A security guard at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has been charged in the vandalism of a $1.2M painting.

crispy thinks there's nothing better than a quickie on a Sunday afternoon.

While sitting in JFK last month reading Green Hermeticism, a book inspired by the eponymous conferences held by the Suluk Academy on alchemy and ecology, I was struck by a quote from the German Romantic philosopher Novalis, translated "the sciences must all be made poetic." I sympathize. Despite the generally laughable efforts of creation "scientists," we (not to be too West-normative) seem to frame faith and science not as complements but as combatants. Rationalists and nonbelievers feel like Romans watching barbarians approach intent on sacking our institutions and libraries; the religious feel that their concerns are ignored in favor of the sweeping indoctrination necessary for our liberal, humanistic society. This image of Christ and Darwin fighting bareknuckled in a steel cage is, of course, oversimplified and polarized in a way to appeal to the idiots on either side. The complex relationship between Faith and Science isn’t inherently a conflict, and its substance isn’t all evolution and fluff.

There are a great many areas of fascinating and unusual intersections between the natural sciences and spiritual belief; the "Law of Attraction" popularized in The Secret claims provenance in quantum mechanics, specifically the (heavily disputed) interpretation that the observer’s consciousness causes wave function collapse. ("What the hell are you talking about, Fluxy?"). Does human (or other) consciousness affect the universe in a demonstrable physical way or is it just pseudoscientific rubbish? Beats me, but all my attempts to materialize a ziti pizza whilst writing this article have failed. I call bullshit!

The Bahá'í, Faith teaches that science and faith are harmonious, with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá writing that

Philosopher Karl Popper rejected classical empiricism, the idea that theories can be "proven" through observations of the natural world, in favor of a standard of falsifiability. A scientific theory can’t be confirmed, only proven false or found to "correspond with the facts." I tend to view the world in a manner similar to this: a collection of plausible explanations and non-falsifiable theories rather than a world ordered by Cartesian rationality or by the hand of deity. As such, I have a hard time grokking the die-hard atheists or the true believers; I apply Fluxy’s Razor to everything.

So, back to Green Hermeticism. The authors argue that the beginnings of the Enlightenment occurred as a battle between non-dualist Rosicrucians and dualist Cartesians. Isaac Newton wrote more about alchemy than about physics, but eventually the worldview we’ve come to associate with him won out. Later, Romanticism and its affection for the natural world were crushed by Industry and the inevitable clash between capitalist and Marxist ideologies. So homeboys suggest that we revive our sleeping hermetic tradition and take the Gaia hypothesis to the next level; that we create a joyous spiritual ecology that recognizes that we are part of, not separate from, "Nature."

Nature: It’s not just national parks anymore!

This isn’t really new. The movement called "deep ecology" has argued essentially the same thing for years, albeit from a less alchemical angle. But consider this:

Not to be too much of a frou-frou new age hippie ("too late!" you say), but to me, there’s something worthwhile to such a worldview, and not just in the Fluxy’s Razor sense. We are part of the vast biological system that is this planet. Some people wonder if we’re the cancer afflicting Gaia, but being the happy-go-lucky optimist that y’all have come to know and love and loathe, I suspect that perhaps we are her brain. If we can accept that spirituality has a healing effect when used judiciously and graciously, then why not act as the soul of that which has come to be called creation? I’m not talking about communing with your crystal dolphin inner child in the name of the great mother goddess (although if that blows your skirt up, by all means, go for it.) No gods necessary, but perhaps a little faith in ourselves and our ability to change and to heal our world. Without that, we’re stuck in fatalism and in death.

In 1982, stood before the Nobel assembly and spoke of the soul of Latin America:

García Márquez was speaking of the ability of humanity to triumph over tyranny and disaster, but this optimism applies just as powerfully to the world in which we live, so long as we use all the tools available to us, be they "Religion" or "Science." Science informs us, and spirit (whatever that may mean to you) inspires us.

Nothing is written. Everything is permissible, possible, and alive. So now, my chilluns, go out and change the world.

