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Art as Investigation In Which Facts Are Created, Changed

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The trouble is that modern art in various ways abandoned imitation, representation, naturalism, and it now has to make out a case for its products’ still being truth. This is where science—certain aspects of science—are seized upon, assimilated, or sometimes simply plagiarized in decorative words, so as to bolster up art’s claim to cognitive value. One such use—and it is a curious reversal of Aristotle—is the boast of factuality: the work of the artist is said to be research; his creations are findings.

—Jacques Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art (1971)

Maureen Mullarkey expounds on this remarkable idea in one contemporary art exhibit series, WeakForce.

Reviews

Film review: 'Thor: The Dark World'

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I saw the new Thor movie, Thor: The Dark World, this weekend, and I suppose I ought to review it. I find it hard to express an opinion, because I can’t find much handhold. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it – I had a good time. I was well entertained. But I’m left without any strong impression. Lots of action, lots of CGI, lots of interesting visuals (some locations shot in Norway’s Lofoten Islands), but I came away with no great emotional response.

One problem is the clearly contrived nature of the central problem of the plot. Long ago, the Dark Elves (who, I must admit, look more like elves than the Jotuns looked like jotuns in the first movie) fought a great war against the Aesir gods, and were ready to unleash their doomsday weapon, called Aether, which is supposed to have the power to destroy the whole universe. But the gods forestalled them by some stratagem I didn’t quite understand, and now the Aether is locked away in a secret place. But a dark elf named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) has recently re-awakened, and is plotting to reclaim the Aether, in a plan that comes to involve Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor’s (Christ Hemsworth’s) love interest from the last movie. There’s a big attack on Asgard, and Thor defies his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) in a desperate gamble to defeat Malekith.

One part I did enjoy was how the sibling rivalry issues were portrayed in Thor’s relationship with his adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who is first of all a prisoner, but then enters into a desperate alliance with Thor. I was troubled by the killing off of a couple important characters, which messes with the source material (both mythical and comic book).

When all was said and done, I didn’t come away with any feeling that the movie had transcended its sources, as I did with the first movie.

So I recommend it, but not in the highest terms. Cautions for lots and lots of comic book violence.

Publishing

The Bay Psalm Book

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In my American Literature class, professor Ruth Kantzer instilled in me a love for the Bay Psalm Book. I could hear the music, like you can below, but the words, translated for singing, captured me. At first, I believe the congregations and families sang without instruments, so what we have below came many decades later.

One of the 11 original copies of the first book printed in America will be up for auction tomorrow at Sotheby’s. The video above will give you some details. You can buy your own copy here: Bay Psalm Book

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I am the cutting edge

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Today I used my Kindle Fire HD with the Overdrive app to borrow and download, for the very first time, a book from the Hennepin County Library (one of Lawhead’s, if you care). I’m a student of library and information science, you know, and this is how I stay on the cutting edge.

What have I learned in my class so far? The most disturbing thing is that all that stuff we’re digitalizing to “preserve it?” It’s all crumbling to dust. CDs, DVDs, floppies, tape, every single digital medium deteriorates over time. As I recall they give the average CD-ROM a little over 20 years.

The most stable media for preserving data remain, for the time being, archival quality paper and microform.

Just to give you something to worry about tonight.

Authors, Religion

50 years gone

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C. S. Lewis’ grave in Holy Trinity churchyard, Headington Quarry, Oxford

Photo credit: jschroe

I’m going to alter my long-established custom of always posting about a days’ commemorations in the evening of that day, which means most of you read it the next day. Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis (also of a couple obscure characters named John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley).

I was, of course, around when it happened, in junior high if you must know. What did I think when I heard Lewis was dead? I’m not sure, because I wasn’t aware of his death date until years later, long after I’d become a Lewis enthusiast. I do remember the day though, because of the Kennedy thing.

But I’ve written about that before. I’d like to just recall what Lewis has meant in my life. It occurred to me today that Lewis was himself my Wardrobe, the portal through which I entered a larger world.

I was educated, like most of my friends, in Lutheran colleges which are now under the umbrella of The Very Large Lutheran Church Body Which Shall Remain Nameless. But, unlike a large percentage of my friends from those days, I neither apostatized or became a liberal. It was Lewis who made that possible (with the help at a later stage of Francis Schaeffer). The Lutheran schools I’m speaking of had then, and I assume still have, one single purpose in their religious education curricula, and that is to destroy all Christian faith in their students. But Lewis (though no biblical inerrantist) showed me that embracing orthodox Christianity doesn’t mean giving up reason. I clung to reason, and I clung to the faith of my childhood.

