"Naked nudity" - the final humiliation of Albert C. Barnes

"Dear how do I get my husband to see Renoir? Tell him he favored nudes.
P.S. Book me at visitPhilly.com"

Last summer, on a county road somewhere in the swamps of Jersey roughly halfway between New York and Philly, this billboard appeared along the roadside. The first time I saw it I swore out loud, cursing what was surely the beginnings of the final humiliation of Albert C. Barnes. I thought about it again this past week when reading of a recent court petition that gives the faintest glimmer of hope for halting the injustice of the Barnes Foundation move, scheduled to begin in a few months.

It's often mentioned in art circles that the distinction between figurative art and tawdry indecency can be described as that of between "nude" or "naked" - the idea being that when tastefully done, the nude figure has historically represented the pinnacle of artistic grace, whereas gaudy "nekkid pitchers" are generally felt to be of a more crass and vulgar nature. Naturally, this distinction requires a measure of subjectivity on the part of both artist and viewer since there are often gray areas that hinge on factors such as artistic intent and the general degree of receptiveness. And other times... well, it's pretty clear-cut. In many cases, naked is embarrassingly obvious.

This billboard is clearly a naked ad. There is no pretense or nuance involved here. It is a naked attempt to exploit Renoir's nudes for commercial profit for the "Culture Industry," and for tourist dollars to the city of Philadelphia. By diminishing Renoir's nudes and placing it within the context of the naked, it debases his art into what I'll call a "naked nudity" - art that is stripped of its dignity for the sole purpose of spinning off financial gain. This is hardly surprising in today's landscape of museum viewing-mills for the masses, and the constant hype surrounding each new blockbuster exhibit.

But, what is surprising are the layers of exploitation found in the Barnes case and the magnitude of its perversity, rivaled only by the irony which is crystalized, here, in this billboard ad. It touches on the too-familiar themes of betrayal, ethical failings, the power of moneyed interests, judicial overreach, and the "art establishment." The best summation I've found to date on the matter is in the 2009 documentary "The Art of the Steal," by Don Argott. And, in a delicious bit of counter-irony, statements made in that documentary form one basis of the petition now before the court, which will hold its next hearing March 18.

Albert Barnes acquired the largest collection of Renoir works in the world, and they are still housed in the Barnes Foundation collection. He was able to do this because of his unparalleled eye for quality works of art. He was collecting from the likes of Renoir and many other Post-Impressionist and early Modern artists
when the establishment art "experts" and the Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed his 1923 showing at Philadelpia's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art "primitive art," "trash," "debased art," "nasty," and "most unpleasant." The collection is now valued at over $25 billion.

The 1923 snub obviously had a profound effect on Barnes, and from that point on he was determined to dedicate his collection to the cause of art education, establishing the Barnes Foundation as a school for the study of fine art. Barnes was especially interested in instilling an appreciation for art in people from all walks of life, including the disadvantaged. He left strict instuctions in his will that the art pieces can never be moved from his school in Merion, Pa. or be sold or lent to museums. His desire was to make the works available specifically to those who understood and appreciated the true value of the art, and who were not to be herded like cattle past those works in a museum. Up to 12,000 monthly visitors from the general public could view the works in his Merion school. (In 2009, by comparison, the Museum of Modern Art in New York averaged about 234,000 visitors per month.) Barnes died in an automobile crash in 1951.

But an ironclad legal will can never hold back the cunning force of those clawing to get their hands on a $25 billion collection. And so, the collection was "acquired" by collusion, by misrepresentation, and by applying massive pressure on the Lincoln University Board of Trustees (stewards of the Barnes Foundation) by Philadelphia establishment power brokers. In a judicial farce, the collection was ultimately ordered moved from Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, betraying the direct instructions in the Barnes will. Instead of fueling a desire to understand the essence of important art movements in the quiet setting of Merion, those Renoirs and Cezannes, those Picassos and Van Goghs will now be fueling the sales of admission tickets, and the retailing of burger joints, hotel packages,
steak shops, taxi fares, and draft beers all around the Parkway. I'm all for capitalism, but this has much more to do with profiting from stolen merchandise.

