Gaither Stewart

Symbols and objects held sacred by a whole people form a more powerful protective barrier than the highest of walls. Even the Great Wall of China was more a scarecrow than a real barrier to Mongol invaders. In that figurative sense I have imagined here the Russian icon as a historical defense of Russia against circling invaders, against mercenary armies and menacing space shields.

(Rome) Even though Russian icons have little meaning in the USA, religious icons lie at the roots of pictorial art in Slavic East Europe. For the seven hundred years from the 11th century until the time of Peter the Great, the icon practically was the only indigenous pictorial art of the vast territories of the Eastern Slavs, which later, in fact, coincided with the former USSR. Though a mysterious object, the icon, that is, the sacred image, or the sacred representation that the museum visitor easily passes up for more conventional art, is nonetheless both pure art … and at the same time sacred art.

Read more »

By Carolyn Bennett

In a sense there are only Means and means must be judged against firm and impartial standards of morality and legality. If an End though a means is envisioned as an end, it too must stand and be judged impartially as moral or immoral, just or unjust, legal or illegal, humane or inhumane. Ends contrived by men never justify means. Given this—

The world watches Israel as it enters another corrupt phase in a sixty-year era of corruption—means upon means. Thomas Paine said “A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men” (and women). In its fraudulent cause Israel has caused deaths and displacements of hundreds of thousands of people who never harmed or threatened Jews.

Read more »