You yourself may approve or disapprove of that course on my part, but as for me, it’s one of the things I’m thankful for as Thanksgiving approaches.

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Cheesy Danish

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Someone on Facebook posted a link to an article (not sure if it was this one; there are several out there) about this newly unveiled portrait of the Danish royal family, produced – though this seems incredible – at the family’s request, apparently.

If somebody did a portrait of your family like this, would you pay them?

I made a crack on my friend’s comments about how this is actually considered cheerful in Denmark, home of Hamlet and Kierkegaard.

But in fact I think it’s more ominous.

As a certified amateur artistic wiseacre, my immediate interpretation of these spooky figures, backed up by classical ruins, was that the purpose would seem to be to portray the royal family as doomed, a crumbling remnant of an outmoded social order.

And I bet the royals understand that, but know that pointing it out would just open them up to accusations of trying to suppress artistic expression.

But even more, it struck me that the composition reminded me viscerally of another famous royal portrait. This one: Continue reading Cheesy Danish →

Authors, Fiction

50th Anniversary of Doctor Who

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This Saturday is Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary. A special episode, “The Day of the Doctor,” will broadcast around the world at 7:50 p.m. GST (11:50 a.m. PST/ 2:50 p.m. EST).

I don’t know who introduced me to the show. I just remember watching it through the 80s and maybe before that. PBS played whole series on Saturday nights year round, so if season 16 has six multi-part stories, then PBS played them in 6 weeks. They were playing Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor and favorite of The Countess of Wessex, when I started watching. At some point, they broadcasted all of Jon Pertwee’s episodes, picked up again with Baker, and carried on with Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy until it was cancelled (or put on hiatus) in 1989. I haven’t picked up the new series yet, though Christopher Eccleston’s first episode, “Rose,” was great fun.

I’m sure you’re dying to know that my least favorite of these actors was Sylvester McCoy (who plays Radagast in The Hobbit), not because of his ability, but because of the script. Of all the shows I have seen, his version of our universe’s problem solver seemed to have read the script more than any others. The stories in the late 80s didn’t show The Doctor figuring out situations and boldly foiling the bad guys. They ran him and his companions through a variety of hoops until the curtain rose on Act 4 to depict The Doctor walking in with the solution in hand. How did he know the solution? He read the script, as far as I could tell—and crazy scripts they were.

For the series anniversary, I wanted to compile some trivia which will amuse and befuddle you. No need to thank me. The pleasure is all mine. Enjoy!

Continue reading 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who →
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Much noted, long remembered

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One of three known photographs of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, taken by David Bachrach.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It was on this day 150 years ago that Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery. The words have become part of our national canon, and not without reason. Lincoln had the rare qualities of having both a first class mind and a masterful prose style. This is particularly interesting when we remember that he had about the least formal education of any American president. If he had not existed, it would have been impossible to invent him.

Authors, Writing

Do We Need Another C.S. Lewis?

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People have often suggested a popular Christian fantasy author is the next C.S. Lewis. I don’t think that’s an appropriate question. Few people strikes us as the same as another person only better, so why should we look for a living author to replace a dead one? That would make the dead one mostly obsolete, wouldn’t it?
Steve Harrell doesn’t think so. He says we need a new Lewis. “When we try to insert Lewis’ cultural observations into our culture today,” he writes, “we become like Indiana Jones—still fighting the Nazis through the 1980s. The Modernist war between reason and theology is over…. We live in a postmodern, post-secular age that doesn’t respond well to the intellectual arm-twisting and large-scale historical criticism that Lewis excelled at.”
Joel Miller argues Harrell is missing the point. “A vibrant intellectual life includes thoughts that span millennia. They’re not so foreign as some insist, and their differences might just keep us from going off the rails.”
Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, notes Lewis’s blessing to us is “in what you might call pastoral theology: as an interpreter of people’s moral and spiritual crises; as somebody who is a brilliant diagnostician of self-deception; and somebody who, in his own book on bereavement after his wife’s death, really pushes the envelope – giving permission, I suppose, to people to articulate their anger and resentment about a God who apparently takes your loved ones away from you.”
In related a post, Jeremy Lott notes the angst many have had over Susan’s absence from The Last Battle. Many readers think Lewis condemns her life choices by appearing to keep her out of Narnia when everything comes falling down, but Lott quotes from Lewis’ letters to show that the author simply believed Susan’s story was longer and more adult than the one he wanted to tell. “Why not try it yourself?” Lewis asked a reader, to which Lott replies, “Who has tried to tell Susan’s story?” He hopes someone will attempt to pick up the life of Susan Pevensie and finish at least part of her story.