THE ARTFUL INVESTOR 

New research calls art a smart investment,
but skeptics point to high costs and high risk.

By Christopher Palmeri
BusinessWeek
(excerpt)

John Morrissey hunts young artists the way some money managers dig for undiscovered stocks.  In the evenings the West Palm Beach (Fla.) attorney scours magazines such as Artforum and Websites such as Artnet.  He tours galleries in New York and Miami, chatting up dealers and sometimes the artists themselves.  Buying works early can lead to spectacular returns.  In 1998 he bought a piece by abstract painter Cecily Brown for $11,000 at her second show, at New York’s Deitch Projects, a gallery.  Last year, he says, a similarly sized piece from the same show sold at auction for $968,000.  “My artists have outperformed any other investment I’ve made,” he says.  Art is hot.  The record price for a single painting was broken three times last year.  The auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips de Pury sold a combined $1 billion worth of contemporary art last fall.  Attendance continues to surge at art fairs such as December’s Art Basel Miami Beach and Februarys Armory Show in New York.  The common explanation is that a new breed of collector, the hedge fund manager rolling in money and looking to show off newfound wealth and sophistication, has hit the scene.  There is another factor at work, however:  the belief that art is an asset class that belongs in your investment portfolio along with stocks, bonds, and real estate.

The leaders of this new art-as-asset school are Jianping Mei and Michael Moses, two longtime professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business.  In 2002 they released a study that found art handily outperformed bonds and Treasury bills going as far back as 1876.  Based on their most recent results through June of last year,  Mei and Moses conclude that art narrowly edged out stocks over the past 10 years, returning 8.5% annually.  Contemporary art---which they define as anything since 1950---did even better, returning 12.7% over the past 10 years, three percentage points better than stocks.

The pair founded a consulting firm, Beautiful Asset Advisors, to sell their research to investors.  Moses says that because their studies show a low correlation between the performance of art and other assets, art can be used to diversify an investment portfolio.  He suggests an allocation of roughly 10%  for investors who have at least $500,000 in financial assets, after debt.  “We try to be quantitative,” he says, “and get the war stories and folklore out of it.”

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ALVIN AILEY
American Dance Theatre

All About Ailey

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater grew from the now fabled performance in March 1958, at the 92^nd Street Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York.  Led by Alvin Ailey and a group of young African-American modern dancers, that performance changed forever the perception of American dance.  The Ailey company has gone on to perform for an estimated 21 million people in 48 states and in 71 countries on six continents, including two historic residences in South Africa.  The company has earned a reputation as one of the most acclaimed international ambassadors of American culture, promoting the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience and the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance heritage.

Although he created 79 ballets over his lifetime, Alvin Ailey maintained that his company was not exclusively a repository for his own work.  Today, the Company continues Mr. Ailey’s mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones to add to the repertoire.  In all, more than 200 works by over 70 choreographers have been performed by The Ailey.

Before his untimely death in 1989, Alvin Ailey asked Judith Jamison to become Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.  Ms. Jamison wrote in her autobiography, Dancing Spirit, “I hope I’m a continuation of Alvin’s vision.  He has left me a road map.  It’s very clear.  It works.”

The Alvin Ailey Company is currently performing at the California Center for Arts, Escondido, California.  Look for them also in Orange County and Los Angeles County.

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Editorial

SHATTERED HOPES AND PLANS

‘...whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle…’
Hebrews 11:34

The author Ernest Hemingway wrote this sentence:  'Life breaks us all . . . but many are made strong at the broken places.'  Hemingway was drawing attention to the fact that some people are able to recover from the experience of feeling broken and go on to be stronger than they were before.  The human spirit can rise to great heights when faced with trauma and trouble, and there are multitudes of people who, though not committed Christians, draw on their inner strength to survive and recover from the most horrifying of experiences.  The exciting thing about the Christian life, however, is that whether or not we are temperamentally gifted with a strong fighting spirit, we are able to draw on the redemptive energies of Jesus Christ and thus can turn every weakness into strength.  Nothing that happens to a believer cannot be transformed by God, who is able to turn everything to good.  The only condition He makes is that we link ourselves to His power.

Has something happened recently in your life to bring you to a place of spiritual or psychological weakness?  Has it left you feeling woefully weak and inadequate?  God specializes in matching His ability to your disability.  By His transforming grace your frustration can become fruitful.  You can be strong in broken places.

