Gemini: Artificial Intelligence, Danger & Failure
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Gemini: Artificial Intelligence, Danger & Failure

I am one of those artists sounding warnings about the negative impact Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having on the arts, from painting and drawing to photography, literature, musical composition and performance, as well as the cinematic arts. I was writing a critique of AI when I got word of Google’s latest AI application. My treatise is temporarily delayed, but consider…

Eco-Extremists Attack Xmas Trees!
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Eco-Extremists Attack Xmas Trees!

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, How faithfully you blossom! Through summer’s heat and winter’s chill Your leaves are green and blooming still. O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, How faithfully you blossom! The above lyrics are from an 1824 song written by German composer Ernst Anschütz. Over the years his composition O Tannenbaum (in German ‘Tannenbaum’ means fir tree), became closely associated with…

Oliver Anthony and the Rich Men North Of Richmond
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Oliver Anthony and the Rich Men North Of Richmond

This commentary is a somewhat unusual take on the timelessness of American folk music, with its focus being a young Virginian named Oliver Anthony, a former factory worker who became a farmer that lives off grid, but now hopes to make a living as a country folk singer. On Aug. 8, 2023, Anthony released his song Rich Men North Of…

The Red Pope Meets Piss Christ
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The Red Pope Meets Piss Christ

In the Vatican City State on June 23, 2023, beneath Michelangelo’s High Renaissance mural in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis addressed some 200 invited artists and creative types. One attendee was Andres Serrano—maker of the infamous Piss Christ photograph and other sacrilegious images. I’m not writing this essay as a practicing Catholic, but as a working artist. The Pontiff’s assembly…

Eco-Vandals Attack Monet Painting at Stockholm Museum
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Eco-Vandals Attack Monet Painting at Stockholm Museum

On June 14, 2023, two women from the eco-extremist group Återställ Våtmarker (Restore Wetlands), raided the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. They attacked Le Jardin de l’artiste à Giverny (The artist’s garden at Giverny), a painting created in 1900 by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. The two vandals, a 28-year-old nurse and a 25-year-old nursing student, wore white T-shirts emblazoned…