Art and the Homeless

A convenient starting point for homeless advocacy is the Supreme Court opinion in Kolender v. Lawson (1983) that a local government cannot implement and enforce arbitrary rules of conduct. City councils are elected, and as election turn-out is usually small, offices are jealously contested by the candidates. Particular constituents' interests are involved, leading to material support for sympathetic representatives. Sometimes these local initiatives run afoul of the Bill of Rights. A city ordinance making “vagrancy” a crime led to the trial of Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1983). Jacksonville is not a small town, and the homeless problem came to overwhelm its citizens. Legal enforcement was thought necessary. Although well-intended, by making it a violation of the law, it fell to beat cops to decide who was (and wasn't) breaking the law. On appeal, the code was found to be as vague as the definition of vagrant. If the homeless thought they could take refuge from the s...

Noah Charney's new book The 12-Hour Art Expert , subtitled "everything you need to know about art in a dozen masterpieces," may have created a subject niche similar to the "For Dummies" series. I hope so, because it's engaging reading which does not assume extensive knowledge of art by the reader.   The Expert takes the "down the rabbit hole" approach to art. Let blue noses look down their noses, but conspiracy theory is the literary genre of our time. It is thoroughly democratic. Anybody can join. All that is required is a suspicious mind. Noah Charney's approach makes art a curious subject. I find Charney's exploration of Carlo Crivelli's iconography provocative. Crivelli (c. 1430-1495) exhibited the idiosyncrasy of including an expertly painted pickle in his religious paintings. It was his trademark. This was before artists signed their work. One would expect to discover a connection with his name. As Charney observes, Crivelli li...

Attention given to the artist as subject—whether as a celebrity, or as an object of pity—historically relegated the subject matter of art to the background. The subject in art was ultimately felt to be redundant, unnecessary. Later, subject matter was re-admitted to art, both by artists, and by critical observers. Nonetheless, in the meantime, something had changed. There was no going back. Paintings "had" a subject before the painting itself was thought-of as the subject. This is now so commonly accepted as to be almost unworthy of note. Why art dispensed with subject matter is complex. Before total, or absolute, abstraction a painting without a subject would not have been seen as a painting. This seems an almost trivial distinction until realizing that with the return of the subject the painting itself remained the subject. It was both. The subject of a painting became, in effect, a subject-within-a-subject. The admissibility once again of a subject in art is now a matter o...

Blending oil paints is like kneading bread dough. Kneading is the process that brings the bread dough ingredients together, activates the wheat's gluten protein, and yields a silky-strong dough ready to be baked. Kneading massages the yeast into activity, which reacts with the wheat proteins, forming a glutinous mass. The process must take effect (“rise”) before the loaf of dough is baked in the oven.  Un-kneaded dough tends to spread-out flat. The baking dough can unexpectedly fall back into itself, collapsing the loaf, if the dough is not given a chance to rise. And if an insufficiently kneaded loaf of dough is baked the baked bread loaf will be heavy -as well as flat. This may be the intended effect if flat bread is desired. How do you know if bread dough is kneaded enough? Dough is ready when it passes the elasticity test. To find out, tear off a chunk of dough and stretch it between your fingers. If the dough tears, you haven't kneaded it enough, and is in need of more kne...