Vonnegut

How is this for a definition of high art:
"Making the most of the raw materials of futility"?

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

Pleasing Forms

"Making abstract work involves a lot of reflection. Even in work like this, in which paint must be put down with verve and speed, the artist has to spend a lot of time looking at the results and evaluating them. An area of paint has either come to rest in an optimal shape, density, transparency, hue, texture, and relationship to nearby areas, or it hasn't, and thus something needs to be done. But what? It depends. You decide by paying a lot of attention to your gut reactions about pleasing forms."
~ Franklin Einspruch, Catalogue essay for
George Bethea's "Prajna: Color and Light" at Dorsch Gallery

Absurdity & Anti-Art

"Western society, and particularly that of America, is gravely ill, and a major symptom is the American treatment of the Negro. The artistic expression of this culture concentrates on themes of 'absurdity' and 'anti-art,' which provide further evidence of its ill-health." ~ Romare Bearden (1911-1988)

• Wikipedia entry on Romare Bearden
• Romare Bearden on ArtNet
• Romare Bearden Foundation

Romare Bearden, "Sunrise Coffee" (1970)

Feckless

feck·less (fěk'lis), adj.
1. Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective.
2. Careless and irresponsible.

[Scots feck, effect (alteration of effect) + -less.]

"Lately Art has been confused with fun-loving but declawed and neutered mutts named Fluff and Feckless."
~ Salute the Rough Guys

More art criticism via street signs at the "Salute the Rough Guys" website.

Ecclesiastical Architecture

"Every age gets the ecclesiastical architecture that its social and political concerns warrant, and it's worth remembering that the great churches of pre-Reformation Europe, which [Andrew] Sullivan loves, look and feel like towered and battlemented military fortresses. Then, churches were built like castles, to intimidate; now, like shopping centers and sports arenas, they take entertainment rather than war as their model, which some might construe as a humanitarian advance of sorts."

~ Jonathan Raban, "Cracks in the House of Rove"
(a review of Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul, in the 12 April 2007 edition of The New York Review of Books)

* * *

How should a church look?

Po-Faced

po-faced
Pronunciation: 'pO-"fAst
Function: adjective
Etymology: perhaps from po chamber pot, toilet, from French pot pot
British : having an assumed solemn, serious, or earnest expression or manner : piously or hypocritically solemn

"Shouldn't games at least be entertaining, not po-faced, solemn and pretentious?" ~ Richard Dawkins, "Postmodernism Disrobed"

hat-tip: Bill Gusky's Artblog Comments.