'The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.'
Psalm 28:8

Often in life something happens that causes us to almost break apart, but at the same time strengthens us so that we are better prepared to face a similar situation in the future.  A person who visited the Netherlands tells how his guide pointed out an historic site.  'This is where once the sea broke through,' the guide said, 'and caused untold damage, also bringing about the deaths of hundreds of people.  But see―now the breach has been dealt with in such an effective way that one doubts whether it could happen again.'  Some Christians, however, when broken by difficult or traumatic circumstances, never seem to recover and remain in a constant state of weakness rather than strength.  So the question that has to be asked is:  Why? 

An artist who lived in France describes how he sat on his veranda one day and noticed a vine that had reached its delicate tendrils up and across a void until it had grasped the branch of a tree.  That night there was a fierce mistral.  The following morning the vine had become a poor drooping thing with its stems hanging downwards because the branch to which it had been clinging had broken in the storm.  The vine had fastened upon a rotting branch instead of the strong healthy trunk.

There are some Christians, I am afraid, who fasten themselves upon something other than Christ―a denomination, a religious rite, a custom, or even a person.  A storm comes and down they go because they fastened on to the culture surrounding Christ rather than Christ Himself.  When men and women hold on to the central reality―Christ―they toughen, rather than wilt, under adversity.

Sometimes life breaks us.  But we can become strong at the broken places.  Everything can be redeemed.  Christianity has been described by one writer as 'cosmic optimism'.  There is redemptive energy available to change the course of our lives and to give us moral mastery.  It is true that there are limitations under the present conditions in this world, for there are other wills that attempt to thwart us as well as our recalcitrant human nature.  But we are not finally limited by those limitations.  With God they can be turned into contributions.  Be assured of this:  nothing can work successfully against us in the long term when we have God on our side.  Nothing.

SHATTERED HOPES AND PLANS

This is often a difficult issue to face because of the frustration we feel when the plans we have made for our life come to nothing.  This is how I felt when I realized after nearly 10-years of working to bring the visual arts back into the church, the doors seemingly kept closing on me.

Consider how Jesus reacted to the blocking of His plans in this incident: 

'Then all the people of the region...asked Jesus to leave them,
because they were overcome with fear.'  Luke 8:37

After He had healed the demon-possessed man, the people who lived locally came to see what had happened.  When they found the man 'sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind' we read, 'they were overcome with fear'.  What were they afraid of―sanity?  The people begged Jesus to go away and leave the area.  His presence had cost them too much.  Here was a man who was prepared to sacrifice a herd of pigs in order to deliver a man possessed by demons.  This is only speculation on my part, of course, but I wonder if their fear was due partly to the fact that they couldn't understand the Saviour.  We can often be afraid of something we do not understand.  Were they afraid that He might do something else to upset their values?

How did Jesus respond to this blocking of His ministry?  He turned in another direction.  His ministry was not so much blocked as redirected.  If you read the rest of the chapter, and the one that follows, you will see that Jesus then performed some of His greatest miracles.  He turned the blocking into a blessing.  The frustration turned to fruitfulness.  So, when your plans and hopes (as were mine) are shattered, do what Jesus did: utilize the grace that constantly flows towards you from God and consider turning in another direction. 

O Father, whenever my plans are blocked, help me to understand that there is a purpose in what is happening.  Sometimes You upset me in order to set me up--to set me up with new and better plans.  I am so grateful. Amen.

ISOLATION BECOMES REVELATION

The ministry of Jesus was not deterred by opposition, ―turning in another direction, He was able to work some of His greatest miracles―the feeding of the five thousand being one of the most famous.  The deflection became for Him a spur.  I wonder if these words are speaking to someone who is feeling defeated because much of what was planned had gone wrong.

'...a loud voice...said, "Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches..."
Revelation 1:10-11

When John was banished to the island of Patmos because of his allegiance to Jesus Christ, it must have seemed that his ministry and his plans had all been rudely shattered.  He says, 'I, John...was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.  On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said:  "Write...what you see...'"  So, isolated from his brothers and sisters and prevented from ministering to them by word of mouth, he wrote what he saw, and as a result blessed not only the churches of his day but the whole Christian Church from that day to this.

The place of isolation can indeed become the place of revelation.  This is something you can discover today if you listen carefully to what the Spirit is saying to you.  Listen...and write out your vision of coming victory.  Whenever my plans have been shattered―and there have been many such occasions―[most recently the church visual arts ministry planting]--this is what I do.  First I pray and confess any self-pity.  Then I take a sheet of paper and write out whatever the Spirit is showing me.  It might take a little while for the vision of impending victory to become clear.  So listen―and write!

Gracious and loving heavenly Father, it is Your purposes I want to achieve, not my own.  Whenever my own self-centered plans are crossed, help me to discover Your better plans.

