Fascinating discussion about cruelty and art.

Some obliquely-related items, perhaps—

The rendering in Art Spiegelman's Maus.

Regarding same author's recent Book of Genesis—I read the excerpt in The New Yorker earlier this year and loved it (it was just a few pages).  I sought some reviews and one by Harold Bloom simply dismissed and disparaged the book because he said the women in Genesis are “supposed” to be beautiful and he did not think Art Spiegelman's women in his Genesis were beautiful.  Some of us thought Spiegelman succeeded in commenting on certain received ideas of beauty and that his women are beautiful, and that Bloom’s view is sheer rigid prejudice.  Other feminists objected to all of Spiegelman's women and some to all of his work.  (The other review by someone who understood visual art was more intelligent about the visual aspects of the book.  I eventually bought the book but have not had time to read much or recently.)  (Also interesting are Spiegelman’s ideas about “neosincerity,” about which I heard him speak with Alex Melamid (formerly of Komar & Melamid—take a look at their art) and in re the Danish cartoons debates in recent years.)

Just some fragments.

And to follow up on those, the attached Mankoff cartoon published right when he died of course, with Henny Youngman’s obituary in a 1998 issue of The New Yorker, comes to mind.

And also the two attached Shanahan cartoons from The New Yorker.

Barrie

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Barrie Karp, Ph.D., Philosophy
barriekarp@gmail.com
New York City!

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.