Flux got really drunk and started writing a leftist spiritual manifesto that revolves around hilarious, tongue-in-cheek pantheism a few weeks ago. She promises that this article isn’t an attempt to fish for prospective book deals. She swears.

Apparently Christians down in Kentucky are so up in arms over the idea that dinosaurs once ruled the Earth they’ve erected a museum to prove that God just put those fossils there to test our faith. Now, me, I love dinosaurs. In fact I made a webpage devoted to my collection of old dinosaur books. So I will beat up anyone who says dinosaurs didn’t really exist to my face. Besides, if dinosaurs didn’t really exist the where did Godzilla come from? Answer me that, smarty pants!

As I understand it, creationist theory has it that everything described in the Book of Genesis happened exactly “literally” as described. The various fossils we’ve discovered were put into the ground by God, who wanted to see if we’d still have faith in what He wrote in His book if we were faced with physical evidence that proved it wrong. There are a number of variations on creation theory, ranging from rockheaded adherence to the Bible to the various anthropic principles out there which basically accept science but say that the world was still created by some kind of intelligent being or some such thing. I really don’t follow this kind of stuff. It just puts me to sleep.

One of the things I have never been able to figure out about religions is this whole concept of faith. To the hardcore creationists, the word “faith” seems to mean accepting that everything in the Bible is literally true. But the this brings up a whole ‘nother area of what we mean by “literal truth.” Does it mean that the Bible records the facts as they happened as if observed by an impartial observer on the scene? Is there even such a thing as an impartial observer? I mean, look at the Kennedy assassination. That happened less than 50 years ago in front of loads of eyewitnesses with still and movie cameras and tape recorders documenting the whole thing and we still can’t get a consensus on exactly what went down that afternoon. How are we supposed to verify that things that went on thousands of years ago occurred exactly as the people of the time said they did?

I suppose a Bible thumper would say that God is infallible, He wrote the Bible and therefore everything went down just as He said it did. This is a nice argument because there’s nowhere you can go from here. The Bible is perfect because the Bible says the Bible is perfect. End of story. But that argument does nothing for me. If a God like the one they believe in existed, even He would not be an impartial observer since He would have His own specific point of view that would, of necessity, be completely different from anyone else’s.

On the other hand, liberal Christians say stuff like, “When the Bible says the creation took place in seven days, those are really seven of God’s days and we don’t know how long those are.” This is very sweet and avoids conflicts with science. Yet it still means that we have to accept that the Bible is infallible. It’s this reluctance to believe the Bible — or any book, for that matter — could contain mistakes that always bugged me.

One of the things that attracted me to Buddhism early on was that it does not have the concept of an inerrant scripture. The Buddhist sutras were written by human beings. Some of those human beings, it may be said, were pretty extraordinary. But none of them were infallible. Furthermore, Buddhists don’t get too fussed when you point out to them that the sutras were often changed and revised during their copying and recopying over the course of hundreds of years. In Shobogenzo, Dogen even points out some canonical sutras that he says are bullshit. This did not get him in any trouble even in the 13th century because Buddhism had already developed a long tradition of questioning its own scriptures. This dates back to Buddha himself who said, “Do not go by what is written in scripture.” This, of course, certainly includes scriptures about him.

If we look at the debate between creationism and evolution in terms of our subjective experience, creationist theory may be comforting. It’s nice to believe there’s some big guy with a beard up in the sky ready to smite your enemies and snatch you up to Heaven before the End Time Tribulations. There are times even I wish I could believe in such things. But when we look at the physical world we live in, creationist theory just does not fit the evidence. I know those guys in Kentucky want to prove it does. But the only way to do that is to make your theories incredibly convoluted, invoking a God who likes to trick people and so on. We all know that nature doesn’t work like that as it plays out right before our eyes on a day-to-day basis. Why would it work that way over the course of thousands of years? Why would God bend His own rules all the time? Why would He deliberately try to fool us into believing things that would make Him have to send us to Hell? What kind of God is that?