WORKING WITH A WOUND

'The king was distressed, but...he ordered that her request be
granted and had John beheaded in the prison.'  Matthew 14:9-10

Jesus had just heard that John the Baptist, His cousin and forerunner, had been beheaded.  The account says, 'When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.'  No doubt He wanted to be alone to deal with the hurt that His cousin's death had inflicted upon His tender and sensitive soul.  But when word got out that Jesus had gone somewhere to be alone, a crowd followed Him to that solitary place.  How did Jesus react to the fact that the people had ruined His plans to be alone and reflect on the sad death of His cousin?  We read, 'He had compassion on them and healed their sick' (v.14).

You will begin to realize how much like Jesus you are becoming when you can minister to others even though your heart longs for someone to minister to you.  Am I saying this is easy to do?  Of course not.  I have failed in this respect many times myself.  But it is possible.  Jesus, who wore our flesh and measured its frailty, promises to be with us always.  He knows what it is to be hurt, and stands at our side ready to provide us with the strength we need to minister to others, even though our own heart may be broken.  He gives most when most is taken away.

Lord Jesus Christ, You who knew what it was to wince when wounded, help me remember that Your wounds can heal my wounds.  Grant also that my wounds might heal someone else's wounds.  May my hurts be healing.  Amen.

GATHERING UP THE 'REMAINDERS'

I once came across the phrase 'getting meaning out of life's remainders.'  Sometimes life leaves us with nothing but 'remainders'.  But with God's help we can gather up those 'remainders' and make meaning out of them. 

Could it be that in the book of Revelation when there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour, that it was because God was moving the scenery for the next act.  The silences we experience when our hopes are shattered and our plans delayed or destroyed may be God's way of preparing us for the next act.  So hold steady.  God never abandons his children, and He takes a Father's interest in everything we do.  He hurts in our hurts.

DEAR ARTIST

Remember to Pray for Others!

INTIMACY & PRAYER

“And this is my prayer;
that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight."
Philippians 1:9

One of the best ways to find out how a person handles intimate relationships is to get them to talk about their prayer life.

Non-Christian counselors need to probe into a person’s sex life to see how they handle relationships; a Christian counselor need only ask how the person uses the language of prayer.

“Sexuality and prayer,” says Eugene Peterson, “crisscross constantly in pastoral work; they are both aspects of a single created thing—A CAPACITY FOR INTIMACY.”

Both can be explored to understand how a person relates to another at the deepest level of relationship.

 What is your prayer life like?  Dull or dynamic?  Passionate or prosaic?

When we develop and express our love to another person we are using the same words, actions and emotions that we use in the expression of our love for God.   A person who is inhibited in the way they express love to another person will usually be inhibited in the way they express love to God.

 “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable His judgments…”Romans 11:33

An examination of our horizontal relationships will help in an examination of our vertical relationships—and vice versa.

If you DO pray, HOW do you pray?  Sadly, many people view prayer only as a means of asking God for the things they lack.  That is a part of prayer of course, but not the whole part.  There is an aspect of true spiritual prayer that involves the cultivation of our romantic relationship with the LORD JESUS CHRIST.

If I were to tip-toe into your home one day and overheard you praying, would I hear prayers that are dutiful but riddled with clichés?  Would I hear passion in your prayers, spontaneous outbursts of praise, expressions of gratitude to God for His everlasting love and mercy, delight at having been chosen by Him to bear His name?

In Romans 11:33, the apostle, in the midst of writing some very taxing theology, allows his heart to overflow to God in a thrilling doxology.  Hear the passion that bursts from the heart as he cries:  “Oh the depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge.”  He can hardly contain his feelings.

Is your prayer life like that? —punctuated by spontaneous outbursts of affection and praise?

Prayer that has no time for romance is not mature prayer.

FATHER, SET MY SOUL ON FIRE WITH LOVE FOR YOU SO THAT AFFECTION RISES BECAUSE IT MUST.

 “Yet I hold this against you;
you have forsaken your first love.” Revelations 2:4

 Do you ever tell the Lord how much you love Him when you pray?

When we first encounter God’s saving love, either through a dramatic conversion that happens in a moment, or in a gradual awareness that we are coming to faith, we are often overwhelmed by the fact that our souls have been invaded by the “Ageless Romancer”.  We feel a passion within that may well be compared with the feelings we experience when we fall in love with a member of the opposite sex.  But it is not unusual, as sometimes in human relationships, to find that passion beginning to diminish as time goes on.  What we experienced as earth-shaking and soul-changing is now taken for granted.  The freshness of our spiritual experience becomes stale.  We have “forsaken our first love”.  We preserve the importance of our conversion by regularly attending church, reading the Bible, praying, celebrating communion, but the romantic feelings we once had toward our Lord are no longer there. 

