Circulation Des Elites

Vilfredo Pareto

It's like overhearing your parents fighting behind their bedroom door. From the point of view of the average Joe, the elites are having a dust up. The sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, coined the term, "circulation des elites." The White House correspondents are no less an elite than Joe Rogan. Certainly Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are their own elite along with Wolf Blitzer and his co-anchor, Pamela Brown. In comes a would be assassin guns a blazing. Will he become an urban legend, the Luigi Mangione of 2026? Will he be locked up in Fort Knox, a true Goldfinger, rather than one those maximum security for-profit federal penitentiaries filled with cypto-kleptocrats? This is not The Apprentice. It's Jerry Springer where you had to call security to break things up.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kant

Kant

Paradigm shift was the catchphrase of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The two words are innocuous, almost pallidly academic yet absolute in their assertion of relativity. But where does the "categorical imperative" figure in? The Kantian requisite differentiates between right and wrong. The present comical universe displays the consequences of “transactional analysis.” Decision making has no relationship to morality. The present state of "value free politics" perpetrated by the president illustrates the consequences of the attack on deontology.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Which Way Should the Male Gaze?

 

"Sunlight" by Joan Semmel (1978)

Is it wrong to look pruriently on Courbet's"L'Origine du monde" with its headless model in a wanton splayed legged pose? Joan Semmel is known for her nudes, currently on display, in her solo show, "In the Flesh," at The Jewish Museum. Does the artist defang the male gaze by virtue of her own agency? Is it an act of esthetic corruption to get turned on by "Sunlight," or another of Semmel's nudes where a female subject is pictured underneath her male lover with one hand grasping his balls and the fingers of her hand reaching tantalizingly towards his anus?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Kepler

Johannes Kepler

There are billions of galaxies. The Milky Way is only one, though a Kepler planet, an inhabitant, is still going to be 1200 light years from earth. In addition the cosmos is filled with a dark energy that's causing objects to drift ever further from each other. Space is getting darker, with celestial objects becoming ever more evanescent. No wonder humans constantly and futilely need to assert their self-importance. However delusory, it provides an anodyne. So, much maligned ego does have a function--as a momentary respite from cosmic indifference. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Chance

What are the chances of being spotted by somebody you barely know in the middle of nowhere aka Main Street in a strange city. Not much, right? How much more improbable is it to be spotted by the same person a second time? The improbability of an improbable occurrence repeating increases exponentially. Those who believe there are no coincidences  argue there are other spiritual algorithms at work. Is it a mere throw of the dice? Or...? 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Ozempic Personality Disorder

Apparently weight loss drugs like Ozempic have side effects—one of which is anhedonia or the ability to experience pleasure. In the course of quelling one appetite by way of reducing dopamine flow other temptations are eradicated and patients may start to ponder the point of living. Hamlet comments "that the dread of something after death/The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveler returns, puzzles the will." Suicidal ideation is not compatible with those taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

L.H.O.O.Q.

 

L.H.O.O.Q.

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp's quote which graces the wall in the current MoMA show, sounds a bit like an artist trying to punch his way out of a paper bag. One admires the cleverness of his famed vandalizing of the "Mona Lisa," which sets the state for Rauschenberg's erasing of de Kooning and later guerrilla art such as Banksy. However, to complete the circle and in a Duchampian way turn Duchamp upside down,  can the Dadaist enterprise compete with great art "works?" Compare the experience of "View of Delft," "The Night Watch" and, yes, the "Mona Lisa" to any number of conceptual strategies--that seek to redefine the nature of beauty and art, and you may find you may feel shortchanged. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star