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The Dumbing Down of Culture

ByMark Vallen

I’ve long understood the connection between visual art and music. To me the musician and artist are kindred spirits, and music has always fanned the flames of my own creativity. Naturally I’ve always been an avid music fan, and since my childhood I’ve enthusiastically collected music recordings. In fact when I was 7 years old in 1961, the very first…

Goya and the Sleep of Reason

Goya and the Sleep of Reason

ByMark Vallen

In the late 1700s the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) created a series of eighty etchings he titled Los Caprichos (The Caprices). An irrational thought or action can be a “caprice,” and Spanish society at the time provided Goya with myriad examples of ferocious caprices. For instance, Goya created paintings and prints that wryly scrutinized the Spanish…

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Art and the Global Economic Meltdown

ByMark Vallen

An unavoidable political topic is on the lips of everyone in the art world these days, I am not speaking of the U.S. presidential election – but of an international economic meltdown the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. No matter what “new” political circumstances we wake up to in the aftermath…

The Last Supper of Western Civilization
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The Last Supper of Western Civilization

ByMark Vallen

This essay will broach the subject of The Last Supper, a controversial artwork by photographer Elisabeth Ohlson. Deemed blasphemous by many, it was exhibited at the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium in May of 2023. I will contrast Ohlson’s irreverent photo with a brief overview of how visual artists in the West have portrayed The Last Supper—the final meal…

Design for the Other 90 %

ByMark Vallen

There’s an old adage that goes, “First they break your legs, and then they want thanks for giving you crutches.” New York City’s, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has mounted an exhibit that adheres to that truism. Dedicated exclusively to historic and contemporary design, Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition, Design for the Other 90 %, is the museum’s presentation of innovative tools allegedly created…