And the billboard, sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Tourist Board, is obviously laying the groundwork to market the Barnes collection. It's a fitting expample of the crass nature of modern advertising which targets the "Costanza" of our inner consciousness - that is, the George Costanza or, perhaps, the Homer Simpson that resides deep within us. As "higher-beings," we like to imagine that we have risen above those base impulses that drive the lower species of the animal kingdom, which can only act on wants and desires. This may even be true. But occasionally, in unguarded moments, we reveal the hidden Homer or Costanza that we keep shackled within, and fail in our attempts to control that urge to shovel handfuls of shrimp into our mouths, or to drool on our shirts at the thought of a donut. After the death of Albert C. Barnes, the thought of controlling his massive collection left the elites drooling on their shirts, and doing not a little shoveling of their own. Hopefully, Judge Stanley Ott's decision will save them from their own base impulses.

The Cruelest Month?

T.S. Eliot

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers...

Every April I am reminded of the T.S. Eliot poem “The Wasteland.” Yes, T.S. Eliot paints a bleak picture. It’s a dark motif, but its heaviness depicts a passive brutality from which you can’t look away.

What is it about Eliot’s pronouncement on life’s futility that seems so strangely compelling? Is it his visual imagery? The dramatic style in which he turns a phrase?

He seems to have the ability to reach right through to our consciousness and slap around at our basic existential fears.

…What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust…

It’s interesting that Eliot casts such a brooding shadow of nihilism across a season that usually inspires cultures with renewed hope and excitement, as signs of new life begin to emerge in its earliest expressions. Granted, April does offer a rather unique backdrop, in that this new life is merely hinted at. In early April, the landscape is typically dominated by iconic reminders of devastation and loss - in every naked tree or bush; in the moist rich, dark color of any exposed parcels of earthen soil; in the brownish-green turf, barren of weed or wildflower. But for most, this very despondency merely heightens the glorious nature of new life, which stirs heroically and rises amid its vapid environs. This weekend's Easter celebration is a fitting demonstration of the jubilant response to this rebirth.

But Eliot departs sharply from this ethos and burrows deeply into its antithesis. For him, life seems to amount to a cruel span of pointless suffering that has as its end the terror and indignity of death. Life springing from beneath the soil, to suffer and brood, only to return once again in humiliation to the soil of burial.

…Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'…

Imagine we could map being and nothingness into a sort of binary code of existence, and that we could isolate our own link or "snippet" within this linear progression, which then could be expressed in two ways. It could look like this: 101 or like this: 010

Most cultures or major religious doctrines that address our relationship in this progression subscribe to the first model, and hold that "being" leads to "nothingness" leads to "being." Our life (1) on this earth must end (0), but will begin anew (1) in a different form or on another plane. Eliot seems to focus on the concept that "nothingness" leads to "being" leads to "nothingness." Our struggle to come forth into existence is a futile and bitter exercise, since our death is its ultimate end. From that viewpoint, life would look very much like a wasteland. It would then become so much more difficult to accept and bear life's suffering.

…'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.
'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?'
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door...

Such an existence would look as a buddha world would, if Guatama had gotten up and walked away from the bodhi tree after arriving at the first of his Four Noble Truths. Christ's death on the cross would have been dramatically altered had a previous sentence been left to stand, and that last sentence not been uttered, along with the concept that gave it meaning.

Is April indeed the cruelest month? That would seem to depend largely on how you view your calender.

Rand, Reason, and Feeble Voices

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oil on canvas

(work in progress)

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I recently discovered through a google stroll that there is such a thing as an Ayn Rand Institute. I read “The Fountainhead” about 15 years ago and really liked the novel. Ayn Rand is not everyone’s cup of tea (with one dimensional characters and uncompromising extremes), but I rather liked the dramatic style and found it’s message to be powerful and refreshing - that is, refreshing in the sense that it celebrates the nobility of human achievement in a decidedly unapologetic manner. Rand, of course, developed her own philosophy, called Objectivism, which I haven’t spent a lot of time studying. But her fictional works express some clear themes about human dignity, the role of the individual within society, a mistrust of the power of government, and a sharp rebuke of socialism.

