Friday, June 24, 2005
Friday semen blogging
I'm really tired of the New York Times. They're considered the "paper of record" and some sort of bastien of liberalism, but the editorial POV of the paper is weak and often backtracking, they make obvious and simple mistakes, their lifestyle pieces are embarrassing, they continued to pay Judith Miller and William Safire long after it was revealed that she was a bad journalist and he was a ridiculous liar. And I hate how every damn headline seems to follow the same obnoxious pattern of "[Preposition] [Proper Noun] COMMA [Rest of headline]" Crap like "In Prague, shoes make the politician" or "For Rumsfeld, a question of strategy." Gak!
Oh, and they make a lot of mistakes. I've seen more spelling & grammar & factual mistakes there than in any paper anywhere.
Which leads us to our topic of the day. As you may have heard, "The Scream" was stolen. Yes, that Scream. The Munch Museum in Oslo is now reopening. Here's the Times coverage of it:
Wait. Munch created a painting of the Madonna decorated with ... SEMEN? What? How in the world would that work?? Wouldn't that be the greatest art scandal of all time, regardless of how great Munch was and despite him living in a more open time than now, and not having Rudi Giuliani as his damn mayor?
So I looked it up.
In fact, the painting in question is ringed with spermatazoa. Not semen. Sperm. There's a difference. It's actually pretty inflammatory, what Walter wrote, and conjures up images of Munch going a little overboard in his excitement over his great painting. Instead, it's quite the haunting image. Check it out:
Oh, and they make a lot of mistakes. I've seen more spelling & grammar & factual mistakes there than in any paper anywhere.
Which leads us to our topic of the day. As you may have heard, "The Scream" was stolen. Yes, that Scream. The Munch Museum in Oslo is now reopening. Here's the Times coverage of it:
Museum reopens without its 'Scream'
WALTER GIBBS
OSLO, June 17 - After Edvard Munch's masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" were taken in a daylight robbery of the Munch Museum here in August, critics accused the museum's director, Gunnar Sorensen, and other city officials of naïveté for not adequately securing Scandinavia's greatest art treasures. After all, the robbers had simply run in, yanked the paintings from the wall and left.
...
The Munch Museum is exclusively dedicated to Norway's greatest Expressionist, a tormented figure who lived from 1863 to 1944. Both "The Scream" and "Madonna" (a haloed woman with a rippling blue aura said to suggest the moment of conception) are part of a series of paintings from the 1890's that Munch called "The Frieze of Life." When Munch liked one of his paintings, he often did numerous versions, keeping one for himself. A second oil version of "The Scream" hangs today in the National Gallery in Oslo, across town from the Munch Museum. Munch painted five variations of "Madonna," including one decorated with a fetus and semen, but the version stolen last summer is considered the best.
Wait. Munch created a painting of the Madonna decorated with ... SEMEN? What? How in the world would that work?? Wouldn't that be the greatest art scandal of all time, regardless of how great Munch was and despite him living in a more open time than now, and not having Rudi Giuliani as his damn mayor?
So I looked it up.
In fact, the painting in question is ringed with spermatazoa. Not semen. Sperm. There's a difference. It's actually pretty inflammatory, what Walter wrote, and conjures up images of Munch going a little overboard in his excitement over his great painting. Instead, it's quite the haunting image. Check it out:
