Super Size Me

A new "study" claims that over the past 1000 years the size of food portions depicted in "Last Supper" paintings has steadily grown. A computer analysis used 52 images from the 2000 coffee table book "Last Supper." The researchers compared the size of the plates and the food servings on those plates using the apostles' head sizes to calibrate the measurements. Let's hope none of the painters were going through a Caricature Art phase... I'm not being completely facetious here.

As the Got Medieval blog points out, there's plenty of proportional wonkiness in medieval art. Realism wasn't the goal back then. In fact, the size of objects usually conveyed their symbolic importance. Furniture and architecture weren't considered interesting enough, and hands were disproportionately large because they needed to show gestures in order to tell a story.

Anyway, I'm not even sure what we were supposed to conclude from this study, but plenty of reporters have used it as another opportunity to remind us how fat we are.

Death of The Town Hall

In 1943, American artist Norman Rockwell produced a series of oil paintings depicting The Four Freedoms: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear. At the time, tyranny ruled over Western Europe, and the paintings served as a reminder of our motivation for fighting in World War II.

Right now, we need a reminder of a different sort, but it can be found in that same iconic Freedom of Speech painting. The scene is a local town hall meeting where one working man speaks and his neighbors calmly listen. I get the sense that they don't necessarily agree with the nervous speaker, but apparently they don't scream or yell or wave their fists. Nobody is full of rage. They listen respectfully because they might actually learn something. And besides, everybody wants the same respect when it's their turn to speak.

That's been the tradition in this country since about 1600... until last week, of course, when the teabaggers were whipped into a frenzy by their astroturf overlords. As I've stated before, these protesters do not make up a grassroots coalition of "regular Americans." The movement was manufactured by slick, conservative, well-funded, lobbyist-run think tanks called Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works with the purpose of denouncing taxation (with representation).

However, the teabaggers didn't go away after tax day. The lobbyists now have a fanatical list of grunts at their disposal, and they intend to use them to shout down any intelligent debate about other pressing issues like health care reform and clean energy. Think Progress has a leaked teabagger memo describing harassment strategies for town hall meetings. Suggestions include "artificially inflate your numbers", "be disruptive early and often", and (the most revealing one) "Try To 'Rattle Him,' Not Have An Intelligent Debate."

That says it all. They are firmly against intelligent debate. And they are proving they are against any intelligent debate. One moment of complete absurdity happened at a Town Hall event hosted by Texas Rep. Gene Green:

During the town hall, one conservative activist turns to his fellow attendees and asks them to raise their hands if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Almost all the hands shot up. Rep Green quickly turned the question on the audience and asked, “How many of you have Medicare?” Nearly half the attendees raised their hands, failing to note the irony.

But other protests have been more disturbing. In Maryland, a protester hung a Democrat Rep. in effigy. That is a clear threat.

And the only recourse at these meetings may be to arrest for disorderly conduct. We certainly can't afford to tolerate those who endeavor to silence their opponents. It's mob rule. All Republicans need to denounce these tactics or risk closing down our system of government.

But I almost forgot that they want President Obama to fail, and they want our country to fail. I guess America never was as idyllic as a Norman Rockwell painting. I wonder how Rockwell would have painted a teabagger?

Andrew Wyeth

"I don't really have studios. I wander around—around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me." — Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth was an American painter. He died Friday at his home in Chadds Ford, Pa. He was 91. The New York Time's obituary was quite a shock to me because I assumed he was already dead.

I don't know why I had that misconception. Maybe it was the rural and sentimental subject matter of his paintings. His realistic style seemed out of place in the modern world.

Wyeth's painting titled Christina's World was perhaps his most famous:


It's also one of my favorite works of art. I'm not sure "beautiful" can describe it on a superficial level. But on an another level, it touches my soul. The sense of aloneness is very personal. The woman is in a field. She is skinny and weak and crawling through tawny grass. She wants to get to that house in the distance, where it is probably warm and there are people there, but it's going to be a long struggle. You can't see her face, so I suppose we simply project our own emotion onto her. Sorrow? Fear? Despair? Longing? The house itself seems isolated too. Its dilapidated features recall the great depression and add to the sense of melancholy...

Well, I'll never be a great art critic. My emotional response is ineffable. However, knowing that Christina was real, knowing the story of her life, and knowing why she was crawling through that field helps explain my love for the painting.

Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep. Maybe he's been invited to wander someplace else now.

That's What I Call Art!

In 2003, an unknown Bush administration official ordered historic diplomatic photographs removed from a State Department hall leading to the building's main cafeteria. They replaced them with huge color glossies documenting the diplomatic accomplishments of Bush, Cheney and Rice. Go figure. I didn't even know they made any accomplishments.

What were the original historic photos?

There was an original political cartoon from the Jefferson era showing Britain and France pick-pocketing the Americans; there were pictures of negotiations with Indian tribes over land; President Woodrow Wilson at Versailles; former secretary of state Elihu Root somewhere; Roosevelt and Churchill signing the Atlantic Charter; former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze in cowboy boots at Jackson Hole; a splendid shot of the old State Department building; and a photo of President Ronald Reagan at a meeting with a very young Colin L. Powell seated behind him.

But this is what makes true art: the Bush photos have recently been modified with some very cool mustaches. These artistic embellishments were quickly cleaned up, and the mustache artist is still unknown. I'm shocked that none of Bush's domestic surveillance programs caught the perpetrator!