Indeed, our government’s sudden slink from the matrimonial bed of free market capitalism for a sordid tryst with socialism got me thinking about Rands’s prophetic 1957 work “Atlas Shrugged.” I began that book shortly after finishing “The Fountainhead,” but I soon flamed out in the face of its one thousand plus pages. I picked it up again recently, and am having another go at it because of the uncanny parallels between the book and what is happening today. I am through the first third of the book and it is almost stunning how several of the events depicted could have been pulled from today’s headlines. Anyway, my renewed interest in Ayn Rand led me to an internet search which led me to the Ayn Rand Institute and its Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, whose blog fancies itself “Voices for Reason.”

“Voices for Reason” is less than six weeks old. It’s off to an inauspicious start.

The day I found the ARI blog, the breaking news was President Obama’s executive order freeing up federal subsidies for new lines of embryonic stem cell research. His order also removed President Bush’s emphasis on effective alternatives to this embryonic form of stem cell research. To be clear, we are talking about using taxpayer money - Rand would describe it as money confiscated from the personal wealth of the citizenry under the rule of law backed by the force of arms - to subsidize a morally and ethically controversial area of scientific research; research that already has private sector investment, owing to the anticipation of potential earnings.

Anyone remotely familiar with Ayn Rand or her writings could assert with absolute certainty that she would have rejected the infusion of federal money. Any institute bearing her name, or any such institute’s web blog proclaiming itself “Voices for Reason” in her name, should be expected to lambaste Obama’s executive order, and with good reason in light of her life’s work. That is why I was surprised to see Keith Lockitch’s commentary supporting Obama’s order. I was even more surprised to see such weak argument under the lofty banner of “Voices for Reason.”

Let's set aside, for the moment, the overall intellectual dishonesty of his blog post, and look at the problems with his argument as such. Lockitch dutifully recites the official party line when he states, “Now just to be perfectly clear, I am not praising the use of federal tax dollars to fund scientific research. I think all research should be privately funded.” But it is the next line that damns him as a charlatan as he states, “What I’m praising is the fact that this crucial area of research will no longer be hampered by state-enforced religious dogmas.”

What would Rand have to say about that? President Bush did not ban any research, contrary to what most people believe. How is it that “crucial” research can be hampered simply because it is not subsidized by the state? If a particular research were truly crucial, the marketplace would embrace its potential and rush to invest private capital. Along with another lukewarm believer, ARI executive director Yaron Brook, they seem to belie and directly contradict the professed preference for private funding. They endorse a government handout, but only after throwing around hollow caveats about their official reluctance to do so.

And, what of the moral and ethical debate? Ethics and morality are subjects that can be addressed rationally without ever once mentioning God or religion. Unless it is Lockitch’s contention that an atheist is incapable of holding moral values and ethical standards, bringing religion into this discussion is simply a red herring. In fact, if you check dictionary dot com, the lengthy result for the entry “moral,” under all the major published American dictionaries, has a single mention of the word “religious,” (definition no. 2 of the Webster’s entry) which clearly draws the distinction: “Used sometimes in distinction from religious: as, a moral rather than a religious life.” (emphasis added) The entry for “ethical” makes no religious reference at all.

At the same time, he advances that old shopworn false dichotomy that pits religion against science. Remember, it is he, the scientist, who injected religion into the discussion. Granted - in years past, religion has not always handled scientific advances gracefully. But then again, science at one time taught that the earth was flat. There has been a steady maturation of thought on both sides that enables people of faith today to discern no significant conflicts between science and their beliefs. He should concede that fact even if he is not broad-minded enough to embrace it. His rhetoric clearly demonstrates that there are still intransigent holdouts on both sides of this imaginary divide.

But regardless of whether we are talking about scientists, clergy, atheists, agnostics, or left-handed dental hygienists, no group can be excluded from crucial ethical debates. And the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights should recognize that it is up to the individual to decide which influences will inform and shape his or her ideals; be it Objectivism or "religious dogma." The state has not outlawed religious thought. Yet.

