Author: jameswagner

“Mahomet débordé par les intégristes”

charliehebromahomet.jpg

This cartoon appeared today in Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly associated with the radical Left. The in-house drawing portrays the prophet of Islam next to a headline, “Mahomet overwhelmed by the fundamentalists.” The distraught man cries, “It’s hard to be loved by fools.”
Anyone who comes to my blog regularly knows that I have great affection for the planet’s diversity, and that I am extremely sympathetic to the people and cultures of the middle east, but I expect I’ve also made it pretty clear that I consider myself an adversary not just of fundamentalism, but of all organized religions, equally, and regardless of where they are found. Okay, I admit that sometimes there’s a worthy aesthetic element, but as in any other institution, that’s not the part that destroys and kills.

BETTER THAN A CARTOON
Barry has uncovered the best words to appear on the subject of the cartoon war yet.

The fact that fundamentalists of all persuasions are completely incapable of self-reflection, self-criticism, and self-irony would not warrant a mention, were it not for their practice of imposing their issues on me and my world. They assume that we will kowtow to them as soon as we recognise who they are: “Look out! Religious feelings! We’re leaving the private sphere.”

See his site for the context of this piece and a link to Sonia Mikich’s entire text.

[image from nouvelobs, via a news item from Reuters]

wacky Christians green with envy?

The U.S. and British governments criticized publication of the caricatures as offensive to Muslims, raising questions about whether the line between free speech and incitement had been crossed. [Associated Press]

One more short thought on the subject of cartoons (although as much as I would like never to have to address this stupidity again, I suspect this is only the beginning):
Our own fundamentalist Christian religio/politicos must be green with envy of their Islamist fellows for what they have been able to accomplish around the world in just a few days.
Contrary to the principles and practice of their open societies, virtually everyone of any authority in what we would like to regard as an enlightened world is currently bending over backwards to apologize (for the normal exercise of hard-won fundamental freedoms) to particularly vocal members of one cult. Our sad, clueless guardians and the institutions they control are going even further and affirming a quite new and unrestricted principle of untouchability with respect to both the practice and beliefs of that cult – and in theory at least that of any other which manages to get noticed.
Where will this end? There are lots of different religious formats out there, with lots and lots of taboos, and lots of cynical people willing to use them for their own political purposes.
We seem to be engaged in a political and cultural suicide which will be mourned by people of intelligence and good will everywhere in the world – if any of us survive the deceased ourselves.

“Ride the Subway, See a Movie”

Berlinfenster2.jpg
(but don’t look at the soft upholstered seating)

No, not in New York of course, where transit communications systems have changed little in the last 100 years. Instead, this is the headline of a short item by Sarah Plass in today’s NYTimes. It’s about a real film festival located entirely inside Berlin’s modern subway cars.

A ride on the Berlin subways these days is a literal and figurative trip. For 1.5 million passengers daily, a ride means access to the fifth international short-film festival, “Going Underground,” in which four ultrashort films a day are playing on 4,000 screens in the trains. Altogether, 14 international productions, each not longer than 90 seconds and all silent, were chosen from 450 shorts from 39 countries. Films from Germany, the United States, Britain and Brazil, for example, feature 3-D characters, monsters and abstract art. Several other films, competing for the Renewable Movie Award, deal with renewable resources. In what is billed as the world’s first underground film festival, passengers are asked to vote for their favorites via cellphone text messages or online [on the festival website www.goingunderground.de]. The award ceremony will be on Feb. 12, with the winner receiving $3,600, which can be used for longer productions. The festival runs through Tuesday.

The article doesn’t mention that this is actually the fifth Kurzfilmfestival in der U-Bahn!
We were very impressed with the transit system when we were in Berlin last fall. Yes, these screens are used for advertising much of the time, but they also offer grown-up news and weather segments, as well as short entertainment spots. Looking over my shoulder, Barry has just warned me to be careful about what I wish for. I’m not wishing, but I agree that if the MTA ever got around to installing a similar system, the programing would probably be controlled by FOX – and it wouldn’t be subtle and it wouldn’t be delivered at a moderate sound volume.
Right now I’d just be happy to have the L train back on weekends.

