Monthly Archives: August 2016

(László Moholy-Nagy) Painting the Post-Human Future (Art & Technology)

Posted on August 23, 2016 by zjb

Art from the 1920s for the space age. László Moholy-Nagy was a major presence at the Bauhaus. He designed for the future. For all the attention invested in new materials and technologies, the thin and intersecting straight lines and circles hover over terrestrial space. … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Lee Bontecou (Untitled) (War Machine)

Posted on August 22, 2016 by zjb

She made it out of welded steel, canvas, black fabric, rawhide, copper, wire, and soot. In the permanent exhibition at MoMa, Untitled (1961) by Lee Bontecou is warlike and threatening. Philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto compared this and other such … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Sausage Party & Gnostic Techno Religion

Posted on August 22, 2016 by zjb

(SPOILER ALERT!) It seems like there’s no way to shake off religion in popular American film, even at its most impious and irreligious. The narrative sense of a satisfactory end won’t allow for it. Sausage Party could have concluded this … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , | 4 Comments

(Seeing Things & Apparitions) Rachel Harrison (The Spiritual in Contemporary Art)

Posted on August 21, 2016 by zjb

Perth Amboy touches upon seeing, material culture, and the supernatural. At things concrete or apparitional, everyone is looking at something –the friend of Barbie in a wheelchair, the Indian chief, the Chinese sage, the visitors, of whom one can see … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

(Jewish Mysticism) The Non-Existence of Jewish Ethics (Joseph Dan)

Posted on August 19, 2016 by zjb

Is there such a thing as Jewish ethics? Does it even exist? What if anything do Jewish mysticism and Jewish ethics have to do with each other? Does the one complement or submerge the other? In search of answers to … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Naming “Radical Racist Judaism”

Posted on August 17, 2016 by zjb

In the United States, the conservative right insists that the only way to combat extremism in the Muslim world is to come out and call it out by name “Radical Islam” or “radical Islamic Extremism.” Maybe the Jewish left should … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged | 3 Comments

Greening Architectural Models (Japan)

Posted on August 17, 2016 by zjb

From Japan –different spatial organizations, green and no longer grid-like, with a spongy and serpentine organic look for the future, a new century. The models were on view a while back at MOMA.

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Israel Exports “Radical Extremist Judaism” to U.S. Universities

Posted on August 16, 2016 by zjb

I’m writing barely tongue in cheek, but the recent story, which you can read here, of the plan  by the Israeli Diaspora Affairs Ministry to channel funds to orthodox student groups on college reminds me of the way in which … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Black Lives Matter & Socialist Zionism (This Tisha B’Av)

Posted on August 14, 2016 by zjb

I wasn’t sure that I was going to post about the Black Lives Matter Platform or the way its use of the term “genocide” to describe the impact of Israel on Palestinian lives offends the historical record or Jewish memory. … Continue reading →

Posted in uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

It’s Not So Simple: Jean Amery on Wittgenstein, Jewish Self-Hatred & Simplicity (Menachem Feuer)

Posted on August 14, 2016 by zjb

An excellent read by Menachem Feuer writing about Amery writing about Wittgenstein, simplicity, and anti-Semitism

Posted in uncategorized | Leave a comment