Ultimately, though, nothing on his blog post merits serious consideration, since it lacks basic integrity. I have never heard of Keith Lockitch until now, and found his bio information on the website. I don’t have practical use for the whole Theoretical Physics thing, in which field Lockitch holds a Phd., and frankly, his post doctoral work in Relativistic Astrophysics to me sounds as though it could be script writing work for the original series episodes of Star Trek. But I defer to the scientific community and acknowledge that Lockitch must be a serious academic. I can therefore only conclude that by withholding key elements of the ethical debate, he is being intellectually dishonest.

The ethical debate is real, it’s serious, and scientists themselves are struggling with its implications - including Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells. It concerns the dignity of human life, and the rights of human beings still in their embryonic form. Lockitch will not mention that, as Al Gore would put it, the debate is over in the scientific community as to when human life begins. But unlike the Gore analogy, the debate is over because of the science (updated link), not the politics. Being a member of the scientific community, Lockitch presumably understands this full well.

But, most damning of all, and most disingenuous, is that he does not mention the recent breakthrough in infused plouripotent stem cell research, which utilizes a patient’s own skin cells instead of embryonic stem cells. In contrast to embryonic stem cell science, it holds more promise, its techniques are available now, it is patient specific (overcoming the danger of immune rejection). It's cheaper, it's more practical - and it makes the entire ethical dilemma of destroying human life in its embryonic stage a moot point.

The promising plouripotent research led Dr. Thomson to say of the current controversy, “a decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote.” (I sincerely believe that he meant funny “odd” and not funny “ha-ha”) It is so promising, in fact, that apparently hundreds of research labs are switching from embryonic to plouripotent stem cells. Ayn Rand would not only have a full appreciation of this, but I can’t help thinking she would honor this outstanding human achievement in the field of science that, at the same time, preserves human dignity. It just seems so reasonable.

Orientalism's Farewell Kiss

"Untied"
11x14 oil on canvas board

All politicians, if they are to experience any longevity in their chosen field, must effectively hone their ability at press conferences to duck and dodge the constant salvoes from self serving journalists. Last Sunday in Baghdad, President Bush took that skill set to a new level. So slick was he in avoiding those POTUS bound projectiles (size 10), that no less a purveyor of talent than Don King marveled at his nimble athletic reflexes. Yes, yes I know, the shoe flinging was intended as an extreme insult, and it played out as such to the Arab audience. But ...well, how can I put this? With all apologies to the culture police, it really looked rather buffoon-ish to us Occidentals.

I don’t know, maybe it just gets kind of lost in the translation. I suppose it is possible that we just don’t appreciate the profound and serious nature of airborne leather crafted footwear, but my guess is that rather than feeling insulted, most Americans feel as embarrassed for our Arab brethren as we were for our Soviet comrades when Khrushchev had his shoe-crazed moment at the UN a half century ago. You can’t think of Nikita today without the mental image of him exhorting the cohorts in his delegation to join him in banging his shoe on the desk in the General Assembly. In an odd sort of way, the Mother of All Insults on Baghdadiya TV was more reminiscent of Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent” to American cable news audiences -chastising Ed McMahon with his curse, “May the fleas of one thousand camels infest your armpits”. It’s hard to be insulted while you’re stifling a chuckle (or a McMahon style chortle).

Perhaps its true, after all, that Western culture cannot possibly understand today’s Arab culture on anything close to a visceral level. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than a particular reaction to the shoe flinging incident. The flinger in question, Muntader al-Zaidi, was given an award for “courage” by Wa Attassimou, a Libyan group headed by Khaddafi’s daughter, Aicha. In looking over the list of finalists for this award, Aicha apparently was unimpressed with daily acts of valor that would command the respect and humble admiration of the average American citizen. True heroic bravery is ubiquitous in that struggling nation. No, Aicha Khadddafi (a lawyer who offered to defend Saddam Hussein after his capture, according to Reuters) chose to recognize the false bravado of an Iraqi Geraldo Rivera. She claimed he represented “a victory for human rights across the world.” Maybe. But it begs some obvious questions.