We compensate for the loss of these romantic feelings by throwing ourselves into endless Christian activities.  But ceaseless rounds of Christian activity are but the ashes upon a rusty altar if we lack a blazing romantic love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

When prayer, the most personal aspect of the spiritual life, becomes riddled with clichés and there is no warm inner glow of love running through our conversations with the Saviour, then we ought to put our souls on alert.

How are things between you and the Lord?  Are you in love with Jesus as much as you used to be?

There is always a reason for a lapse in one’s romantic feelings for the Lord.  It might seem that romantic love dies of its own accord.  But it only “seems” like that.  When love wanes there is a reason.

CALENDAR

· Small Group Sharing              Dates/Times/Places

We come together with the purpose of fulfilling two purposes:  First, to know God better, not merely academically, but as we would a best friend, a respected and admired father, and our soul's lover. We learn to experience and feel God's presence.  Second, to know each other as brothers and sisters, not merely as we do our blood siblings (as in blood is thicker than water), but stronger by the blood of Christ, we bond with Spiritual blood.

We discover who God is.  The whole subject of worship rises and falls according to our concept of God.  We cannot worship God in the way he deserves to be worshipped until we understand something of who He is.  What comes into our minds when we think about God is most important.  Worship is pure or base according to whether the worshipper entertains high or low thoughts about God.  A wrong concept of Him can lead to wrong conclusions about Him.  You cannot worship someone you don't trust. 

When we are moved by a magnificent sunset or by a field of beautiful flowers our natural response is to gasp, 'Oh, how beautiful.'  How much greater, then, should be our response when we consider who God is and what He does.

In his letter to the Romans Paul pours out his feelings after reflecting on the riches of God's grace.  For a moment he pauses in worship and then he exclaims, 'Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Romans 11:33).

Each one of us would do well to pause and ask the questions:  What is my image of God? How do I see Him?  What concept of the Creator do I carry in my heart?  How, for instance, does the picture the apostle Paul gives of God in Ephesians 1:3-14 compare with your own image of God?  Is it similar or radically different?  The reason why Paul could speak of God so powerfully was because He saw Him clearly.

Make sure your concept of God is drawn from Scripture otherwise you may be holding in your mind a false picture of Him.  Join us.

Send your Calendar items to olivia@artcellar.net

CULTURE and History

Shakespeare’s Artistry

            How did a man of so little education come to write plays of such varied erudition?  But it was not really erudition.  In no field except psychology was it extensive or accurate.  Shakespeare knew the Bible only so far as his boyhood studies might have opened it to him; his Biblical references are incidental and ordinary.  His classical learning was casual, careless, and apparently confined to translations.  He knew most of the pagan deities, even the lesser or looser ones, but this knowledge could have been from the English version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  He made little errors that Bacon, for example, could never have made:  called Theseus a duke, had Hector of the eleventh century B.C. refer to Aristotle of the third, and let a character in Coriolanus (fifth century B.C.) quote Cato (of the first).

             He had little French and less Italian.  He had some knowledge of geography, and gave his plays exotic locales from Scotland to Ephesus; but he gave Bohemia a seacoast, and he sent Valentine by sea from Verona to Milan, and Prospero from Milan in an ocean-going vessel.  He took much of his Roman history from Plutarch, of his English history from Holinshed and from earlier plays.  He made historical faux-pas unimportant to a dramatist: put a clock in Caesar’s Rome, billiards in Cleopatra’s Egypt.  He wrote King John without mentioning Magna Charta, and Henry VIII without bothering about the Reformation; again we see the past changing with each present.  In outline the English historical plays are correct from our current view; in detail they are untrustworthy; in standpoint they are colored by patriotism—Joan of Arc, in Shakespeare, is merely a wanton witch.  Nevertheless many Englishmen, like Marlborough, confessed that most of their knowledge of English history came from Shakespeare’s plays.

