Political World

We live in a political world.

— Bob Dylan

The notion behind this post came to me a week ago, but I felt no urgency to pursue the idea until yesterday, when POLITICO announced that the Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade.

My notion is simple: even though we can’t escape the latter, painting and politics don’t mix.

My proof of that statement is my difficulty selling Judging Amy, a still life I painted in October 2020.

It commands a lot of attention at art fairs, but no one has ever asked about its price (like all my small paintings, $140).

Despite it’s stopping power, I just cannot sell it.

Convincing arguments in favor of political painting most often claim that when a painter depicts a political truth—as Picasso did in Guernica—it’s truthier than the same political truth as told by, say, a journalist.

The late historian Howard Zinn made this argument.

“Artists lend a kind of spiritual element to reality which enhances the truth,” he told Resonance Magazine in 2003.

“There are huge numbers of people in the world whose lives are lives of sheer misery, sickness and violence. In order to change that you need to have artists who will be conscious, who will use their art in such a way that it helps to transform society. Art may not be a blunt instrument, but it will have a kind of poetic effect.”

But just as convincing are the arguments that disfavor political painting.

They most often point to the self-indulgent nature of it: political paintings display a vacuity that mirrors politics itself.

Art critic Peter Schjeldahl made that argument in 2006.

“My problem with political art is not that it’s bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics,” he told Guernica Magazine.

“What are we talking about with a political artist? We’re talking about a closeted person with minimum contact with reality—who has trouble tying his fucking shoes! And he’s supposed to be political? A bus driver has a better perspective on things. Artists are completely indulgent.”

As an example, Schjeldahl pointed to Velázquez, who painted many political paintings.

Velázquez only managed to avoid ugly self-indulgence because he was “the greatest painter who ever lived.”

In contrast, his contemporary Rembrandt, “the second greatest painter who ever lived,” painted captivating pictures aimed solidly at his middle-class patrons.

“He invented the bourgeois art market,” Schjeldahl said.

I must admit I have to side with Schjeldahl.

After the unsalable nature of Judging Amy, I need to remind myself: if I ever feel like climbing on my soapbox again, I’ll stop.

Maybe I’ll paint it, instead.

It worked for Warhol, after all.

Above: Judging Amy by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas board. 10 x 8 inches. Brillo Box by Andy Warhol. Oil on wood. 17 x 17 x 14 inches.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

— George Ball

I belong to several Facebook groups that relish the past. 

"Abandoned Homes America," for example.

"Paperback, Pulp and Book Collectors Anonymous."

"The Golden Age of Hollywood."

These groups attract fellow aficionados: people avid about old houses, books and films.

But they also attract whiny weirdos who can't handle the here and now.

"As many of us get older, we might hearken back to simpler times," blogger Michael Kwan write in Beyond the Rhetoric. 

"We may look upon the present with a certain level of disdain. We might admonish 'kids these days' for ruining everything. But, are we all just falling victim to the golden age fallacy?"

Nostalgia, also known as the "golden age fallacy," insists we'd be more content in times gone by.

Nostalgia drives malcontents and misérables to look backwards for happiness.

Nostalgia a disease of longing. 

It's so crippling that philosopher Karl Jaspers blamed the most heinous sorts of crimes—murder, arson, and child molestation—on it.

Not every contemporary psychiatrist believes nostalgia is a mental disorder.

But I do.

That's why I'm disturbed by the relentless Facebook posts like, "We have too much today an overindulged society, as kids we ate what was on the table" and "Bring back Aunt Jemima, screw the woke crowd!" (both verbatim quotes taken from "The Golden Age of Hollywood").

I see those crabby statements and think, with Jaspers, "There's a potential child molester."

Michael Kwan calls wistful reminiscence a "flaw in the romantic imagination of people who find it difficult to cope with the present."

I think it's a much deeper—and darker—flaw.

A flaw in character.

Clueless

The reason people do not know much is that
they do not care to know.

― Stephen Fry

I was scammed last week out of $500; a first, for me.

I received an email appearing to come from the president of an association I belong to. 

She asked me, as a favor, to buy $500 worth of gift cards and send them to a veterans charity on behalf of the association. She was supposedly swamped and couldn't get to it. I'd be reimbursed for my out-of-pocket expense promptly.