Foremost among them is, why, given Mr. al-Zaidi’s great intestinal fortitude, did he keep both shoes tightly laced and secured around his feet during the entirety of Saddam’s reign? Surely he must have been aware of Hussein’s appalling human rights record, even against his own people. As a television journalist, he surely would have at least googled “Halabja.” A well aimed wing tip in Saddam’s direction was certainly in order. That would have been a real act of courage - and it would have gotten him and his entire family murdered. Courage in the face of a reign of terror is rare. It creates a fear so powerful that it often leads to paralysis. The long nightmare of Saddam's reign of terror has been broken, which was made clear by the grandstanding of an Iraqi journalist. And the man largely responsible for breaking that reign by committing - rightly or wrongly - American lives and treasure was ducking a pair of shoes at a Baghdad press conference.

Seasons in the Sun

Indian Summer
oil on canvas panel

To the best of my recollection, it may have been at the tender academic level of third grade that I was introduced to the spinning orbs that comprise our local solar system. In the bigger picture, of course, the time that has passed since my experience years ago within the confines of the four walls of classroom 3A, is very small indeed – yet it is large enough to have distorted my understanding of some basic astrological facts. For example, I was set aright this week thanks to a kind of radio version of the daily almanac which informed the listening public last Wednesday that the earth would be at its perihelion, or its closest orbital position relative to the sun.

My thought was, “How can that be?” I knew about the elliptical shape of earth’s orbit and, since the frigid palm of Old Man Winter had been smacking me briskly about the face and ears, wouldn’t that indicate that earth was, in fact, at its farthest point along its orbit of the big Hot Potato? Actually, no. Surprisingly, the farthest point from the sun (the aphelion) will occur sometime during the sweltering days of July. As it turns out, the difference of three million miles doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, and the seasons are determined by the tilt of the earth’s axis as it spins. Tilting away from the sun brings the cold temps of winter, and when the earth works its way around to the opposite side of the big spud, its tilt toward the sun is what causes the noticeable degradation of my wife’s generally pleasant demeanor, exacerbated in direct relation to the mercurial climb along the inside of the thin glass tube of the thermometer.

I’ve been strangely enamored of late with the ritual dance of earth, moon and sun, but all that aside, my confusion over the perihelion thing brought home an obvious assertion that I’ve held to for some time - the unchanging nature of reality in relation to man’s varied and evolving belief systems.

Whether these belief systems are constructs rooted in philosophy, theology, or our understandings of the physical universe, radical shifts in the accepted views in these areas are ultimately rather meaningless. The earth did not morph from a flattened surface to a rounded sphere when man’s understanding acknowledged its true shape. Galileo did not cause the sun to suddenly stop in its tracks, thereby pulling the earth out of stagnation and into a sudden orbit around it (elliptical in nature and with its annual perihelion and aphelion stages). The very nature and existence of mankind or of our God does not rise nor fall with our varied descriptions, denials, or affirmations of same – whether right or wrong. All these remain unaffected. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

It should be written on every door

I've been around the sun forty-seven times now, so it really shouldn’t surprise me at all. But there are times when I am jolted out of this trance of the routine, and am suddenly astounded by the sheer aesthetic beauty found in God's universe, particularly on the surface of this very planet. Many times this sensation is triggered by the way sunlight falls on a certain object, or on the surrounding landscape, or is soaked into the passing clouds. Notably, it will often occur in autumn when flamboyant colors abound and are set-off in the crisp daylight, as though a neon sign was suddenly transcended by benefit of an electrical current.

Regardless of how, where, or why I find myself staring aghast at the marvels of my surroundings, the real wonder is how this can possibly go unnoticed over the vast majority of my conscious existence. Familiarity breeds – if not contempt – at least a sort of blindness. We are driven as with blinders strapped about our harried craniums that serve to keep us focused straight ahead, insulated from tantalizing distraction as we gallop in the circles of our tracks. Yet, we would do well to remember that, as an incredibly talented although largely underappreciated Irish rock band observed in song:

“A thing of beauty is not a thing to ignore.”

Our challenge, to the extent possible, is to - at every moment - graciously and thankfully accept the beauty of our world as a gift. To believe in things of beauty. And to not ignore.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.

