Tolkien's Never-Ending Quest
"The red jumps off the page. You’re in the middle of a letter from Father Christmas to the Tolkien children, when all of a sudden, there it is—“Goblin” leaping out at you, crimson and clawed. It’s a trick Tolkien seemed to love, as another plaque in the exhibit explains that he’d wanted the inscription on the One Ring (“to rule them all …”) to be printed in red as well. We see him developing the script for those famous fiery letters, and imagine how he wanted it to blaze from
Bedecking the Bride of Christ at the Met
"The best plaque at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination has little to do with the fashionable ensemble it accompanies. It instead takes the fact that designer Rossella Jardini is riffing on the starched cornette of the Daughters of Charity (think The Flying Nun and you’re on the right track) to launch into an anecdote about Charles de Gaulle. Apparently, the statesmen felt such affection for the Grey Sisters’ traditio
Sacred Art as an Antidote to Pornography
I profiled the sculptor Dony Mac Manus, and he told me about how he sees his figural art as a way to help heal a pornified culture. He also discussed a time a giraffe lifted him up by its tongue and dislocated his shoulder. "Though he’ll happily point to the ways his work grows out of Catholic teaching and practice (a sculpture inspired by the papal encyclical Humanae vitae is a favorite of his), Mac Manus sees himself not as a “Catholic artist” but as an artist who is Cathol
Down with Ads, Up with Art
"When Calvin Klein plasters billboards with a sprawl of underwear-clad Kardashians, the company is recapitulating the harasser’s logic of sexual entitlement on a monumental scale. “These women are here, undressed and supine, for your pleasure,” the ad seems to say. “This is what you should want.” The ad campaign ostensibly focuses on “unity between strong individuals,” but the languid poses and concussed expressions chosen by the advertisers erase the celebrity models’ indivi
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