But I have been inculcated by that phrase: do something useful, something you can make money at (read: support a family) or accomplish a greater good by. This message is reinforced everywhere including the news where we read reports on job trends (artist or poet never make the top ten in fact the contrary is true), and again in schools the arts are electives if at all available; they are pushed to the periphery. So, it is no surprise I have landed in the useful career of Database Administrator, may be to make amends for the utter uselessness of poetry.

The extent of this guilt and disenfranchisement, I fully divulge in an article recently posted on our friend’s site, Macedonia Films: How I’m Damned & What I’m Doing About It – Part I. Check it out and while you’re there tool around a bit to find out what other exciting things the minds at Macedonia are devising.

Less is more, Less is more, Less is more. When in doubt, err on the side of silence. There has never been a well shot, well acted, well written scene in a film that was utterly ruined by not having musical accompaniment. The opposite, sadly, is certainly not true.

Kent is currently collaborating with Macedonia Films on the score for the movie Avarice. Read the whole interview here: Meet Kent Smith

Descending Theology: The Garden
by Mary Karr

We know he was a man because, once doomed,
he begged for reprieve. See him
grieving on his rock under olive trees,
his companions asleep
on the hard ground around him
wrapped in old hides.
Not one stayed awake as he’d asked.
That pierced him like a sword.
Above him, the sky’s black membrane,
which he’d pass through
soon enough. He wished with all his being
to stay but gave up
bargaining as a child might. He knew
it was all mercy anyway,
unearned as breath. The Father couldn’t intervene,
though that gaze was never
not rapt, a warm mantle around him.
This was our doing, our death.
The dark prince had poured the vial of poison
into the betrayer’s ear,
and it was done. Around the oasis where Jesus wept,
the cracked earth radiated out for miles.
In the green center, Jesus prayed for naught
but pardon of Judas,
who stared up into the same punctured sky
till his neck bones ached, blind
to its myriad blazings. So he failed to walk over
and weep with his brother.

This is absolutely wonderful!  World-renowned conductor and speaker Benjamin Zander explains how classical music is something that can speak into the hearts of everyone.

“Today, the 26th of July, 1632, I, Jacob van Swieten, Public Notary, […] visited the house of Mr. Heijndrick Ulenburch, painter, living on Breestraat, […] and there asked a certain young girl who came to the door whether Mr. Rembrandt Harmens v. Rijn, panter, (who had taken lodgings at the house) was at home and available. The same girl replied‘yes’ and when on my request the aforementioned Rembrandt Harmens v. Rijn, painter, was called and had come to the entrance hall where I was waiting for him, I asked him if he was Mr. Rembrandt Harmens v. Rijn, painter, and he having replied ‘yes’ I then said to him that that was all and that it appeared to me that he was still fresh and vigorous and in good health to which he replied, ‘that is true, I am—thank God—fit and in good health.’”

It is true that in 1632, Rembrandt, 26 years old and living in the house of his dealer, was still “fresh and vigorous,” many years from his own bankruptcy and the decline of his popularity: in 1634 a marriage to his dealer’s daughter would commence a decade of personal prosperity and from auctions Rembrandt would accumulate a treasury of art, armor; even old clothing, shells, the skin of a lion. For this brief period, Rembrandt participated in a national season of prosperity. Throughout the 1600s, Amsterdam held the greatest per capita in Europe. New systems of global trading had, in fact, spread wealth over Europe in its entirety, enlarging the pool of goods available to buyers as it increasingly rewarded its sellers. Both Holland and Spain experienced a “golden age” in the 17th century, and France ascended to greatest power. In a culture which disposed of its excess income through its art, this prosperity transformed the prevalence—perhaps the quality—of European painting in the17th and 18th centuries, and spinning through a unique religious and political mileu, transformed its substance and variety also.

“Rembrandt, Rubens, and the Golden Age of European Painting,” at the Dixon Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee through April 15, samples the cultural abundance of the centuries between 1600 and 1800—it also contains many excellent paintings. For the Dixon curators, however, the diverse character of the show presents an overwhelming organizational challenge. Between the 17th and 18th centuries are arranged innumerable wars, the Protestant Reformation, the French and American Revolutions, the Enlightenment, the invention of the steam engine, the beginning of industrialization, the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical artistic styles, and the formation of artists like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Velázquez. The Dixon exhibit presents us with work from Italy, Flanders, England, North Holland, France, Germany, and Spain, each of which displayed a relatively unique cultural flowering in the golden age economy. A single historical framework only suffices as introduction: the Dixon exhibition is in need of further organization along, for instance, national lines.