[image from Screenlabs]

art in paraphilia

Fritzhaeg2.jpg
a boy and his fancy dog

Ever so often something reminds us that we really don’t know much about fetishes.
I found this fascinating but uncredited image on a site I was directed to by an email from Slava Mogutin (alright, I’ll admit it, I’m actually not totally unacquainted with the wonderful world of Le fétichisme dans l’amour).
Agh, kids!

*
who may be the artist here, but go to his own site to see his credited stuff, including direction to his published writings

[image from fritzhaeg/sundown salon]

we are all Danes today

Mohammed.jpg

This whole Mohammed image thing is almost perfectly ridiculous, but there is one perfect solution to the problem.
Denmark simply must not be left hanging in the wind. There is a popular, although apparently apocryphal story concerning the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. Supposedly the aged King Christian X left the palace on his daily ride wearing the yellow Star of David, the symbol which jews had been ordered to display prominently on their clothing.
Maybe it’s just a nice story, but whatever its basis in fact, the combined efforts of the Danish population saved from extermination all but a few dozen of the nation’s 6500 jews.
Let’s put together a wonderful, real story with the material we’ve been handed sixty years later.
It’s time for all newspapers, and all nations, everyone who has a media outlet, to make themselves a common target of those who would threaten the freedoms which support liberal societies.
I believe the images scorned by ignorant or cynical people who do not, or pretend not, to understand our liberties should be shown everywhere, and as prominently as is possible. Now.
We are all Danes today, regardless of our beliefs.

[image via Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has published all 12 original cartoons on his blog]

NOTE:
It would be inappropriate under the circumstances were I not to mention the significance of the source of the very elusive image I’ve used and the link I provide. Geert Wilders is more than a little controversial himself.

Rä di Martino at Artists Space

POST CARD

diMartinoRae2.jpg
Rä di Martino Not360 2003 16mm film transferred onto DVD [still from video installation]
Rä di Martino has a wonderful video in a terrific group show, “The Mind/Body Problem” at Artists Space. I wish every film packed as much into a feature’s length as this Möbius-Strip-like piece does in just seven minutes. I stood in the room and watched it, I think, four times. It’s still playing somewhere inside my head.

disorderly conduct before the emperor

SheehanHousearrest.jpg
House arrest

If she just had the common decency to wear Old Navy or GAP, it would only have been American business as usual and there wouldn’t have been any fuss.
Even MSNBC can’t make Cindy Sheehan look like a miscreant.

Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan to the speech and covered it up until she took her seat. Police warned her that such displays were not allowed, but she did not respond, the spokeswoman said.
The T-shirt bore the words “2,245 Dead — How Many More??” in reference to the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, protesters told NBC News.
Police handcuffed Sheehan and removed her from the gallery before Bush arrived.

[image by Jason Reed from REUTERS]

Karen Heagle at I-20

HeagleBoundMan.jpg
Karen Heagle Bound Man 2005 oil on panel 61″ x 68″ [pretty large detail]

HeagleStarfish.jpg
Kaen Heagle Low Tide at Rialto Beach 3 (Lone Starfish) 20o5 oil on panel 45″ x 42″ [detail]

Karen Heagle’s show opened I-20 gallery’s very impressive space on 23rd Street tonight and the beauty of both the work and the opening-night crowd represented a certain aesthetic and intellectual nobility not sufficiently represented in large Chelsea shows these days.
I’ve been hooked on Heagle’s imagery for years, but until now I’ve always felt I had to work very hard to find it. Actually it was even a number of years after I first met and talked to the artist before I even discovered that she painted.
These canvases and these drawings are really extraordinary, and extraordinarily sophisticated, in spite of a style which might initially appear conservative, even primitive. Surprisingly, in spite of their simplicity, they never suggest the faux-naif. So is this the twenty-first century?
The portraits, and they are portraits (even if the sitter may be a turkey or a starfish), or at least that’s where they start, are ennobled by the sensitivlty and brilliance of the more-or-less abstract “landscapes” which frame the subject.
May I be excused if I say that those are absolutely the sexiest starfish I’ve ever seen (not that I’ve really ever thought that way about echinoderms before)?
For more on Heagle, see the wonderful Ed Winkleman.