In terms of our actual experience based upon real action in the real world, we have both our subjective wish to be comforted by ancient stories and our objective evidence that these stories aren’t true. Somehow we have to find a way to live a realistic life in the midst of that. Can we find philosophy that satisfies our need for reassurance yet doesn’t fly in the face of what we can see for ourselves is true?

Only this moment is real. The past is never real existence, whether it happened 65 million years ago or 65 nanoseconds ago. So in that sense the creationists are right and the dinosaurs are not real. But on the other hand, Buddhists accept that cause and effect is absolute, that nothing, and no one — not even God — is free from the law of cause and effect. Looking at the real evidence of fossilized Archocanthosaurus skulls in terms of what we know about cause and effect, the only reasonable explanation is that are the remains of creatures that once lived, breathed and chased Raquel Welch in a Dimetrodon skin bikini.

But if we believe that, aren’t we giving up the comforting reassurance of religion? While there is no sense in arguing with science, science is restricted to the material world. In Buddhist terms, the material world is only a small part of reality. This may sound like wishful thinking on the part of Buddhists, like we haven’t given up our fantasies of there being something beyond the world we perceive through our senses. But look at your life and you’ll find it’s true. Our real experience is never limited to just that which occurs in the material world. Our experience is always both subjective, or spiritual, and objective, or material, at the same time.

The reason the folks in Kentucky are so concerned with whether the dinosaurs really existed or not is because science scares them. They’re afraid that if science is true, the Bible must be false. And that would be a bummer because it would mean there is no God and everything we do is our own responsibility. Plus the whole deal about getting yanked up to Heaven before the Antichrist takes over the world pretty much goes right out the window.

But we don’t need to be frightened of science. For example, science says that what I call my consciousness — or my soul if you want — is just electrical energy whizzing around inside a three-pound lump of meat in my skull. That is a frightening idea if you believe in the existence of an immortal soul. But as a Buddhist I am perfectly OK with that explanation. Just because you can explain something with words doesn’t really mean you know what it is. Just look what electrical energy whizzing around inside the meat in your skull is doing right now. Because of that energy you’re able to interpret abstract shapes glowing on a piece of plastic in front of you and use them to communicate with me over enormous distances. We can even communicate with Buddha, who’s been dead 2,500 years. It’s incredible stuff. It’s mystical stuff, when you get down to it. That the so-called “mundane” everyday world exists at all is a tremendously mystical thing. The world we’re living is more worthy of worship than any God we could invent.

The problem with arguing creationism versus evolution is that such discussions can go on endlessly without any hope of reaching a conclusion. One of Buddha’s admonitions to his followers was not to get caught up in these kinds of discussions since it just wastes time. Life is short and none of us has time to waste. I find the theory of evolution entirely convincing and I have no difficulty accepting it. I don’t really have the time, patience or inclination to try and convince believers in creation science they’re a bunch of numbskulls. Still, though, it’s important to oppose the practice of teaching creation science in our public schools. Schools need to teach the highest levels of real scientific understanding, not indoctrinate their students in arcane religious ideology. I wouldn’t want public schools to teach Buddhist doctrine either. That’s not their place. Except in so far as Buddhism is realism and schools need to teach realism.

Part of my family lives in Cincinnati, and the next time I visit that area I’ll probably make a stop at the Creation Science Museum just to check out the animatronic dinosaurs. But ain’t nobody ever gonna convince me creation science is true.

Here's some plugs though...

TODAY Saturday June 2nd, 2007 at 7 PM I'll be in Phoenix at the ARIZONA ZEN BUDDHIST SOCIETY.

I'm in the June issue of LA YOGA magazine with Lou Reed on the cover.

An excerpt from my new book SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! is in the current WHOLE LIFE TIMES magazine as well as in CONSCIOUS CHOICE magazine in Chicago and Seattle, and COMMON GROUND magazine in San Francisco.