             Like other Elizabethan dramatists, Shakespeare used many legal terms, sometimes improperly; he could have gleaned them in the Inns of Court— the law schools in which three of his plays were staged—or in the several lawsuits engaged in by his father or himself.  He is rich in musical terms and was evidently sensitive to music—“Is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should lake souls out of men’s bodies?”  He lovingly remembers the flowers of England, strings them on a rosary in The Winter’s Tale, and decks Ophelia with them in her delirium; he alludes to 180 different plants.  He was acquainted with the sports of the field and the points of a horse.  But he had little interest in science, which was soon to fascinate Bacon.  Like Bacon, he retained the Ptolomaic astronomy.  At times (Sonnet 15) he seems to accept astrology, and he speaks of Romeo and Juliet as “star-crossed lovers”; but Edmund in Lear and Cassius in Julius Caesar vigorously reject it:  “The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

             All in all, the evidence indicates that Shakespeare had the incidental learning of a man of affairs too busy with acting, managing, and living to sink his head into books.  He knew the more startling of Machiavelli’s ideas, he referred to Rabelais, he borrowed from Montaigne; but it is unlikely that he read their works.  Gonzalo’s description of an ideal commonwealth is taken from Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals”; and Caliban, in the same play, may be Shakespeare’s satire on Montaigne’s idealization of the American Indians.  Whether the skepticism of Hamlet owed anything to Montaigne’s genial doubts is an unsolved problem; the play was published in 1602, a year before the printing of Florio’s translation, but Shakespeare knew Florio and may have seen the manuscript.  Montaigne’s subtle criticism of traditional ideas may have helped to deepen Shakespeare, but there is nothing in the Frenchman that corresponds to Hamlet’s soliloquy, or to the bitter indictment of life in Lear, Coriolanus, Timon, and Macbeth.  Shakespeare is Shakespeare—pilfering plots, passages, phrases, lines anywhere, and yet the most original, distinctive, creative writer of all time.

             The originality is in the language, the style, the imagination, the dramatic technique, the humor, the characters, and the philosophy.  The language is the richest in all literature: fifteen thousand words, including the technical terms of heraldry, music, sports, and the professions, the dialects of the shires, the argot of the pavement, and the thousand hurried or lazy inventions—occulted, unkenneled, fumitory, burnet, spurring . . .  He relished words and explored the nooks and crannies of the language; he loved words in general and poured them forth in frolicsome abandon; if he names a flower he must go on to name a dozen—the words themselves are fragrant.  He makes simple characters mouth polysyllabic circumlocutions.  He plays jolly havoc with the grammar:  turns nouns, adjectives, even adverbs into verbs, and verbs, adjectives, even pronouns into nouns; gives a plural verb to a singular subject or a singular verb to a plural subject; but there were as yet no grammars of English usage, no rules.  Shakespeare wrote in haste, and had no leisure to repent.

             The marvelous style, “manneristic and baroque”, has the faults of its lawless wealth: phrases fancifully artificial or involved, farfetched images, word plays tiresomely elaborate; puns amid tragedy, metaphors falling over one another in contradictory confusion, repetitions innumerable, sententious platitudes, and, now and then, hilarious, nonsensical bombast filling the unlikeliest mouths.  Doubtless a classical training would have chastened the style, silenced the doubles-entendres; but then consider what we should have lost.  Perhaps he was thinking of himself when he made Ferdinand describe Adriano as a man

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;

One whom the music of his own vain tongue

Doth ravish like enchanting harmony . . .

But, I protest, I love to hear him lie . . .  (Love’s Labour’s Lost)

            From this mint issued an almost universal currency of phrases: the winter of our discontent (Richard III); piping time of peace (Ibid., I, i, 24); wish father to the thought (2 Henry IV); tell the truth and shame the devil (1 Henry IV); sits the wind in that corner? (Much Ado About Nothing); uneasy lies the head that wears a crown (2 Henry IV); paint the lily (King John); one touch of nature makes the whole world kin (Troilus and Cressida); what fools these mortals be! (Midsummer Night’s Dream); the Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose (Merchant of Venice); midsummer madness (Twelfth Night); the course of true love never did run smooth (Midsummer Night’s Dream); wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello); every inch a king (King Lear); to the manner born (Hamlet); brevity is the soul of wit (Ibid., II, ii) . . . but this is a hint to stop.  And of metaphors another thousand, of which one may serve—“to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind” (Midsummer Night’s Dream).  And entire passages now almost as familiar as the phrases:  Ophelia’s disordered herbal of flowers, Antony over dead Caesar, Cleopatra dying, Lorenzo on the music of the spheres.  And a whole repertoire of songs:  “Who is Silvia?” (Two Gentlemen of Verona), “Hark, hark! The lark at heaven’s gate sings,” (Cymbeline), “Take, O take those lips away” (Measure for Measure).  Probably Shakespeare’s audience came for his plumage as well as for his tale.

