Category: Culture

Abstract Art Discussion

Columbinesea Hey, Tim Jones, here (not Jimmy).

I did a series of posts on the nature of art a long time ago, which I left unfinished, due to the fact that I had not thought through all the implications of my earlier assumptions and categories of thought, especially in regard to the place of non-objective art ("abstract" art that depicts no recognizable subject).

I have been doing more thinking on this recently, and though I am still not prepared to draw any huge, sweeping conclusions, I have clarified my thought considerably. I will be completing that series of art posts soon, but in the meanwhile, I stumbled on an interesting art blog, where the author and I have been engaging in a discussion about non-objective art that some readers might want to scan.

Basically, I’m not convinced, yet, that non-objective art is really capable of substantive communication, but I am open to argument.

The subject came up as a result of an upcoming opportunity I have to meet and view the work of artist Makoto Fujimura (above). I have heard a great deal about his work, and have been reading some of his articles and interviews, trying to get some insight into his understanding of the function of art, and why he prefers to work in such a highly abstract way. Fujimura is very open about his Christian faith, and his work has found increasing recognition in the secular art community. He speaks with great conviction both about the Christian faith and about the power of art, and so I look forward to meeting him and seeing his work. I will post about his exhibit afterward.

Visit The Aesthetic Elevator blog. In addition to our discussion, he addresses the chocolate Jesus sculpture of recent infamy. My take on it? Flippant, empty and of no consequence, artistic or sociological. Calculated to gin up publicity by means of controversy… *yawn*. Anyone could think up a project like this every twenty minutes.

See the work of Makoto Fujimura.

The Chronicles Of IncrediKid!

A reader writes:

I wanted to share this
movie I made. Its a family film, 5 minutes in length and was my first
attempt for "On The lot" by Steven Spielberg. My oldest son loved filming
it, so if you have a chance take a look. Its a general audience film. Thanks
again and God Bless.

I did indeed take a look at the fim, and thought folks (especially parents!) would get a big kick out of it. I’d love to embed it here on the blog, but unfortunately Mr. Spielberg doesn’t seem to have gotten with the YouTube generation yet, so . . .

 


HERE’S THE LINK.

EMI To Nix DRM!

Good news, everybody!

EMI–one of the world’s largest music labels–has decided to give DRM-free online music a try. The deal is they’ll start selling their entire catalogue (except The Beatles) via iTunes in DRM-free form for $1.29 a song (up from 99 cents a song for the DRM-hobbled version of the music).

Personally, I’d pay the extra 30 cents for music portability, and I suspect a lot of other folks will, too.

As for The Beatles . . . well, they’ve been stick-in-the-muds for years, being slow to adopt changing music technologies. They were among the last artists to make their music available on CD, even when it was clearly the preferred choice by consumers. It’s like they’ve still got their heads stuck in the ’60s of something.

Steve Jobs also says that he expects half of the music on iTunes to be available in the premium, DRM-free version by the end of the year, which suggests he’s in negotiations with other labels for the same thing.

GET THE STORY.

By Their Lives of Judas You Shall Know Them

CNS is reporting:

Curiosity about the New Testament figure of Judas and a feeling that his reputation as the worst sinner in history "isn’t fair, isn’t right" led British novelist Jeffrey Archer to attempt a new version of the story.

Archer, presenting "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" at a March 20 press conference in Rome, said he is a practicing Anglican who wanted his new book to be backed up by solid biblical scholarship.

So he convinced Father Francis J. Moloney, provincial of the Salesians in Australia and a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, to collaborate.

Now, I don’t have a problem with someone writing a book called "The Gospel According to Judas" or writing novels about Judas or about Judas’s perceptions of Christ. I don’t even have a problem with someone who wants to present Judas as something other than the worst sinner in history–something that the Church doesn’t teach that he was. One could hold that Judas had diminished culpability for his sins and that someone else in history had a higher degree of culpability.

But I do have a problem with this:

Archer’s main thesis is that Judas tried to prevent Jesus’ arrest and execution by enlisting the help of a scribe to get Jesus out of Jerusalem and back to Galilee where the Romans supposedly would ignore him.

In the end, the scribe betrays Judas, which means Judas unwittingly betrays Jesus.

Both Archer and Father Moloney doubt that Judas committed suicide, a story recounted only in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The Benjamin Iscariot in Archer’s title is Judas’ fictitious son, who — years after the death of Jesus — finds his father living in an ascetic community near the Dead Sea. His father reluctantly gives his version of what happened to Jesus and the son writes it down.

I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable on two grounds. First, it flatly contradicts the biblical accounts of Judas’ death. It would be one thing if the author made it clear that he was not writing about our universe and that he was dealing with a parallel Judas and what happened to him, but that’s not the case. The author and Fr. Moloney both cast doubt on the inspired text as it applies to our universe. This is an unacceptable misrepresentation of the facts of history. It’s not a case of them proposing a novel or unexpected way to harmonize the accounts of Judas’s death; it’s them flatly rejecting the biblical accounts.

Second, the author has fallen into the perennial trap of trying to exonerate Judas. That’s not the same thing as portraying him in a way that nuances his character and motives. It’s not the same thing as just saying "He may not have been the worst sinner in history." It’s flatly rejecting the betrayal that Judas performed. On this account, Judas didn’t betray Jesus; he was himself betrayed.

Sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. Not if we’re being asked to entertain what might have been the case with the Judas in our universe.

I don’t know what it is with authors (and filmmakers) who want to rehabilitate Judas in this fashion.