On Sunday June 3, 2007 at 1 pm Barnes & Noble Desert Ridge - 21001 N. Tatum Blvd. - Phoenix, AZ
On Monday June 4, 2007 at 7 pm Changing Hands Bookstore - 6428 South McClintock Dr. - Tempe, AZ

Tuesday June 12th at 6PM at the VIRGIN MEGASTORE in San Francisco
Thursday June 14th, 7PM at GATEWAYS in Santa Cruz
Friday June 15th After Dinner Talk at the SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER (Zazen at 5:30, Dinner at 6:30, Talk at 7:30)
Saturday June 16th 7 PM at COPPERFIELD'S BOOKS 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma, CA 94952
Sunday June 17th at San Quentin Prison (this isn't open to the public, but all inmates reading this are invited!)

AND on Wednesday July 25th, 2007, my movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars!

Plus, the very first record by my old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records. This 7 inch vinyl record contains our 1983 demo tape full of thrashin’ Minor Threat/Negative approach style hardcore with a drop of psychedelia thrown in for good measure. Get yours today!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.

Dinosaurs and creation theory
live together in perfect harmony,
side by side on my laptop's keyboard;
Oh, Lord, why don't we-e-e...

Oh, uh, hello there!

I remember the first time I encountered a steadfast Creationist face to face. It was around ten years ago, I believe. We ended up in a very heated argument in the middle of eighth-grade homeroom period, the culmination of which was him telling me that dinosaur fossils were placed in the earth by God as a test of our faith, and me telling him that any God who would only half-ass the idea of dinosaurs is no God of mine.

I don't know if the new Creation Museum opening in Petersburg, Kentucky, this weekend is a sign of Fundamentalist Christians getting somehow more awesome over the years (in a strangely charming sci-fi sort of way), or just all the more utterly off their rocker, but either way it's kind of jaw-droppingly wonderful.

Aw, H-E-double-hockey-sticks yes! That's $27 million well spent, I say. It's high time alternate realities were featured more prominently in museum form, and these guys aren't about to throw down for just any old tacky Disney Hall o' Presidents-type robot fare – the museum's exhibits are designed by Patrick Marsh, the man responsible for the Jaws and King Kong exhibits at Florida's Universal Studios. Marsh claims to have given his efforts to this cause on account of he's a devout believer himself; no word yet on his value system as it relates to freaky giant gorillas.

The main men behind this project are Mark Looy and the delicious-sounding Ken Ham, co-founders of Answers in Genesis, an "apologetics ministry" whose mission it is to provide creative interpretations of the Book of Genesis and reconcile it with modern science the best they can, providing all the better argument fodder for righteous eighth-graders everywhere. Their magazine alone boasts 50,000 subscribers, and they claim that 9,000 charter members have already signed on to fund the museum venture, placing it completely in the black. At least you can rest assured that it's not your tax dollars at work.

At this rate, you may be wondering what kind of wonders may await you at this Bizarro-Exploratorium. Well, wonder no more, my friends! We've got the goods:

Wait, but now I'm confused. Shouldn't a proper Creation Theorist assume that the dinosaurs were bad eggs and were left to drown with the unicorns? Because if they didn't die in the Great Flood, and there's no evolution so they couldn't have evolved into something else, then what happened to the dinosaurs? I mean, where would they...

Shoot. I think I just got a brain freeze.

Anyway, the Creation Museum officially opens to the public on Memorial Day (that's the 28th to you foreign heathens), and its founders expect a quarter of a million visitors within the first year. Will you be one of them? I won't lie: I probably, would if I was remotely near the region. Even though the thought of paying to get in kind of makes me cringe, you've got to admit that, at the very least, it must be good for some ironic laughs and Kodak Moments. Plus, who can resist the pull of friendly animatronic dinosaur pals? I'll tell you who: no one. Not even God.

And that's a fact.

Rumors are swirling that Saddam Hussein's followers are working on the installation of a museum honoring the late dictator. They are hopeful that they will secure a location near the Saddam's grave as a building site for the memorial so that visitors can witness pieces of his legacy while they pay homage to a pretty horrible guy who really liked Doritos. The museum will include the clothes Saddam was wearing during his rather embarrassing execution. Other mementoes will include pieces donated by the Hussein family.

