Dissident Muse Journal

Something just happened at PEN America that ran so contrary to my moral instincts that I had to read several reports to understand it.1 Three writers, including Lisa Tolin, Interim Chief Communications Officer at PEN America and author of a recent picture book about Yoko Ono, wrote a report for the organization titled “‘A Silent Moratorium’,” which appeared on the PEN website on July 9.

I’m pleased to let readers of Dissident Muse Journal know that the first instructional post has gone up at Art Anatomy. This is an example of things to come. If you want to know more or enjoy more about figure drawing, please check it out and subscribe for free if it speaks to you. Going forward, I plan not to announce new Art Anatomy posts here at DMJ. This is an exception since it has been a while since the introductory post. DMJ will continue as before.

Pesellino, King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land (detail), c. 1445–50, tempera, oil, and gold on panel, Clark Art Institute (source) From Gestures (2014) by Vilém Flusser, translated by Nancy Ann Roth. “It is apparent that the disruptive gesture resembles work. Work is a gesture whose motive lies in the decision to make something different from what it is, because it is not as it should be. Both destruction and work decide that something is not as it should be.

Bernhard Hoetger, monument on the grave of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Worpswede () Rilke’s copious literary gift is undeniable. But increasingly I found myself anticipating Becker’s raw probity. Page 51: I think we should not always demand of our poor soul a Sunday afternoon mood. I also find that every action we take is also who we are, and we should respect that. I do not accept any norm—not the Rilke norm, not the Becker norm, etc.

Franklin Einspruch, Leviathan, 2026, ink, watercolor, and egg tempera on paper, 7 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, ©FE This was a commission, for which I’m available. Reach out if you need a sea monster of your own. I am also available for dragons and basilisks. Unicorns are on offer for a premium. I have long thought of the Leviathan as a whale. That’s not correct, as I found in the course of researching this image. The Leviathan eats whales. The lore hails from ancient Judaism, following other Canaanite sources.

I’ve finished reading The Only Revolution by Jiddu Krishnamurti.1 Krishnamurti, as a child, was groomed by the Theosophists to become what they were calling the “World Teacher.” In his twenties, he dissolved the organization that they formed for this purpose and became a syncretic guide to truth, adopting no creed. Instead he advocated for a practice of continuous, unalloyed attention, exemplified as meditation.

Paula Moderoshn-Becker, Clara Westhoff, 1905 (source) A self-described “family” of artists at the Worpswede artist colony at the turn of the 20th century that included Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Becker “enjoyed nude bathing, moonlit dancing, and weekly concerts and poetry readings in the music room at Vogeler’s Jugendstil-inspired villa, Barkenhoff, which was set in manicured gardens.” This is according to the introduction by Jill Lloyd of The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence edited by...

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906, oil tempera on cardboard (source) The title is a line of Rilke’s set down in a poem written to Paula Modersohn-Becker, recorded in The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence edited by Rainer Stamm for Eris. We will read it over three weeks beginning Sunday. Finally, we’ll return to Jed Perl’s Art in America anthology for a couple of weeks. I’ve been avoiding it, I don’t know why.

Installation view, “Alma Allen: Call Me the Breeze,” Venice Biennale (source) Artforum recently posted an essay by Harmon Siegel, “When Criticism Was Life and Death,” subtitled “On ‘Problems of Criticism’ and judgment in times of crisis.” It situates an essay by Clement Greenberg of which I’ve long been fond, “Complaints of an Art Critic,” in history I didn’t know: it was part of a series prompted by Robert Goldwater about the state of criticism circa 1967.

Come shoot (paper targets with pictures of) Nazis with us! Target image by yours truly. An astute articulation of contemporary Zionism appeared last fall in Tablet. “June Israel vs. October Israel” by Jordan Chandler Hirsch, who among other things is senior counsel at Palantir, contrasted two triumphs with two disasters.