The most cogent argument for the cultural significance of these political boundaries is found in art of the 17th century Netherlands. North Holland (after 1648 and freedom from Spanish monarchy the Dutch Republic) in the 17th century cradled such artists as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Jacob van Ruisdael. It was here, and also presumably in the region of Spanish-controlled South Holland (Flanders), that the genre of still life painting began. Landscape and ordinary scene or “genre” painting already existed; in the new conditions they flew. We can safely conjecture that such developments followed a course sewn by religious and political innovation. Throughout the 17th century the Dutch Republic was both an arena of Protestantism and, by the mid 1700s, a democratic state. Situated within a newly formed and culturally avaricious middle class, such changes meant that the average individual, rather than the church or the royal court, became art’s greatest patron.

One of the most beautiful examples of painting in the Dixon show is Pieter Claesz’s Breakfast Still Life (1653). This is a pronk or display still life: its costly imported lemons, Chinese pottery, and Venetian glassware establish it as an article of ostentation. But the subject is sensitively handled. The surfaces of the rippling ham, the wine glasses, are exactly observed, and the light suffusing the whole scene is attentively, reverently registered: we see the same qualities in the work of contemporary masters Daniel Sprick and Jacob Collins.

Subtlety returns in the same show in Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Forty-Year-Old Woman (1634). Rembrandt’s ability to simultaneously preserve and suppress the elaborate, tactile details of his subjects is evinced by the woman’s thin white cap and collar which, nuanced with light effects and complexly sewn, remain somehow visually subordinate to the subject’s face and the painting’s real core. Projected by this core, at the center of the portrait, are meanings for which, as van Gogh said of Rembrandt’s paintings in general, “no words exist in any language.”

There are other paintings in the show. From France, a country still burdened in the late 18th century by an extravagant monarchy, a huge portrait of Louis XV’s daughter; Ecce Homo, a Caravaggio-esqe work by Gerard Douffet likely intended to participate, with the work of Caravaggio, in the aggressive Counter-Reformation proselytizing of the Catholic church; and in the first gallery, soft English portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Marie-Victoire Lemoine; the latter who was rejected by the art circle because of her sex but not her tendency to place outsize heads on smaller, unsuspecting bodies.

Although the Dixon’s characterization of the European 17th and 18th centuries as a “golden age” is in some sense an invention, given that the same category is applied by art historians only in the ways already mentioned, in another sense it is, as we have seen, very true. The Dixon’s summary mentions the numerical growth of artists and art schools. As for art itself, the period contains what may be the most diverse and accomplished array of genres found in any era. The subjects of still life, landscape, portrait, and “everyday life,” as well as Biblical and classical narratives, were, for the first and arguably the last time, powerfully arrayed across Europe. In Italy and Flanders—most impressively—where Catholicism still prevailed, flourished the now extinct cult of narrative painting as it began in the Renaissance; the Dixon show registers saints, conversions, sacrifices, expulsions and raisings. The Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens, a principal exponent of the narrative genre, is represented in the show by the witty The Princes of the Church Adoring the Eucharist (1627). A notable aspect of the quality of such scenes by Rubens and similarly trained painters is the prodigious dynamism of their subjects. Narrative painting at its height collected streams of rushing, ebullient figures; the challenge of articulating both human anatomy and the convincing appearance of movement was met by golden age artists through extensive knowledge of the human form in action—now, even the most general anatomical knowledge is largely missing from artistic practice.

It is true that even at the close of the 19th century we see the same diversity of subjects, the array of Biblical, mythological, and everyday scenes. But the golden age roughly marks simultaneous excellence across the categories. By the latter half of the 19th century, narrative painting had already lost its gravitas and force, the seriousness of Biblical and mythological themes deteriorating with the patronage and popularity of the church, and the invention of photography perhaps acting as a soporific on the once restless narrative. Painting also faced another and unprecedented challenge. Less than a century from the end of the golden age, the very appearance which painting had held since its inception would suddenly and drastically rearrange, written on a new and Modern paradigm.