But I suspect it’s this: They themselves have an uneasy conscience.

They themselves feel that they have betrayed Christ (as have we all by our sins), but rather than throw themselves on Christ’s mercy and accepting his grace, they want to rationalize or excuse their sins and so–using the character of Judas as a psychological surrogate for themselves–they rationalize and excuse his in fictional form.

The underlying psychological message they’re trying to give themselves is: Hey, if Judas didn’t really betray Christ–if he was a tragic victim of circumstance–then that’s what I am, too. I haven’t really betrayed him. I’m just a victim of fate, too, and I’m not really responsible for what I’ve done.

By their lives of Judas you shall know them.

GET THE STORY.

Sold-out Silence: Manhattan Monk Movie Mania!

This weekend I went back to see INTO GREAT SILENCE a second time at the one venue it is currently playing, NYC’s Film Forum Theater.

I went with my 12-year-old daughter Sarah, who watched Papa’s two-minute plug for the film on EWTN’s "Life on the Rock" this past Thursday, and wanted to see it.

The screening was sold out.

Luckily I had bought tickets online, or we wouldn’t have got in. After an hour getting to the theater, turning around and going home would have been no fun. There weren’t two seats to be had together; I had to ask another patron if he would change seats so that I could sit with Sarah. (She loved the film, BTW.)

Apparently, that sold-out screening was indicative of a strong opening weekend; a contact at Zeitgeist tells me the film did very well in NYC (I don’t have numbers yet). So, this is good news for all of you who are hoping that the film will come to a theater near you, since art-house theater owners look to the NY opening of a film like this when deciding whether to book the film.

A number of readers have asked what they can do if the movie isn’t currently scheduled to play near them. Answer: Contact your local art-house/alternative theater owner(s) and ask them to book the film! The more interested patrons theater owners hear from, the more likely they are to book the film. And if it does come anywhere near you, make sure people who would enjoy it know about it.

Of course if you truly live in the sticks where there isn’t an art-house theater for three hours, you’re probably out of luck, but then you already knew that anyway.

P.S. Chicago-area readers: Note that the Music Box Theatre has moved up the film’s week-long run by a week, from a start date of April 6 to a start date of March 30!

WHERE AND WHEN (slightly updated!)

A Novel Idea

Earthjim Over at Catholic Exchange, Terry Mattingly tells us about a new graphic novel / movie project from the creator of Earthworm Jim (left), Doug TenNapel.

Along with exploring the creative process that TenNapel employs, Mattingly describes how Creature Tech moved from a picture story on paper to a real , fer-sure Hollywood movie;

"The key moment came when the blogger called "Moriarty" posted the following at the Ain’t It Cool (aintitcool.com) site for film insiders:  "There’s no doubt. It’s weird . . . It’s also very funny, profoundly sweet and heartfelt, touching in a strange way, and serious about concepts like faith and family without being in any way preachy or corny.

"Simply put, Creature Tech is the best American animated film since The Iron Giant . . . Better than anything from any studio . . . It’s a movie that just happens to be in print."

Within minutes, studios started calling his agent. Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox won the bidding war and early work began on a live-action movie"

I want to see it already, just based on the sketchy (heh) description in Mattingly’s article. TenNapel deals with the creative problems that face Christian artists in an apparently organic, sensible and honest way. Of the current state of the entertainment biz from a Christian perspective, he states;

"People want a quick fix. Christians are going to have to learn that art isn’t automatically good if it’s made by Christians. And Hollywood will have to learn that art isn’t automatically bad if it’s made by Christians."

I did not grow up reading comics much, and am not that familiar with the graphic novel genre, but I hope to read Creature Tech before the movie comes out. Any graphic novel fans out there who might be able to give me some confirmation on the worthiness of this one? It sounds tasty.

GET THE STORY.

Apple Vs. DRM?

If true, then

GOOD.

HERE’S STEVE JOBS’ ORIGINAL ESSAY.

EXCERPT:

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Atlas Shrugged

A reader writes:

Hey Jimmy, any thoughts on "Atlas Shrugged"? I’ve yet to read it, but I’m wondering if it makes any good points, and was also curious what the bad ones might be. A friend has forced me to read it, so I thought it’d be best to get your thoughts first. Thanks!

Well, I can’t generally offer thoughts on works of fiction like Atlas Shrugged, and most have both good and bad points, but in this case I do happen to know something about the work and its author, Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was a 20th century immigrant to the US who advocated a particular philosophical system that she dubbed "Objectivism," because of its supposedly objective viewpoint.

This viewpoint has significant resonances with the Libertarian political movement, and advocates of Objectivism tend to be Libertarian politically (though not all Libertarians are Objectivists). This means that they tend to be economically liberal (in the historic sense–i.e., in favor of laissez-faire capitalism) while being socially liberal as well (e.g., not opposing abortion or homosexuality).

Objectivism tends to support a form of individualism that leaves open to the individual certain forms of freedom that Catholic theology would hold are immoral (e.g., it sometimes exalts selfishness as a virtue). It also tends to be strongly anti-religious.

While I have not read a great deal of Ayn Rand’s works (though I have read some), I can report that she uses her fiction–such as Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged–as vehicles for her philosophical thought.

I can also report that she is not taken seriously as a philosopher by real, academic philosophers.

I suggest looking into the following online articles from Wikipedia for more info:

* AYN RAND

* OBJECTIVISM

* OBJECTIVIST MOVEMENT

* ATLAS SHRUGGED