Rome Journal XVI: SPQR(ca)Vita

painting by Juan Francisco Casas  (photograph by Hallie Cohen)

The pagan spirit never left Rome, despite the advent of Christianity. There's probably no city on earth where the sacred and the profane, religion and sacrilege co-exist so freely and openly. Donato Bramante’s Tempietto is a jewel of Renaissance architecture, commemorating the martyrdom of St Peter, on the grounds of the church of San Montorio in Pietro. But you have to expand your notion of what constitutes a spiritual experience if you attempt to see Bramante’s work anytime before February 16 as the façade of entranceway, is now covered with a poster of a naked woman advertising “SPQR(ca)VITA," a show of sadomasochistic paintings and drawings by Juan Francisco Casas. Granted the show is presented by the Spanish Academy, on whose grounds both the church and Tempietto are situated, but a painting of a woman on all fours, leashed, collared and licking a book on "Bernini" seems  simpatico for Rome, particularly if you are caught up in the current resurgence of interest in the transgressive Marxist Christian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. In fact one of Casas' works, a painting of a bloodied cadaver entitled simply “Pier Paolo,” obviously references the filmmaker’s violent death. Other images in the exhibit include a topless woman with a bag over her head and a naked woman whose body is inscribed with the words, “your eyes can be so cruel just as I can be so cruel though I do believe in you.” Visitors to the Tempietto will have their Augustinian moment when they choose to either turn left to the City of God embodied by a reliquary or take a right turn toward the world of flagellation and defilement of the flesh—which, one might argue, contains its own version of the crucifixion.

Civility

 "Death of  Caesar" by Vincenzo Camuccini

Civility is a tightrope walker. It’s a word that connotes the kind of obligatory manners that are tantamount to hiding the truth or it can be an overarching principle that transcends subjectivity and that has its own epistemic truth. For instance, shock jocks like Howard Stern claim to be saying what everyone's thinking. That’s the same tune Donald Trump is playing. When he talks about keeping Muslims out of the country until further notice, he's merely iterating what others are too afraid to express. When he throws out insults about women nursing babies, having periods or using the toilet, he's simply indulging in harmless bathroom humor. However, what's missing in these kinds of outbursts is civility. From the point of view of cognition, civility is a concept that allows us to give even our foes and opponents full breadth as human beings--despite the fact that they may have opinions which differ from our own. You can win the battle and lose the war (as we well know from Iraq). Denigration can indeed reduce an opponent’s power, if it is done artfully, in a debate. But at the end of the day, we exist in a polity—a country, city or state that reflects the fact that we’re social animals. That’s where the word politician comes from. Thus if we continue to seek feelings of triumph and power, placing civility to the side, then we have made our own bed and must sleep in it. Caesar sought triumph over accommodation and even his close friend, the thoughtful Brutus, eventually turned on him.

Picasso's Bicameral Mind

"Figure" by Picasso (photograph: Hallie Cohen)

It’s no revelation that Picasso amongst many classic modernists was enamored of primitive art. However, the fixation poses a visual conundrum when you look at some of the early work in the current Picasso Sculpture exhibit which is just completing a run at MoMA. How can one of the most venerated practitioners of classic modernism produce works that could have been found on an anthropological expedition. Take, "Figure," piece number 9 in first room of the show, a wood sculpture that exudes a totemic tribalist quality. Cubism is obviously the influence here, but isn’t so-called “cubist sculpture” itself an oxymoron to the extent that the fragmentation of the real object is no longer conveniently taking place in a flat plane? Take Number 29 the famous “Guitar” piece. As a painting you would have spied the object immediately, but here the guitar is literally deconstructed.  No one dreams that a painting can perform a function, but sculpture is three dimensional and in theory you might toy with the novelty of playing Picasso’s guitar. Cubism is supposedly about time as well as space. However, with its "negative space," “Guitar” is  no longer an instrument that could be played by anyone. Here is what the curators have to say about the monumental sculptures of the Boisgeloup period: “Noses, mouths and eyes double as female sexual organs and the sculpture’s surfaces conjure both the softness of flesh and the unforgiving hardness of bone.” The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind was the name of Julian Jaynes book about the ancient world. Bicamerality might be one way of describing the effect Picasso’s work radiates, only the paradox is that it’s created by one of the most highly developed artistic intelligences of the 20^th Century.

The Donald Trump Cult

You get to the point where you think the whole electoral system is such a fucked up mess that you just want to take a leap into the abyss—meaning voting for Donald Trump. Why not do something really extreme, like Jim Jones’ followers? The worse that can happen is that the pied piper will lead his children into a figurative vat of cyanide characterized by even more destruction than we have already experienced. If you think ISIS is bad, then wait until the Donald takes over. But unless you’re an illegal immigrant you start to get taken in by the brashness of this pater familias you once rejected. It’s very enticing when someone comes along and seems to have all the answers. Isn’t this what we all want? The model for the dictator is a God who will fulfill all our wishes and dreams. No need for taxes, no problems with illegal immigrants (we’ll build the Great Wall of Trump), no problems with health care (who needs it?) and if you’re a bully in the schoolyard, ie Kim Jong-un or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, watch out because Daddy’s coming. Remember those oft quoted Yeats lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are filled with passionate intensity.” Well Mr. Trump may lack an exact plan when it comes to foreign policy, but he has no lack of conviction. If you're thinking about taking a leap and playing the Trump card, you’ll be in good company. One of his big fans is Vladimir Putin ("Vladimir Putin Chides Turkey, Praises Trump and Talks Up Russia's Economy," NYT, 12/17/15). Or you could bid no Trump.

Sperm Count: Goodbye to Eden

"The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch

Will mankind be condemned to an existence of loving sex? Is that the next rung on the evolutionary ladder. Taking a Darwinian survival of the fittest point of view, it would seem that those men and women who fit the guidelines of the affirmative consent statutes recently passed in both California and New York will find that their genes are naturally selective, while those who aren’t turned on to reciprocity in sex and prefer S&M, B&D, humiliation and a thousand other paraphilias, and have read the Story of O and Return to the Chateau so many times that they can reiterate the hot passages in their sleep not to speak of The 120 Days of Sodom (which was the basis for Pasolini’s masterpiece of degradation Salo) and jerk off to the scene in Eyes Wide Shut where Nicole Kidman is sitting on the toilet, will find that their brand of barbaric Animal House sexuality, with its worn copies of Adam, Sir, Hustler and Club International is shunted to the side. There's a even a mathematical formula for altruism famously offered by the evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton which has added one more nail to the coffin of sexual inequity with its labyrinth of delicious Catholic shame, documented so amply in the recent blockbuster hit Spotlight. Gone are the days when it was as Mel Brooks elegantly said “good to be the king” or better yet an archbishop! There are no more bunnies wearing tails and as of its March issue Playboy will do away with nudity and before long neither girls nor guys will cover their whoosy whatsis with fig leaves. Yes a certain innocence seems like it’s creeping into the bedroom, like a slow metastasizing cancer, but don’t worry. Once a pickle no more a cucumber. There'll never be another Eden.