Entertainment Highlight: Alice

We stayed in this Saturday. I have a hurt wing (shoulder) and it's so cold out...

 

Would You Allow Someone to Paint Your Portrait?

Take the quiz to the right, won't you?

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne

Modigliani's last muse 

If you answered "in a heartbeat" to the poll question, send me the image of a portrait by a painter whom you'd want to paint your portrait and in what style.

The Friday Evening Nudes

Good, Old-Fashioned Nudes

 Frederick John Mulhaupt

1871 - 1938

American

Amaury Duval

1808 - 1885

French

Henry Caro Delvaille 

 1876-1928

French

originally uploaded by the blog Naked in the Art

Julius LeBlanc Stewart

 American

1855- 1919

Camille Wauters 

Belgian

1856-1919

Bummer! It's Not Friday Yet!

I didn't mean to trick you, if you see a Friday Evening Nudes post pop up and then be gone. It's just that all week I have been a day ahead.  It's Friday? No, just wishful thinking. 

But here is a little peek...

;-)

Foolish and Fluffy

This post is nothing fancy. WP is in...er...Washington, D.C. And no, the purpose of his trip is not political, at least not in regard to the government. With lots of things hanging around waiting to get done, I sit here making up pastimes that are way more fun than putting ornaments away, doing laundry, sweeping the front hall...

This is how I avoid housework. Finding paintings of fluffy kittens and pudgy puppies. I'm feeling random - it could be anything. Here we go!

Oh, wait. A note to Dianne:  you know, luv, it's not too early to expose Hope to art. Just have her drool on her favorite, k?  ;-)

Foolishness

(I did promise fluffiness)

Fluffiness

both images by Arthur Heyer

Ferociousness

Spencer Hodge

The little girl being the ferocious one.  ;-)

Theophile Alexander Steinlen 

1889

 Fashionable

Marguerite Gérard

Characters on Canvas

 In this post, I feature a portrait by German painter and printmaker, Otto Dix

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden,

1926

mixed media on wood

Paris, Musée National d'Art Modern

Dix had met her on the street, and declared:

'I must paint you! I simply must! ... You are representative of an entire epoch!'
'So, you want to paint my lacklustre eyes, my ornate ears, my long nose, my thin lips; you want to paint my long hands, my short legs, my big feet—things which can only scare people off and delight no-one?'
'You have brilliantly characterized yourself, and all that will lead to a portrait representative of an epoch concerned not with the outward beauty of a woman but rather with her psychological condition.'^[4]

Democracy?

 Seated left to right: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice John Paul Stevens, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas. Standing left to right: Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Photo Credit: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

 Here it is and I can't believe they got away with it

 

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (2010), the Court ruled that federal restrictions on corporate electoral advocacy under the BCRA were unconstitutional for violating the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), which had previously held that a law that prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled the part of McConnell that upheld such restrictions under the BCRA.^[9]

Here at the Pagan Sphinx blog, I cannot let another day go by without expressing my outrage over the recent U.S. supreme court ruling  on campaign financing. The effect of the ruling is that corporations and unions can now spend freely on political ads directly related to a candidate, and with no time restrictions.

There isn't enough time before our planet is truly on its death-bed to recover democracy in the U.S. The Supreme Court has now officially given our country's elections up to the entities that have the most money: the corporations. He who spends most wins the most twisted votes.

The corporations already have the most power. They don't need more freedom to speak. Do we want the same bunch that have ruined our environment and our economy, now deciding who we should vote to protect their interests? I can't believe this is what we want in the U.S. But then again, I never dreamed a Republican would replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate, either.

from an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor

But on reflection, the idea that more speech is always better should seem just as ridiculous as the idea that corporations should have equal moral standing with people. Speech is plainly bad for democracy if it misleads voters. It might even be bad if it affects views by repetition rather than persuasion, if it is simply so pervasive that it effectively drowns out competing voices. Read the whole article here.


 Shoddy Scholarship

Huffington Post:  Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions

Music for Sunday: Goodbye to Kate McGarrigle

 Kate McGarrigle (left) and her sister Anna chatted at the Monument National in September 2004 after a news conference announcing that the folk music duo were recipients of the Governor-General's Performing Arts Awards. Kate McGarrigle died Monday of cancer at age 63.

Photograph by:  JOHN MAHONEY, GAZETTE, FILE

Kate McGarrigle, one half of the McGarrigle Sisters, mother to singers Rufus and Martha Wainwright and supremely talented singer and songwriter from Canada, died on January 18 at the age of 63. Listen to the story on NPR.

 I loved her voice as soon as I heard it as a teen-ager in the mid-70's. So many of my favorite songs were written and performed by Kate and her sister Anna. Having lived in France and as a child, I loved the old French songs, too. It is amazing the love an artist can put into her songs. I think that love shielded Kate in her own world of music and passion for life. It was not about fame or fortune. She went unnoticed by the masses of people who buy records but some of us were lucky enough to discover and treasure her music. I know I will play those songs for my grandchildren.