Camille Paglia’s latest book is the very definition of protean. The eight sections of this seven-hundred-page volume, fittingly titled Provocations, cover popular culture, film, sex/gender/women, literature, art, education, politics and religion. Paglia, who calls herself “pro-pop and pro-sex,” has also proven a fierce advocate of the canon, which for her encompasses the best of civilization. Those familiar with her writings will know that this breadth is not an indication of some egomaniacal attempt at a “theory of everything,” but a sensible shortcut to sorting out decades of writing on an expansive range of subjects. After all, the author’s scholarly maiden voyage—Sexual Personae (1990)—was another seven-hundred-page tome that addressed the continuity of Western culture through an analysis of sexuality and eroticism in art. Intellectual ambition is still Camille Paglia’s middle name.
Tags:
#MeToo,
Alan Greenspan,
Art and American Culture,
Ayn Rand,
Camille Paglia,
Higher Education,
Provocations,
Robert Hughes,
Scandal,
Scholarship,
Sex,
Sexual Personae,
Vamps and Tramps,
Vladimir Nabokov Comments Off on Scholars and Scandals |
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The #MeToo’ers got their aesthetic affiliation all wrong as they went for Puritanism—one of history’s archetypal patriarchies. In my latest contribution to The New Criterion, I discuss how the movement’s desire to disassociate itself from traditional trappings of femininity, including color, is incongruent with their professed embrace of the oppressed “other.”
Tags:
#MeToo,
Ashley Judd,
chromophilia,
chromophobia,
Dave Hickey,
David Batchelor,
Frans Hals,
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe,
Masha Gessen,
Puritanism,
Stella Paul,
Steve Bannon,
Time magazine,
Vanessa Friedman Comments Off on Why chromophobia of #MeToo does not make any sense |
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In the latest tragical-comical episode linking the art world and the #MeToo movement, a group of artists and activists, with the help of the gallery’s curator, removed a seminal Pre-Raphaelite artwork from the wall of the Manchester Art Gallery “to initiate a discussion.” My analysis of what happened was just published in Dispatches section of […]
#MeToo is in the news again (still), now going after paintings with unpalatable content. My article “A Warning about the Balthus Warning,” just posted in the Dispatch section of The New Criterion. It explains why it is a very bad idea to decide whether an artwork deserves to grace museum walls based on how offensive […]
My article “The art world’s ‘hidden enemy’” on the subject of purges for sexual misconduct in the art world is out in the Decemer issue of The New Criterion. (The New Criterion, Volume 36 Number 4, on page 86). Here is the full text of my article: The art world’s “hidden enemy” While preparing my […]
