Category Archives: Art

Tweet Soviet Realism celebrated the cult of mass murderer Joseph Stalin Art in service to the state is not art but propaganda. The role of art is to steep the viewer in a transcendent space. Propaganda aims at buttressing a narrow political and social agenda. Totalitarian regimes always follow a strategy of using art to […]

Tweet The Black Wedding The memorial book for Apt recounts how a holy rabbi helped the town during a cholera epidemic in 1892. Every few days someone died. In a community of about six thousand, that was a calamity. Prominent citizens went to the holy rabbi, imploring him to say a few prayers to the […]

Tweet Moshe Hammer, Z’L. True genius is a rare commodity. Five years ago, 26-year-old Moshe Hammer, z”l, a Lubavitch artist who frequently worked through the night, stepped outside for a walk in Los Angeles, to clear his head and recharge his creative batteries. As was his custom, Moshe rambled miles from his apartment in the […]

Tweet It’s not often you come across genius. Four years ago, 26 year-old Moshe Hammer, Z’L a Lubavitch Chasid and an intensely private artist, took a break from work on his drawings, and stepped outside for a long walk in Los Angeles—to clear his head. Moshe rambled miles from his apartment in the Fairfax district […]

Tweet Ah, the art world, where it’s okay, even fashionable to mock Christianity, and where attacks on Conservatives and the current administration are celebrtaed as brave and passionate defenses of free speech. Yeah, about as brave as wearing the latest Dolce & Gabbana threads. But G-d forbid you should even mention a particular word. One […]

Tweet When Seraphic Secret is not re-reading Jane Austen, we are leafing through reproductions of paintings by Johannes Vermeer and wondering just how much of our Apple stock we would have to sell to purchase one of the Dutch master’s luminous paintings. More than we own. More than Steve Jobs controls. I think it’s a […]