The real news is that his followers are also working on publishing the Iraqi tyrant's memoirs as they were written from his jail cell during his trial. The authenticity of the autobiography is reportedly confirmed by a member of his legal team.

Somewhere in Seoul, Korea, there is an art and craft museum dedicated to owl themed works. It seems to be a tea house with a thorough collection of owl antiquities and craft. Frankly, I can't understand anything on the website, so if any readers can do a translation better than the one I got from Google, please divulge the secret text within.

Something's definitely lost in translation, but a web search yielded some further interesting, mysterious and comprehensible results. On a Korean tourism website, useful information is provided in English:

Photo Location

This Sunday, October 1st in the Los Angeles area, twenty museums have agreed to open the doors to the public free of charge. Take advantage of this, Southern Californians; while there are some museums that are always free (such as the Getty), most are not.

The participating museums in the day event include:

More info and links to the participating museums are here.


Photo Location: Folk Art is Free Art on Oct. 1.

On the subject of admission fees, though people seem to be able to justify paying $10 and upward to see Snakes on a Plane, many are reluctant or unable to meet the cost of museum admissions. Is it because we still feel as though a traditional education should be free? Or because museums are asking for so much these days?

No matter, if your finances disallow meeting the steep price of museum culture, read the fine print or call and ask first. Some American museums admission fees are characterized as "suggested admission", meaning pay what you can, anytime. I used to visit the Art Institute of Chicago at least once a week when I was a kid, never able to cough up more than a couple dollars. Or change I found on the sidewalk. (The museum has since removed their flexible admission policy.)

While public financial contributions to museums are crucial to meeting the many overhead costs as with any business (from security to acquiring new collections), many museums reach out to the public with their flexible fee options. If not a pay-what-you-can admission program, many offer free days throughout the month.

Source

Here's a short list of art museums with suggested admission policies:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA), Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, NYU's Grey Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum (always free), all Smithsonian Museums (in DC, always free), Hearst Art Gallery (Bay area)

If you know of another museum with a flexible admission policy, please post it here! And, of course, remember that many smaller museums and privately owned collections are free all the time and most museums have volunteer programs which will also gain you free admission.

It costs $20 to get into NYC's MoMA, the same price as Jason Polan's self-published book The Every PIece Of Art In the Museum Of Modern Art Book. Skip the lines and crowds and art history lesson in exchange for the sketchbook interpretation of the January 2005 collection.


Photo Location
Hat tip to Gawker

The Whitney and Tate Museums have collaborated to fund a sort of confusing but interactive internet based project called Screening Circle. The installation is somewhat akin to a quilting circle made up of live, anonymous contributers drawing pixelated "squares" to be bound into a video quilt.

Enter the portal and you'll be able to "help docs" (which means you can pick an existing "quilt square" and add to it). Using a palette of 9 basic screen colors, draw with your mouse and make your mark on the Screening Circle. Like I said, it's a little confusing at first, but you'll figure it out.

Photo Location

View the interactive "quilt" or participate here.

Visiting the exhibit “Société Anonyme: Modernism for America” at the Hammer Museum, what struck me most, besides the sheer mass of work (some expected Leger’s and Kandinsky’s, some lesser knowns and surprisingly organic sculptures) was the personal care Société Anonyme, Inc.’s founders, Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray took to capture a movement.

Société Anonyme, Inc. was founded in 1920 as America’s first “experimental museum” for contemporary art. Société Anonyme or S.A., the French designation for corporations, literally translates to Incorporated, Inc. And with that nod to Dada, Dreir and Duchamp (Man Ray’s role was less significant) sought to promote Modernism in America, encourage international exchange, educate, and provide forums for discussion on Modernism. They tried to simultaneously capture and spread a movement through collecting art (a Modern collection, then unrivaled, and now matched only by MoMA and the Guggenheim, NY), curating over 80 exhibits, and distributing 30 publications.


