Dissident Muse Journal

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.

digital drawing from online modeling session, 2021 I got deeply into both figure drawing and modernist abstraction in graduate school, and have been working out the tensions ever since. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I wrote an anatomy book. I never illustrated it, though. I’m doing so now. To accompany that effort, I’ve started another Substack in which I’ll record the process, while offering additional commentary on the art of drawing as the muse directs me.

Christopher McDonald of The McFiles (pronounced “mac files”) had me on his livestream yesterday evening to talk about The Socialist Book of the Dead. We had an immensely enjoyable conversation about the project, why socialism remains attractive despite its history of unmitigated disaster, and what God has to do with all this. You can check out the recording here. There seems to be a lot of interest in the story of an artist working on a project critical of socialism from a man-bites-dog angle.

A hatching lesson. [Substack is warning me about the length of this post with respect to email. There are a lot of pictures. Please consider clicking through.—FE] Holly MathNerd wrote a brave post recently about how she failed at ink drawing on a commission. The subject was a hummingbird. I can see, without straining, what is wrong with the hummingbird. There is essentially one value across the whole bird — no light source, no shadow, no modeling.

An Asynchronous Studio Book Club reading of Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars by Camille Paglia. Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches, Kunsthaus Zurich (source) Glittering Images proceeded to the end in the same spirit of erudition and wonderment that characterizes the rest of the book.

You should have an informed, responsible discussion about treatment options with your deity. Morris Graves, Bird in the Spirit, c. 1940–1941, opaque watercolor on paper, 21 3/8 × 41 3/4 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art (source) Suppose, God forbid, that your biopsy results came back and the news was bad. Would you pursue the recommended treatment, or take to vaguely admitting that you’re ill, going on with life as you’ve lived it, and letting yourself be eaten from the inside?