             “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact”; Shakespeare was two of these and may have touched the third.  He creates a world with every play, and, not content, he fills imagined empires, woods, and heaths with childlike magic, scurrying fairies, awesome witches and ghosts.  His imagination makes his style, which thinks in images, turns all ideas into pictures, all abstractions into things felt or seen.  Who but Shakespeare (and Petrarch) would have made Romeo, exiled from Verona, fume with envy that its cats and dogs might gaze on Juliet and he be disallowed?  Who else (but Blake) would have made the banished Duke, in As You Like It, regret that he must live by hunting beasts so often more beautiful than man?  Little wonder that a spirit so keen in every sense should have reacted passionately against the ugliness, greed, cruelty, lust, pain, and grief that seemed at times to dominate the panorama of the world.

             His originality is least in dramatic technique.  As a man of the theatre he knew the tricks of his trade.  He began his plays with scenes or words calculated to jolt the attention of his nut-cracking, card-playing, ale-swilling, woman-ogling audience.  He took full advantage of the abundant “properties” and machinery of the Elizabethan stage.  He studied his fellow actors and created parts suitable to their physical and mental peculiarities.  He used all the jugglery of disguises and recognitions, all the shifts of scenery and the complications of a play within a play.  But in his craftsmanship he shows some scars of haste.  Sometimes the plot within the plot tears the tale in two; what was Gloucester’s tragedy to do with Lear’s?  Almost all the stories turn on improbable coincidences, concealed identities, highly opportune revelations; we may be reasonably asked to make believe, in drama as in opera, for the sake of the story or the song, but an artist should reduce to a minimum the “baseless fabric” of his dream.  Less important are the inconsistencies of time or character; presumably Shakespeare, thinking of rapid production, not of careful publication, judged that these flaws would pass unnoticed by an excited audience.  Classical norms and modern taste alike condemn the violence that often dyes Shakespeare’s stage; this was another concession to the pit, and an effort to meet the competition of the slaughterhouse school of Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatists.

            As he developed, Shakespeare redeemed the violence with humor and learned the difficult art of intensifying tragedy with comic relief.  The early comedies are wit and humor unrelieved, the early historical plays are stodgy for lack of humor; in Henry IV tragedy and comedy alternate but are not well integrated; in Hamlet the integration is achieved.  Sometimes the humor seems too broad; Sophocles and Racine would have turned up their classical noses at the jokes about human flatulence or equine micturition.  An erotic quip now and then is more to the modern taste.  Generally, Shakespeare’s humor is good-natured, not the savage misanthropy of Swift; he felt that the world was better for a clown or two; he suffered fools patiently, and emulated God in seeing little difference between them and world-explaining philosophers.

             His greatest clown rivals Hamlet as Shakespeare’s supreme achievement in the creation of character—which is the supreme test of a dramatist.  Richard II and Richard III, hotspur and Wolsey, Gaunt and Gloucester, Brutus and Antony rise out of the limbo of history into a second life.  Not in Greek drama, not even in Balzac, are imagined persons so endowed with consistent character and vital force.  Most real are those creations that only seem contradictory because of their complexity—Lear cruel and then tender, Hamlet thoughtful and impetuous, hesitant and brave.  Sometimes the characters are too simple—Richard III merely villainy, Timon merely cynicism, Iago merely hate.  Some of the women in Shakespeare seem plucked from the same mold—Beatrice and Rosalind, Cordelia and Desdemona, Miranda and Hermione—and lose reality, and then at times a few words make them live; so Ophelia, told by Hamlet that he had never loved her, answers without recrimination, but with sad and moving simplicity, “I was the more deceived.”  Observation, feeling, empathy, astonishing receptivity of senses, penetrating perception, alert selection of significant and characteristic detail, tenacious remembering, come together to people this living city of dead or imagined souls.  Play after play these personae grow in reality, complexity, and depth, until, in Hamlet and Lear, the poet matures into a philosopher and his dramas become the glowing vehicles of thought.

FOOD & TRAVEL 

The BEET goes on . .

Health Matters        
Even though they have the highest sugar content of any vegetable, beets are still very low in fat and calories.  The greens---which are incredibly rich in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals---are the most nutritious part of the plant.  But even the roots are a good source of vitamin C, potassium, fiber, iron, and folic acid.

 RECIPES:

Golden Beet Carpaccio      6 servings

4 medium (2 ½ inch diameter) golden beets, trimmed, scrubbed
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup very thinly sliced red onion
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons drained capers
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
6 cups (loosely packed) baby arugula

Preheat oven to 375-degrees F.  Toss beets with oil in roasting pan.  Sprinkle with salt.  Cover pan with foil.  Roast beets until tender, about 50 minutes.  Let beets stand covered at room temperature 20 minutes.  Peel beets.  Place in bowl; cover and chill at least 1 hour.  [DO AHEAD:  Can be made 2 days ahead.  Keep chilled.]

