “Je me Souviens” – the defeat on the Plains of Abraham- and getting spit at in return with counterclaims of getting the short end…
Michael Ferguson:a computer beat the best Presidential candidates in a debate? If so, would it be significant or a parlor trick?...It would be a heuristic statement generator. It would absorb a large quantity of political statements and rebuttals with estimates of their general effectiveness (which pollsters have been doing for some time) and, from this, generate stat...ements that its heuristic suggests will meet with broad approval. I do believe it is within the current capability. However, as I said, I'm not sure that it would be very significant....Read More:http://thepolymathicablog.blogspot.com/
Rick Salutin:Does this mean the illusion of democracy and freedom is as powerful as the real thing? To some extent, yes. If you think you’re free and choosing your fate, it probably gives you the same kick as the reality would, if it existed. Americans think they’re the freeest, most democratic country “in the history of the world,” as they like to say. Yet their range of political choice is very narrow compared to others. Their parties largely mirror each other and you can’t even mutter “single-payer health care” without being shut down and kicked out of the room where they do serious politics. But try and tell them they aren’t free and democratic. They’re certain they’re the model for everyone. Personally, I wouldn’t deride this kind of delusion. It’s like religion. Wha
r gets you through the night, especially in hard times, personally or nationally.Read More:http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/967091–salutin-the-romance-of-elections-seriously
ADDENDUM:
Btett Gundlock. G20 detainee exhibit. "Harper is rightly being criticized for spending $1 billion on the G20 summit, including the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. This follows a trend set by the Liberals, from the 1997 APEC summit where Jean Chretien joked about pepper-spraying demonstrators in the face, to the 2001 mass arrests at the FTAA summit, to Bill C-35 and C-36 that criminalized protesters, to the half-billion dollar militarized G8 summit in Kananaskis. As members of the "opposition", the Liberals have joined the Conservatives in passing Bill C-3 to continue secret trials in Canada." Read More:http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html image:http://prisonphotography.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/brett-gundlock-prisoners-project/
David Eskerdjian:So what is it about Caravaggio that makes him so special for our age? In my opinion, it is a unique combination of factors. …In the end, and not forgetting all these contributory factors, paradoxically the real reason we revere Caravaggio is because we agree with so many previous commentators down the centuries about his art, but love what they loathed. It is the collision of unfiltered naturalism with an operatic sense of drama that makes Caravaggio so overwhelming, and it may not be by chance that his public breakthrough came in the age of film noir, when highly wrought chiaroscuro was the dominant cinematic—and therefore visual—mode. Now more than ever, our jaded sensibilities require extreme stimuli, and we are exceptionally impatient. The immediacy and directness of Caravaggio, allied to the death-fixated violence of so many of his creations, seem ideally suited to the present age. It may have taken an astonishingly long time for his hour to come, but from today’s perspective it is now virtually impossible to imagine that his sun will ever set. Read More:http://www.chinaartnetworks.com/feature/wen93.shtml
---Tony Hayward issued the infamous remark, “…we care about the small people ( of Louisiana ) in response to press for some sign of conscience over the Deepwater Horizon crisis. His words were Dionysian occult language for, “This entire region will soon be dead.” Small people in UK folklore are fairies, and they inhabit the land of the dead. Deepwater Horizon is a US population extermination event, and the only thing slowing down progress in barricading Britain from the US is complacency, because people are preoccupied with entertainment, and Britain’s brainchild, the international corporation. Folks are going to have to wake up pretty quick, because this was not only an assault on the oceanic ecosystems, it attacked inland ecosystems as well. You can’t take out oceanic life and a shoreline insect population without having a devastating impact on inland plant and animal life as well, and when this reaches the honey populations we are going to be in serious trouble. We don’t think consciously about the complexity of the cycles of life, because we’ve grown accustomed to eating cycles at fast food chains like McDonald’s, ...Read More:http://nwodemystified.wordpress.com/ image:http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/
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