The exhibition, set to tour museums for the next four years, does not have the focus of many traditionally curated shows, but it's not exactly democratic, or academic, or chaotic. It's a record of the time and taste of a group of individuals, artists, who saw the work through an artist's eye.

Société Anonyme believed that their business should be “art, not personalities.” Three cheers to that.

KCRW’s show "Politics and Culture" aired a discussion yesterday with exhibition curator Jennifer Gross and Director of the Hammer Museum, Ann Philbin. Unfortunately, I had trouble downloading the show, but I hope that’s only a temporary problem.



Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America
was organized by Yale University Art Gallery and will tour the following cities:

Hammer Museum
Los Angeles, CA
Apr 23 – Aug 20, 2006

The Phillips Collection
Washington DC
Oct 14, 2006 – Jan 21, 2007

Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, TX
Jun 10 – Sep 16, 2007

Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Nashville, TN
Oct 26, 2007 – Feb 3, 2008

Yale University Art Gallery
New Haven, CT
Fall 2010

Here lies someone who may be more into taking a bath than Ernie. Everyone likes to get sudsy now and then, but Carye Bye, curator of the Bathtub Art Museum, brings a new degree of appreciation to this international pastime.

Photo Location

The museum exists only in digital form for the time being; the world may not be ready for a physical museum dedicated to bathtub art. Until that day comes, be sure to browse the many exhibits, read all about Carye's pilgrimage to the Bathtub Racing Capital of the World, learn how to bake a bathtub cake, and maybe even send in your own hand-made bathtub postcards for the museum's collection.

In 1985, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art acquired a painting of Anthony Van Dyck from a private foundation. Its approximate value is about $1 million. And for the time being no one will see it: the museum has “re-attributed” it and believes that the painting was not painted by van Dyck at all.

The problem with attributing an unsigned work, or even a forgery is a problem that goes to the very problem of art itself: authorial intent. Occasionally, very talented art historians can get inside the head of an artist and be able to describe the painting with their eyes closed, and sometimes when the painting is absent (such as the docent at Hermitage Museum the during the siege of Stalingrad). But there are many talented historians and finding and proving authorship is so subjective, if not impossible.

Under the Abassyd and Umyyaad caliphates, Baghdad was the center of culture in the Medieval world. While Charlemagne was establishing a Christian empire, forming the basis of what we now call the “liberal arts,” and trying to pick up the pieces after the fall of the Rome, Harun al Rashid was bringing together the shared learning of four continents under an Islamic framework; the concept of “zero” from Hindi was applied to mathematics and astrology and the basis of what we now know as algebra start to take shape during this period of time.

Baghdad was the center of sciences and culture until the rise of colonialism. And so, under repressive regime after repressive regime, the collections of the finest cultural artifacts have been stolen, destroyed, and separated. Now, as Iraq tries to find a future, it also tries to find a past.

American involvement in Iraq has been both a blessing and a curse for its cultural heritage. On the one hand, Iraq has huge access to American cultural entities for institutional support. On the other, Iraq is facing a civil war with each side competing over historical differences that stretch all the way back to the Abassyd caliphate—the bombing of Al Askari Mosque's Golden Dome is an example. What better way to rearrange historical differences than by targeting cultural institutions?

Skin Is a Language is an exhibit of skin-themed artworks at the Whitney Museum through May 21. The poster for the show is Catherine Opie's "Self-Portrait/Cutting," a photograph of the artist's back with two stick figures and a small house carved into it. The exhibit runs concurrently with the Biennial.

Says Needled:

A new show of erotic Japanese art, Peeping, Probing and Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan, opened yesterday at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. Beginning with the explosion of erotic art during the Edo period and leading up to the period's influence over the popularity of manga and anime today, the exhibit includes artifacts ranging from brothel guide books to examples of shunga. A pop-up on the museum's website can be printed and used as a coupon for $5 off the admission price.

via Gawker