Free Republic

"I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship." — Ralph Waldo Emerson It is in the spirit of delayed gratification that we decline to join the frenzy of decade-in-review commentary, at least until the first decade of the 21st century actually ends on Dec. 31, 2010. But those who share Emerson's disdain for instant gratification need not fret over the vagaries of the calendar. The past year provided ample illustrations of...

When ART Becomes InhumanKarl ZinsmeisterReprinted from the ART Renewal Center Origionally published in TAEmag. Many of today’s avant-garde artists, I’ve decided, have modeled themselves on that well-known societal fixture, the snot-nosed teenager. Since the 1960s, the hippest modern art has aspired to exactly what every garden-variety 13-year-old brat aims for: maximum opportunities to shock, flout, insult, and otherwise chuck rocks at polite society. And so “artists” spread American flags on the floor and invited gallery and museum patrons to walk on them. “Sculptors” stacked bricks in low heaps and convinced collectors to pay bags of money for something they...