Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/art/page/17/)
Other reviewers of Woody Allen’s film Blue Jasmine were spot on when they praised Blanchett’s acting to the skies. She masterfully portrays the realm of full-throated, disabling, get-away-from-that-lady psychosis. Where I differ from those reviewers is that I experienced Blanchett’s realness as contrasting with the phoniness of so much else in the film.
Taien Ng-Chan is a writer and multidisciplinary artist living in Montréal, Québec. Her work as an artist and scholar has taken her into territory that challenges how governments, institutions and societies ought to be.
Human beings seem to come with certain built-in spiritual inclinations, and gratitude is chief among them. Parents and teachers think we have to be taught to say thank you, but maybe it just comes naturally. Still, like any spiritual inclination, gratitude can be cultivated into a more fulsome flowering.
Israeli archaeologists have recently discovered artifacts that give us a vivid sense of how destructive and merciless extremism of any sort and an eagerness for war can be. Reflecting on The Three Weeks, for those Jews who are not inclined to mourn the destruction of the two Temples, is there any reason to mourn? I have been thinking about this question the past couple weeks in light of the archaeological discoveries.
A deep love for Brazilian culture runs throughout the paintings of Talita Suassuna. Growing up in São Paulo, Suassuna listened to Brazilian music everyday. The rhythms of bossa nova, ijexá, and capoeira soon began to structure her artwork.
… the new film (“Hannah Arendt”) … lends credence to the simplistic notion that her controversial portrait of Adolf Eichmann at his Jerusalem trial was a mark of great insight. She didn’t merit the abuse that she suffered as a result; … but her most significant conclusions were drawn from the very limited range of Holocaust scholarship available to her in the early 1960s. …
With all the negativity directed toward the Middle East in the United States, it’s easy for those with no personal connection to the Middle East to develop ill-founded prejudices and lose sight of the similarities between North American and Middle Eastern culture. How do we bridge this cultural gap? Maybe we could start with something as simple as a comic book?
The red panda, a small mammal that is on the endangered species list, appears on a building’s side just above the Bagmati Bridge in Kathmandu, Nepal. The mural was created by Daas, a transcontinental artist and entertainer who wanted to draw attention to this mammal that is fighting for its survival. “Knowing that thousands of people, everyday, will see this huge, colorful painting – in a sea of grey, deteriorating buildings – felt like I was helping to breathe new life into the city,” Daas says. “I wanted to give the people something to spark awareness as well as imagination.” In 2007, Daas, who was born in the United States, caught the attention of Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan, through his work on large-scale murals.
I’m wondering if — 68 years on — “Holocaust fatigue” is setting in, perhaps reinforced by a certain weariness regarding “Jewish dramas” in general, because of the seemingly endless succession of world crises directly or indirectly related to Israel.
Caught up in political debates surrounding immigration policy, journalists, politicians, and even fine artists often give short shrift to the cultural aspects of immigration: the beautiful blending of cultures, languages, and societies that enrich a country for the better. Felipe “Feggo” Galindo’s series Manhatitlan offers a reminder that immigration is, at heart, about finding home in a new place – a process that inevitably involves some cultural fusion.