Despite some overlaps, military branches do in the end have their own histories, traditions, and, in particular, things, which set an emotional tone. Marines are “Leathernecks” for their stiff collars, originally meant to prevent cutlass wounds. Sailors were “swabbies” for their mops, or “tars” for the tar used on old ships. Navy cadre at the dive school called us “trees” for our camouflage-patterned army uniforms.
The story of Scott Walker is the story not of making it big, but making it big the right way across an entire career, including even the long breaks in between.
Philosophy needed some rebranding, if people were not to relegate it to grumpy old men. But Becky Moon was just a freshman, so she shrugged off the question and contented herself with doodling fresh, playful little pictures about the thought experiments.
“Calvin & Hobbes” ended in 1995, and Bill Watterson was not seen or heard from much since—until last year, when he and caricaturist John Kascht published “The Mysteries,” a (very) brief graphic novel.
It is in Motherwell’s complete and utter lack of direct representation that we might find room to discover the heart of his “Elegies.” He assumes, graciously, that we also have the heart and intelligence to triangulate history, painted images, and varying titles on the theme of Spain’s self-inflicted suffering.
The play does well portraying one of the novel’s main conflicts: that Ahab cannot live without knowing, within the framework of his own understanding of cause and effect, and this tautological pride makes other beings suffer. His lust for vengeance is blasphemous chiefly because he cannot live in The Mystery without acting on some little part of it and calling it the whole—just like us.
It took a South African to restore and transform Forest Park. Now an Englishman has given us a Cahokia in which three groups intermingle—Indian, Black, and European—with precarious harmony.
Humor in the face of depictions as seemingly bleak as Kiefer’s is not far off the mark. There is no punch-line in “Burning Rods.“ Look carefully enough, though, and it is clear there is no distinct vanishing point, either.
In the world of miniatures, Kelly could make art that was comprehensive for her and for the viewer, tackling a topic that loomed large by shrinking it down to size, ordering, and controlling it. Thus she took the overwhelming, misunderstood, dangerous compulsion of hoarding, something nobody ever quite comprehends, and made it approachable.
In the digital age, something strange has happened to people’s perceptions of their own walking-around knowledge. Perhaps they feel the walking-around has been accelerated and covers more ground.