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Very
British Republicans
December 28, 2009
How can we understand that stalwart band of forty Republican nay-sayers in
the Senate, determined to prevent health reform no matter how necessary,
determined to embarrass their president no matter how much they embarrass their
country? The Republicans are behaving as if they have lost their way and somehow
turned up in the British parliamentary system. They are like mean kids who show
up for every baseball game with no gloves or bats but only skates and hockey
sticks. The Republicans have deluded themselves about the American way of
legislating for some time...
NEWS COMMENTARY
December 28, 2009
Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés: The revival of a masterpiece
The Philadelphia
Museum of Art, which has had the late Frenchman's landmark work as part of its
permanent collection for 40 years, marks the anniversary with a greatly expanded
exhibition.
-- Reporting from Philadelphia --
Marcel Duchamp served for many years as both a prince and court jester to modern
art in the 20th century. While creating some well-known works, he also punctured
pretensions with jokes, pranks, aphorisms and a perpetual hunt for new byways of
art. Then he announced he was abandoning art, giving it all up to play chess.
But he was not telling the truth. He worked in secret for 20 years, assembling a
huge, fanciful and puzzling diorama. When he died in 1968, only a few people
knew about his secret. A year after his death, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
installed the secret work and displayed it to the public. While some patrons
were shocked by its sexuality, it soon became a magnet for young artists looking
for new paths to take their own work. Duchamp's masterpiece, known as "Étant
donnés," a shortened form of its French title, is now regarded as one of the
most powerful and dynamic influences on contemporary art...
LOS ANGELES TIMES
September 27, 2009
Royal armor and portraits at the National Gallery of Art
A second
Spanish-accented exhibition, on painter Luis Meléndez, is bound for Los Angeles.
-- Reporting from Washington --
Suits of armor were once so finely
wrought that an attacking lance would glance off their smooth metal harmlessly.
But then, as the Middle Ages moved into the Renaissance, European kings demanded
that the craftsmen finish the armor with elaborate decoration. All the engraving
and embossing upset the surface of the armor. A lance would no longer slip away.
But that did not matter. Decorated armor was for show, so that the kings would
look majestic and powerful and indestructible, especially in portraits by great
painters...
LOS ANGELES TIMES
July 12, 2009
Obama and the United Nations (pdf)
WASHINGTON DC - Relations between the George W. Bush administration
and the United Nations dropped so far into the lower depths that it does not
take much of a prophet to predict that all will improve under President Barack
Obama. Unlike John Bolton, the new president’s ambassador, Susan Rice, will not
show up in New York determined to humiliate and decimate the U.N. Nor is Obama
likely to start a war in defiance of his allies and the Security Council...
Hopes and
Realities (pdf)
International Affairs Forum, Center for International Relations
January 18, 2009
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Stanley Meisler
is the author of the biography
Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War and the history
United
Nations : The First Fifty Years.
Meisler served as a
Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic
correspondent for thirty years, assigned to Nairobi, Mexico City, Madrid,
Toronto, Paris, Barcelona, the United Nations and Washington. He still
contributes articles to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Sunday Opinion
and Art sections and writes a News Commentary
for his website,
www.stanleymeisler.com.
For many
years, Meisler has contributed articles to leading American magazines
including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, the
Reader’s Digest, the Quarterly Journal of Military History, and the
Columbia Journalism Review. While most of these articles focus on foreign
affairs and political issues, Meisler has contributed more than thirty articles on
artists and art history to the Smithsonian
Magazine... |
(1709 - 1784)