Monthly Archives: January 2018

Black Lines Lift Off From Grayish Space (Resurrection) (Michelangelo)

Posted on January 29, 2018 by zjb

Put in conversation with the many lavish tombs that Michelangelo designed for Medici and other Italian patrons is the resurrection idea. Now showing at the Met, the drawn studies for the huge Last Judgement fresco at the Vatican come towards … Continue reading →

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(Entombment) Drawing Jesus Off the Cross (Michelangelo)

Posted on January 25, 2018 by zjb

In the late 1520s, Michelangelo draws the heavy Jesus off the cross in a blur of orange chalk. Study for a Descent from the Cross (or Entombment) is now at the big Michelangelo show at the Met. In the drawings, as … Continue reading →

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Father God’s Louche Body Posing (Michelangelo Drawing)

Posted on January 23, 2018 by zjb

I’ll be posting some comments and what were for me highlights at the big show of Michelangelo drawings at the Met, but for now I wanted to share these two, included in a separate section on studies for the Sistine … Continue reading →

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Baroque Nipple (David & Goliath) (Guido Cagnacci)

Posted on January 22, 2018 by zjb

Deciding not to do departmental paperwork today, I went to the Met to see the Michelangelo and Hockney shows. Wandering around on my way out I stepped into the main foyer of the European galleries to meet this fetching baroque … Continue reading →

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Fact & Freud (The Totemic Father & Origin of Religion)

Posted on January 18, 2018 by zjb

Something I realized last semester working through Totem and Taboo with graduate students runs counter to the usual argument that Freud had no evidence with which to posit totemism as the first form of religion, and to speculate that the … Continue reading →

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Philip Roth (Ecce Homo)

Posted on January 17, 2018 by zjb

Maybe it’s not much of an interview, but I’m still carrying around this bit with Philip Roth here in the New York Times Book Review. What I carry away is a form of expression entirely devoid of illusion regarding race, … Continue reading →

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New Materialism and the Study of Religion (Manuel Vásquez)

Posted on January 10, 2018 by zjb

Manuel Vásquez’s More Than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion has pride of place in the fairly recent materialist turn in Religion Studies. The three keyterms are embodiment, emplacement, and practice (p.325). The force of the title is to take … Continue reading →

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How Not to Dialogue About Israel and Palestine (In the Land of Pomegranates)

Posted on January 9, 2018 by zjb

The few American reviews that I found online seem frustrated without understanding just why Hava Kohav Beller’s documentary In the Land of Pomegranates is such a hopeless reflection upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary follows a group of young Israeli Jews … Continue reading →

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(Burning Excrement) צוֹאָה רוֹתֵחַת (Trump & Bannon)

Posted on January 4, 2018 by zjb

There is a place in Hell and levels there called Boiling Excrement, where there is filth of souls —those who are cleansed of all the filth of this world. They are cleansed and ascend, and that filth remains there; and … Continue reading →

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Downtown Sacramento Simulation

Posted on January 2, 2018 by zjb

A built lived space always mimics an idea. The photographer Thomas Demand takes an ordinary photograph of a very neutral interior space; he then constructs a cardboard model, which he then shoots. Downtown Sacramento looks a lot like that –small … Continue reading →

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