The Golden Age of Painting is at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens now through Sunday, April 15, 2012. Further details can be found here.

Amanda Johnson studies painting and philosophy and teaches a course on “the art of looking at Art” in Memphis, Tennessee. Her work can be found elsewhere including the online arts journal “The Curator”.

On the roofs of the city. How perfect

All things are. Now, for the two of you

Waking up in a royal bed by a garret window.

For a man and a woman. For one plant divided

Into masculine and feminine which longed for each other.

Yes this is my gift to you. Above ashes

On a bitter, bitter earth. Above the subterranean

Echo of clamorings and vows. So that now at dawn

You must be attentive: the tilt of a head,

A hand with a comb, two faces in a mirror

Are only forever once, even if unremembered,

So that you watch what is, though it fades away,

And are grateful every moment for your being.

Let that little park with greenish marble busts

In the pearl-gray light, under a summer drizzle,

Remain as it was when you opened the gate.

And the street of tall peeling porticos

Which this love of yours suddenly transformed.

In February 2012, IAM is holding a small, by-invitation-only gathering for catalysts in the “art/faith/humanity” spheres gathering throughout the world, and the Continuum has been invited to join this gathering. We have elected to send Kent Smith as our representative. For three (cold!) days, he and others will be gathering in IAM’s gallery in midtown Manhattan and meeting with the staff of International Arts Movement. This will be a vital time for us to build our relationships with one another in the movement, to learn more about the future of the movement, to contribute our input, ideas, experiences, and expertise to the shape of the movement, and to be more deeply equipped and resourced as we receive information on the programs and resources IAM produces.

IAM has raised funding for two nights of housing and three days of meals, but we have to cover Kent’s travel costs to NYC. I am writing to see if you would be willing to help underwrite the $500 in travel costs to attend this important gathering.

As IAM is a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization, any donations made are tax-deductible. If you would like to support Kent & the Continuum’s participation, you may do it one of two ways:

1. Mail a check made payable to International Arts Movement, 38 W. 39th St, 3rd FL, New York, NY 10018. Include a note that your gift is to be applied toward the “2012 IAM Catalysts Summit” and include Kent’s name (Kent Smith).
2. Make an online donation. Click here and enter your donation amount under “General Donation.” Once you click “Add to Cart,” you will be able to leave a “note,” where you may designate “2012 IAM Catalysts Summit” and include Kent’s name.

IAM will reimburse Kent’s travel expenses based on donations received. (Any gifts beyond his travel costs will be used to support this regional gathering and the movement as a whole.)

This opportunity is something that will add tremendous value to our work on behalf of artists and the arts, and I am grateful the Continuum will be a part of it. Your donation will really help make that possible.

“This story bristles with ideas and intelligence, and the more you stick with it, the more complicated it gets.”

—Andrew O’ Hehir

“I can’t say that I understand everything Kiarostami has to tell me about life, art, romance, and tradition,…at least not consciously, but I know I feel haunted, elated, enriched by his wily and impassioned view of relationships as bodies in constant flux, of disagreement and individuality, and of the transformative power of a simple, sincerely felt timeout in a moment of bitter crisis…”

—Ed Gonzalez

We have set the next film night for Friday the 10th of February (7:00 PM). As always seating is limited so please do RSVP.

Certified Copy was directed by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and starring William Shimell and the ever enchanting Juliette Binoche, this film examines, indeed celebrates the ideas of originality in art and in life. It gleefully explores life and love and challenges our ideas of perception. It is a film that works on many levels: as an intellectual discussion about art, as an exuberant embrace of love past and present, and as a subtle mystery. Think of it as the contemplative cousin of the Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise / Before Sunset duology drenched in ennui and basking in the Tuscan countryside. I encourage any who are interested in joining us to avoid any and all articles or discussion regarding the subject matter. You will be best served to experience the film without any prior knowledge of its plot and machinations. We are very excited to hear what you all have to bring to the table as we discuss this gem of a film.

For more details or to RSVP contact: cinemaseries@continuumarts.com.