"The Art of Social Critique: Painting Mirrors of Social Life"

Just a brief note to inform you that the collection The Art of Social Critique: Painting Mirrors of Social Life that my paper "Jean Genet: A Case Study of the Artist's Explication and Alteration of Social Practice" is published in is now available. I received my copy today and it is gorgeous. The collection of work in it seems very impressive as well.  

My Essay on Genet and Delacroix

Ingres' Paganini
Delacroix' Paganini

"There is something priggish about these young men of the school of Ingres. They seem to think it highly meritorious to have joined the ranks of 'serious painting'...a great number of talented artists have never done anything worthwhile because they surrounded themselves with a mass of prejudices, or had them thrust upon them by the fashion of the moment. It is the same with their famous word beauty which, everyone says, is the chief aim of the arts. But if beauty were the only aim, what would become of men like Rubens and Rembrandt and all the northern temperaments, generally speaking, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, in other words, beauty, from an artist like Puget and farewell to his verve!" Journal entry by Eugene Delacroix February 9th, 1847

I just had a brief essay published over at Escape Into Life. The essay, entitled "On the Disciples of Ugliness", discusses Jean Genet and Eugene Delacroix and the relation between beauty and ugliness which can be found in their work. In the essay I discuss a contrast between Romantic and Neo-classicist visual art, of perhaps Romanticism and a type of formalism, that is fairly nicely captured in the contrast between Delacroix and Ingres' Paganini's.

Book Chapter

I just received word that I am going to have a piece of mine published as a chapter in an upcoming book. The book is entitled Painting Mirrors: Essays on the Artist as Observer and Social Critic and is going to be published by Lexington Books. The collection is being put together and edited by Shawn Bingham and is expected to be published in the summer of 2011. My chapter will be entitled "Jean Genet: A Case Study of the Artist’s Explication and Alteration of Social Practice". Needless to say, I am very excited.