Tag Archives: Frans Hals

benghazi: boxes of rain

The road to 10,000 armed soldiers begins with a single step; a mere budgetary line charge and adjustment, a few supply planes and a small dedicated group of fighters who have to be nurtured through the embryonic stage to be … Continue reading

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flowers in the dirt poor

Economic bubbles are nothing new. It seems that any unchecked enthusiasm in life in whatever sphere eventually gets pulled down by gravity. The bubble, almost universally seems to be maintained by ignoring our own private information and being guided by … Continue reading

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smuggle the uncomfortable

“The contradictory works of storied illustrator Norman Rockwell resonate in an age of anxiety”, or so the article began. Well enough anyway. But downhill from there. There is a process of historical revisionism underway that seeks to place Rockwell solidly … Continue reading

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the wall street scuffle

The man approached the teller and proceeded to undertake his deposit, transfer money to his line of credit and ended his sequence by a request to order cheques, a package of fifty would suffice, but a greater quantity if less … Continue reading

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the saturday evening you’re toast

Is disavowal repressing something unbearable, or at least sublimating it something more palatable and socially acceptable? What often arises is the concept of innocence, a byproduct of this process of disavowal and reluctance to own up and acknowledge what one … Continue reading

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coloring outside lines lived

An ambivalence about life. A detachment, clean and without guilt that defies the romantic notion concerning childhood innocence. It is a profane illumination of sorts, to live without sentimental condescension or routine exercises in nostalgia yet without the myriad and … Continue reading

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paradox: soul on ice and fire

Rembrandt’s vagabond prints were studies of despair and wretchedness far removed from say, the Frans Hals norm of guileful, droll figures within the tradition of moral satire that reaffirmed popular images of the bottom of the social rung. Rembrandt, though, … Continue reading

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kicking the can down the road: again

There is no doubt that poverty is degrading, and through force, legislation, moral suasion,manipulation, blackmail,  soft euthanasia, and “gaming” democracy and elementary social responsibility we have gloriously succeeded in creating the scenario for economic collapse and social and political insurrection. … Continue reading

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freudian slide into nihilism

Maybe the problem is a mimicry of art historical forms without connecting to the poetic myths that animated and gave life to these forms. That is, the aura of the profound is a falsification in that the depth of the … Continue reading

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artfully preserved

The paintings may appear a bit superficial, an air of being quickly rendered and spontaneous, like Bob Ross “deep” , but they were painstakingly and deliberately wrought … Franz Hals is at the Met and the seventeenth-century Dutch master has … Continue reading

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