Toss onion, oil, capers, and chives in small bowl.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Thinly slice beets.  Arrange beets in concentric circles on each of 6 plates.  Mound arugula atop center of beets on each.  Spoon onion-caper mixture over.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Sauteed Baby Beets with Haricots Verts and Lemon               6 servings

Baby beets, which are roughly the size of a large marble,
are sweeter than mature beets and cook more quickly.

 10 red or golden baby beets, trimmed, scrubbed
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ pounds haricots verts (slender green beans), trimmed
¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 ½ teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
½ cup fresh Italian parsley leaves

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.   Toss beets with oil in roasting pan.  Sprinkle with salt.  Cover pan with foil.  Bake until beets are tender, about 30 minutes.  Uncover and let beets stand at room temperature 20 minutes.  Peel beets.  Cut beets into quarters (or halves if very small).

Cook haricots verts in large pot of boiling salted water until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes.  Drain and transfer to bowl of ice water to cool.  Drain and pat dry.  Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat.  Add lemon juice and peel, then beets.  Toss well.  Stir in haricots verts and parsley; sauté until heated through, about 3 minutes.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Serve hot or at room temperature.

Arugula, Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad          4 servings

 Whole-grain mustard vinaigrette:

1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Salad:

2 pounds small beets, washed

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 (11-ounce) log of goat cheese, preferably Irish cut into 8 rounds
1 cup walnuts, ground in a food processor
1 cup white bread crumbs
2 large egg yolks, mixed with 2 tablespoons water
Canola oil, for frying
1 large bunch arugula
2 ounces mixed salad greens
2/3 cup walnuts, toasted (see note)

To make vinaigrette:  In a small bowl, whisk together all the ingredients until well blended.  Set aside.

To start salad:  Preheat oven to 400-degrees.  Place beets in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Toss to coat.  Cover with foil and roast for 60 to 70 minutes, or until beets are tender when pierced.  Remove from oven, uncover and let cool. Rub off skins and trim roots.  Cut into ¼ inch thick slices and cut slices in half.  Transfer beets to a bowl and toss with 3 tablespoons of vinaigrette.

Shape each round of cheese so it is ½ inch thick.  In a bowl, combine ground nuts and bread crumbs.  Put egg wash in a small bowl.  Dip each cheese round into egg wash, then dredge in crumb mixture, gently pressing on crumbs to coat.  Place rounds on a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Heat 2 inches of the oil in a large skillet until very hot.  Working in batches, cook cheese for 1 minute on each side, or until crisp and golden.  With a slotted spoon, transfer cheese to paper towels to drain.

To compose salads:  Divide greens among 4 salad plates.  Arrange beets over greens and top each serving with 2 rounds of cheese.  Drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette and sprinkle with the walnuts.

Note:  To toast walnuts, spread on a baking sheet and toast in a 350 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until browned.

Red Beet Mashed Potatoes        4 servings

1 pound Russett potatoes, cut into cubes
1 beet, cut into cubes
1 tablespoon butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/3 cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons butter, melted
Salt and pepper, to taste

Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil and cook potatoes until tender.  Drain.  Bring a small pan of salted water to a boil and cook beet until soft, then drain.  In a small skillet, melt butter and saute garlic and shallot until soft.

Place potatoes and beets in a bowl and mash with potato masher.  Stir in garlic, shallot, cream and butter.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

A Bit About Herbs . . .

 Growing Tips

Site:    Choose a spot that gets full sun (afternoon shade in the hottest areas).

 Soil:    Herbs can tolerate a range of soils, but they need good drainage. 
If your soil is heavy clay, add compost before planting.

Irrigation:     Like most plants, herbs will appreciate routine watering their first year. 
Once established, most tolerate drought; mint, though, prefers lightly moist soil
(grow in a pot to keep its invasive roots from spreading).

Fertilizer:   The herbs listed here generally thrive without fertilizers. 
But if you’re harvesting heavily and want to encourage more growth, scatter a small amount of complete fertilizer, such as 5-10-10, among plants at the start of their growing season.

Travel . .  experience the best of travel tours with the Master's Touch Christian Charter Service & Tours:  http://www.masterstouchtours.com/  Call toll free:  1-866-228-7874 or email:  mtt@masterstouchtours.com. 

