I still haven’t finished the Schulz biography, so what to write about tonight?

Further memories of the AFLC Service Section, I suppose (see yesterday’s post). It was one of the more colorful places I’ve worked.

The Service Section (shipping and mailing) was to the America Lutheran Church Headquarters what The Weird Brother We Keep Locked in the Basement and Never Talk About is to some family living next door to a Flannery O’Conner story. The suits (and clerical collars) worked in a tall, pale building on the south side of the block, above Augsburg Publishing House. We SS guys* toiled like orcs in an ancient, creosote-stained, low building on the north side of the block. In order to physically pass from the Shambles to the Tower, you had to either go around outside, or take a freight elevator down to the basement, then follow a tunnel through the rumbling presses of Augsburg’s printing department, to another elevator back in a corner. Continue reading Service Section memories →

Today is a wonderful day in American history. It’s wonderful for two reasons.

1) The color barrier to the highest office has finally been broken.

2) The new president hasn’t yet had time to implement any of his policies.

There will be a very few of these wonderful days, so enjoy them!

My post on Andrew Wyeth below got me thinking about the whole business of realism in painting. And that reminded me of a story I read, years back.

A pastor I worked for occasionally got long letters (more like manifestos) from a friend who was an artist. I got to look at the letters too, if I cared to. From looking at them, I concluded that this artist was a) not as talented as he thought he was, and b) a little nuts. However, he told a story—or rather related an added sidelight to a well-known story—that I’ve never forgotten, and am inclined to believe.

The story of Diego Rivera’s mural, “Man At the Crossroads,” is pretty well known. John D. Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint the mural for Rockefeller Center in 1933. Rivera deviated from his original plan by adding the figure of Lenin to it, and refused to change it at Rockefeller’s request. So Rockefeller paid him for it, then covered it up and later had it demolished.

Now here’s the sidelight my pastor’s artist-friend added. He said that, because of the embarrassment of this experience, Rockefeller made a vow. “Never again,” he said, “will I allow an artist to play this kind of trick on me. This new Abstract Art is all about shapes and colors. You can’t tell what it’s saying. It would be impossible for an Abstract artist to do to me what Rivera did. Therefore, from now on I will commission only Abstract works.”

And because of Rockefeller’s stature (this artist claimed), Abstract Art became tremendously fashionable with wealthy art patrons everywhere. Thus Abstract became the dominant artistic style of the 20th Century—not because it actually gave artists greater scope to explore new frontiers of creativity, but simply because that was where the money was.

I like the story because I’ve always disliked Abstract. When I was a kid who thought he’d grow up to be (some kind of) an artist someday, I took pride in being able to draw things that actually looked like things, and resented all the excitement about cubes and smears.

But I’m asking here—is the story true? Does anybody know? Is it possible to know?

Andrew Wyeth, who helped make realism in painting respectable again, has passed away.

He was the son of N. C. Wyeth, the brilliant book illustrator.

I swear before Heaven and earth that I heard a young man say the following today, in the Men’s Room at the Bible School:

“I’ve been reading this book called The Faery Queene. I heard it’s where Shakespeare got some of his ideas. It’s really good.”

Somewhere, C. S. Lewis smiled.

As Phil noted below, Patrick McGoohan died yesterday (Ricardo Montalban too, but I have less to say about him). McGoohan is most famous for his roles in the TV series, Secret Agent (known as Danger Man in England), and The Prisoner. Also for his one-dimensional but massively entertaining portrayal of King Edward I of England in Braveheart.

I watched both Secret Agent and The Prisoner when I was a kid. Can’t say I was a big fan, though. Secret Agent, in my opinion, didn’t have enough pretty girls, and The Prisoner was all style, no actual story (and again, not enough pretty girls).

It turns out the lack of pretty girls was purposeful. According to McGoohan’s Wikipedia entry he accepted the leads in these programs partly on the condition that he do no kissing. Apparently he had moral objections (like Kirk Cameron) to kissing a woman who was not his wife. Continue reading RIP The Scarecrow, and other maunderings →