"Casualty" (based on a photo by John Freeman)
2006 Graphite

PRAY FOR PEACE.

The Betrayal of Images

OK, let's do the math. Let’s consider the thirteen potatoes and two eggs we see here. From our surrounding universe we find such things with which we feed ourselves and our children. Potatoes, eggs, cutting boards, potato peelers all have value in the real world. Those very potatoes and eggs were in fact consumed by myself and my family. But that's not true at all. What I consumed was not a painting but, rather, real potatoes that grew beneath the cold soil when the sun called them to life with its penetrating energy force, and the rains dampened that particular earthen plot. The eggs were likewise consumed with a grateful thought to certain barnyard fowl that exist under the same sun and breathe the same air that all living creatures depend upon. These are things we often take for granted, but they are the fabric of our daily existence. If we consider their real intrinsic importance and meaning in our lives we can see that the value that is placed upon them is quite a bargain. Indeed, their real value becomes painfully clear to us in times of famine. But, as I have said, I did not consume those potatoes and eggs because, obviously, they are but painted potatoes and eggs. My dog, who salivates in the finest Pavlovian tradition, would slobber nary a drop over the painted canvas. That is not to say that the painting holds no value beyond dog slobber. At the very least, we place a value on the craftsmanship needed to finely weave a piece of cotton fabric, which is then pulled over a wooden stretcher, to be covered with carefully applied paint. It is nowhere near as valuable as life sustaining consumable food when we get right down to it, but value-added cotton fabric can certainly bring meaning or happiness to our lives if done skillfully and with enough sensitivity. Therefore it does hold a certain relative worth, which we refer to as “art.”

But regardless, just as Magritte’s pipe was not a pipe, we are not looking at potatoes, eggs, and the rest. We are looking at a painting of potatoes and eggs. But that's not true at all. What I painted was a real canvas titled "An Irish Blessing" measuring 18inches by 24inches in oil paints and oil medium applied with brushes of various size and type, and then placed in an ornate frame. What you are looking at is not the painting. I know this to be true since I have the actual painting here. What you are looking at must be something other than what is in my possession. Clearly, what you are seeing is the surface of a computer screen that is lit in a particular manner, made to resemble the image of the painting. If you suddenly lost power at this instant, you would no longer see the image of the painting, and would be staring at a small darkened piece of glass or synthetic material. Now, I'm sure the computer hardware was expensive enough, and in that regard holds value, but in an artistic sense, I am also certain you would not hang a computer screen on your wall displaying an artistic image that appealed to you. You could print it out, true, but you would not be able to reproduce the subtleties that can only be experienced in an original artwork, such as depth and character of the brushstrokes or the nuances of the charcoal or graphite or pastel on a richly textured paper. And although it would hold a considerably lesser value than the original, it would at least be an “artifact” that exists in a material sense and can be held, hung, or thrown out as may be appropriate.

But this is outside the scope of our discussion concerning the computer display. Focusing on the computer image, we are at this point three degrees removed from the reality of potato and egg. Not potato. Not egg. Not pigment. Not canvas nor frame. Not any image at all that is actually concrete. Much like the television, the computer screen is just the vehicle that was in front of you before you clicked this webpage and will remain in front of you after the image is gone. The image itself is an abstraction, an orderly arrangement of pixels. It is a soft transient glow of light and nothing more.

If you consider reality as the ultimate art, the essence or spirit of all art, and assign it a value of 1, and then relegate painting, drawing, sculpture, etc to its corresponding artistic value of less than one but greater than zero, we must view the ephemeral emitting of light from the computer screen imitating that piece of artwork as then having a value of zero. Or less, since it is “artwork” that exists not at all.

Anyway, all of this is my way of explaining the somewhat convoluted subheading beneath the blog title. Being a pragmatist (if not an outright hypocrite), I take advantage of the blog format to post my work, because all artists must capitulate in their compelling need to communicate to the world. The internet is an ideal vehicle for this, though clearly, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."

The Lincoln Street reference represents that place where we first dreamed our dreams, and where all things were possible.