A Tours, l’art contemporain

Au début des années 80 sont nés en France plusieurs lieux consacres a l’art contemporain, parmi lesquels le CCC (Centre de création contemporaine) de Tours, qui fête fièrement ses 25 ans cette anne.  Un quart de siècle qui a vu se succéder en ses murs près de 80 expositions, preuve de la vitalité de la création, mais aussi de la nécessité de l’existence de ces centres d’art en province.

Deux événements viennent marquer cet anniversaire, le plus important étant l’installation architecturale de Daniel Buren. Celui-ci, auteur déjà des « colonnes de Buren » installées dans la cour d’honneur du Palais-Royal à Paris, s’attaque ici à un autre genre de problématique : comment faire entrer dans un château un objet trop grand pour celui-ci ?  L’œuvre, intitulée Plus grand ou plus petit que ?, prend la forme d’un immense triangle, dont la base est donnée par la longueur de la façade et dont la pointe est projetée au-dehors, au-dessus du bâtiment.  Le triangle transperce les pièces et les étages du château, changeant de couleur à chaque niveau, bleu turquoise, jaune ou rouge, plongeant la vieille bâtisse dans une ambiance insolite, quasi onirique, détachée du reste du monde.  Jouant à la fois sur l’intérieur et l’extérieur du bâtiment, le travail de Buren permet d’étudier comment la rencontre de ces deux volumes inadaptés, triangle et château, permet de redéfinir l’ensemble de l’organisation architecturale de ce dernier.  « L’œuvre n’est pas seulement ce qui est à voir, mais aussi ce qu’elle permet de voir », explique l’artiste.

En marge de cette installation in situ, l’exposition « Home Sweet Home » offre la possibilité à une quarantaine d’artistes d’occuper des domiciles nomades durant 365 jours. Ces « modules d’habitations mobiles », trois toutes petites maisons aux formes rondes, installées dans les locaux du CCC, permettent de découvrir les œuvres d’artistes de différentes générations et nationalités, dans les locaux du CCC, permettent de conventions d’exposition usuelles.  Une idée originale, qui permet aux visiteurs de découvrir différents aspects de l’art contemporain tout au long de cette année un peu particulière.

« Plus grand ou plus petit que ? », au CCC de Tours jusqu’au 26 février.

 Renseignements sur www.cc-art.com 

France

 Canada

__Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

__Yellowstone, Montana

__England/Scotland

PARTING THOUGHT

The Holy Spirit---seeks to draw out of us all

the potential which God has built into us,

and is continually at work developing us

into the kind of persons God sees us to be.

He prods us to prayer

and on those occasions when we don’t know how to pray as we ought

He takes over and prays in and through us.

He brings hidden things to light in our souls

and seeks to rid us of sin.

He shines the laser beam of knowledge and wisdom

through the fog that sometimes surrounds us

and guides us in ways of which we are both conscious and unconscious

along the path He wants us to take.

He teaches us as no other could teach us,

and leads us into the thing our hearts were built for---

Truth.

He comforts us whenever we are in need of solace,

and strengthens our hearts to go on

even though we have no clear answers to our predicament.

Classes for Cultural Education

High Renaissance Art  - The change between the Early and High Renaissance mirrors to some extent the change in the political and social structure which took place in Italy around the year 1500. “The Renaissance began in the spirit of democracy and ended in the spirit of the court” said Alfred von Martin, social historian.  The very origins of the High Renaissance emerged in Rome at the papal court, at the very beginning of the sixteenth century—the Cinquecento. The energetically boundless Pope Julius II had an uncanny ability to discover not only talent but genius, as well, irrespective of where it came from. He brought together at the same time, Bramante the architect, Raphael the painter (both from Urbino), and the Florentine, Michelangelo, painter and sculptor—three amongst the greatest artists in the entire history of art. Other notable artists soon followed. 
Instructor:  Eugene Marseglia, Ph.D., received a B.A. with honors from George Washington University and a Ph.D. with distinction in Art History from Johns Hopkins University.  He spent two years in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship doing research on the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance and has taught at various universities in the U. S., Canada and Europe.  Thursdays: May 10, 17, 31, June 7 (1- 3:30 *pm) Mission San Luis Rey, Oceanside.  Please note:  This course is being offered 4 weeks with 2 1/2 each.  (you will still get 10 hours of instruction). It was originally in the brochure as 1-3 pm and included May 24th. 
To register, call 1-800-500-9377 or visit www.csusm-es.org/olli

QUIP OF THE DAY:  Some people are kind, polite, and sweet-spirited
until you try to sit in their pews.  Who me?

PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT ARTCELLAR for entry forms or information.  Direct your inquiries to the sponsor.  Listing is courtesy of ArtCellar.