I helped her out the following day.

As a volunteer on several nonprofit boards, I receive frenzied requests from other association officers frequently.

Hers seemed fairly routine.

Only when I received a second request from her to send another $500, did I suspect a scam.

My credit card issuer has determined I was duped by a "credible imposter," so I don't feel completely stupid; only partly stupid.

By placing a few phone calls, I learned within moments of sensing a scam that the association's leaders knew for days about the imposters, but covered up their activities from the association's members.

They had also—years ago—posted all the members' names and emails on the association's website, making them easy pickings for scammers.

I informed the president she had committed an egregious breach of trust by exposing members' personal information and then covering up the scam.

But she didn't—and doesn't—get it. 

The term breach of trust means nothing to her. 

She only wanted to know whether to cancel my meal at next month's annual lunch, since I was resigning from membership.

Some folks simply have no business running a nonprofit.

If you are asked to do so, I suggest you first educate yourself—just a little.

It's easy!

There are hundreds of free resources at your fingertips.

Show you care enough to become informed.

Or stay on the sidelines.

You have no business trying to lead.

Federal Court Okays Web Scraping

I've scraped many a website in my time.

"Web scraping," in case you're wondering, refers to the compilation of information that's published on websites.

A few recent examples:

• This week, I wrote a blog post on the birth of art history by web scraping. 
  
  
• Earlier this month, I taught a brainy high schooler how to "speed write" a term paper by web scraping. In the process, I learned more about Shirley Jackson than you'd ever want to know.
  
  
• Last November, I built an e-mail list of insurance executives for a client who had no marketing list.

Web scraping isn't theft.

Theft is what Instagram coach Kar Brulhart faced this week, when a rival ripped off her ideas verbatim and presented them as his own.

Web scraping is research, as a federal court ruled last week.

In the decision, the US Ninth Circuit ruled against LinkedIn, which sued hiQ Labs, a research firm that studies employee attrition.

LinkedIn wanted HiQ to stop scraping its users' profiles.

The court ruled that web scraping doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which defines computer hacking under US law.

Hacking is defined as "unauthorized access to a computer system;" but scraping snatches public data.

The case had reached the Supreme Court last year but was sent back to the US Ninth Circuit for review.

The court's decision is a "major win for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists who use tools to mass collect, or scrape, information that is publicly accessible on the Internet," says Tech Crunch.

Mushrooming

Feed your head.

— Grace Slick

Mommies are mushrooming, reports Harper's Bazaar.

"This is a time of psychedelic renaissance, of mushroom mania," the magazine says. 

"It’s a time when people are increasingly turning to psychedelics not for recreation but for healing—and many of them are parents."

Raising kids apparently so stresses millennial mommies they must take shrooms to cope.

Magic mushrooms—in my youth the illicit leading edge of consciousness-expansion—have become a trendy substitute for tranquilizers.

But "getting high is not the point," the magazine says: better parenting is.

Parenting is rough, after all, a "sleep-deprived, tedious, anxiety-riddled road, recently made all the more difficult by the pandemic."

Ingesting magic mushrooms can counteract the "malaise of modern parenting."

"The mushrooms allowed me to feel vulnerable," one angst-crippled mommy told the magazine. 

Shrooms took her to a "place of peace and love and real clarity."

Research scientists of recent have been keen on shrooms, according to Harper's Bazaar.

"A steady thrum of studies has illuminated the potential benefits of psychedelics in helping with myriad mental-health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder," the magazine reports.

Two years ago, pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins announced that psilocybin can eliminate depression; while the FDA in 2023 is slated to approve ecstasy for treating PTSD.

So many mommies are turning to shrooms to cope, the magazine says, a nationwide mushroom movement is forming.

Some call the movement "psychedelic parenting;" others, "plant parenthood."

Critics worry that it lacks medical supervision.

But advocates point to the fact that Indigenous healers have used shrooms for thousands of years to heal troubled tribespeople without medical credentials.

Supervised or not, the movement is mushrooming: over 30 million Americans have ingested psychedelics, according to the Johns Hopkins pharmacologists—many of them mommies.

I now understand why I see so many moms in the supermarket talking to the cereal boxes.

Above: Shrooms. Oil on fiberboard. 10 x 8 inches. Score now!