it's precisely in their failure to consolidate whatever gains they may have made that we can see the real beginnings of modernism. Let's begin with some (reasonably) arbitrary assumptions. The first is that we can date the advent of modernism in painting to 1865, which was the year in which Edouard Manet's "Olympia" was exhibited…
Impressionism, Again
I'm not going to address the reasons for why I haven't posted anything on this blog in more than 6 months. Needless to say that there are no good reasons, and that if I thought it was at all important or even a question of any kind of significance for me to do so, I'd…
Manet, Monet, and Modern Art.
This is going to be a long one. Again. So, it's going to be cut up into sections that are updated as often as I can. This whole coronavirus thing has not been good for my productivity in some areas, although my golf game has markedly improved, as have other aspects of my health (within…
How to Normalise Fascism, Part 7
Apres note: I'm coming back to this after a long hiatus, mostly associated with my laziness. There will be repetitions and errours. There will be repetitions and errors. Robert Harris' "Fatherland" is a counter-factual historical novel about an imagined future/past in which the Nazis won the Second World War. Philip K. Dick's "The Man in…
Coronavirus
I was writing a bunch of posts about "Fatherland" and "The Man in the High Castle", but school intervened (teaching, not learning) and it got very busy for me. Now I've totally lost where I was with that, and I'm only getting back on track (not really). But it's been a year of this coronavirus,…
How to Normalise Fascism, Part 6.
Two novels. Robert Harris' "Fatherland" and Phillip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle". As I've mentioned in previous posts, the novels, while sharing a setting (the 1960s in an alternative history in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War) could not be more different in terms of how they tell their respective…
How to Normalise Fascism, Part 5
And we're back. As the title says, this is the 5th post in a series. You can read all of the ones that have gone before, or you can read none of them. I'd prefer if you read all of them, multiple times, identified codes, themes , ideas, whatever, that I hadn't intended or noticed,…
That Time my Friend Robbed the Tate Modern
Clickbaity title alert: My friend didn't rob the Tate Modern as in: rush in there with a gun, brandishing it around, and fleeing with half of Hirst's cow sculpture or a bunch of money. But he did steal from there. It's not a big thing, but it was kind of funny at the time, and…
How to Normalise Fascism, Part 4.
Preambular Note: I didn't know what the German word for 4 was. I learned the words 1, 2, and 3 from the movie "Cool Runnings". Preambular Note (2): If you read what I post on WordPress, and if you're thoroughly sick of reading about "Fatherland", don't worry, I'm sick of writing about it. I initially…
How to Normalise Fascism: Part Drei
Happy New Year to all who read this, except for those of you who believe that this thing that I'm writing (more than 3,000 words after this post) should be an instructional kind of thing. Because it's not. I don't know why I should have to say it, but it's because fascism shouldn't be normalised…
Vatican Hotline 