Today I am bringing this series on William Provine to an end.  Will Provine’s work was cited by  Francis Schaeffer  in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? I noted:

I was sad to learn of Dr. Provine’s death. William Ball “Will” Provine (February 19, 1942 – September 1, 2015) He grew up an evangelical in Tennessee which is the state that I grew up in, but when confronted by evolution he gave up his former beliefs in the Bible and embraced his new secular worldview. I was introduced to his work by the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop in 1979. I contacted Dr. Provine twice and one time I included a link to this post below that I did on him on June 12, 2014.

Dr Provine is a very honest believer in Darwinism. He rightly draws the right conclusions about the implications of Darwinism. I have attacked optimistic humanism many times in the past and it seems that he has confirmed all I have said about it.

I am not a proponent of determinism, but Will Provine was.

Wikipedia notes Christof Koch (/kɑːx/;^[1] born November 13, 1956) is an American neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural bases of consciousness. He is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. From 1986 until 2013, he was a professor at the California Institute of Technology.^[2]

Quote:

I was raised as a Roman Catholic and I think a lot about it. Certainly it’s difficult to reconcile some of these ideas with a classical Roman Catholic doctrine of a really independent actor, and this relates to the question we haven’t talked about, the question of free will and volition; but neuroscience, of course, like all of science, throws some doubts on that, some “water” on the idea that I can really truly act like the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause. Because how would that be? If I can truly act independent, that means that something happens without there being any something happening before, and how is that supposed to work in real life? So, those are issues I’m profoundly interested in, to reconcile, to come to a single understanding of everything in the universe, including things outside the universe.

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If you believe that man is a product of blind chance plus time then I can see how you can believe in determinism. However, the Bible says otherwise.

“The Biblical position is clear — man cannot be explained as totally determined and conditioned — a position that built the concept of the dignity of man.  People today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, and they do not know how to because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image of God.  He was an unprogrammed man, a significant man in a significant history, and he could change history.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason

Here is a letter I recently wrote to Dr. Koch:

February 16, 2015

Dear Dr. Christof Koch,

Today I writing concerning an issue that was very dear to your mentor Francis Crick also and it is the subject of Determinism. I just finished reading the online addition of the book Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray. There are several points that Charles Darwin makes in this book that were very wise, honest, logical, shocking and some that were not so wise. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said of Darwin’s writings, “Darwin in his autobiography and in his letters showed that all through his life he never really came to a quietness concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem.”

Recently I noticed this comment by you:

I was raised as a Roman Catholic and I think a lot about it. Certainly it’s difficult to reconcile some of these ideas with a classical Roman Catholic doctrine of a really independent actor, and this relates to the question we haven’t talked about, the question of free will and volition; but neuroscience, of course, like all of science, throws some doubts on that, some “water” on the idea that I can really truly act like the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause. Because how would that be? If I can truly act independent, that means that something happens without there being any something happening before, and how is that supposed to work in real life? So, those are issues I’m profoundly interested in, to reconcile, to come to a single understanding of everything in the universe, including things outside the universe.

This quote from you made me think of you when I read the book Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters because of what Darwin said the phrase MAN MUST DO HIS DUTY. I am going to quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism.

Darwin, C. R. to Doedes, N. D., 2 Apr 1873

I am sure you will excuse my writing at length, when I tell you that I have long been much out of health, and am now staying away from my home for rest.It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide…….Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man’s intellect;but man can do his duty.”

Francis Schaeffer commented:

What he is saying is that at this point I have no answer. You find Darwin already in a modern hell. On his own position ruling out an answer but yet not being able to live without an answer.  What he (Darwin) is saying is that at this point I have no answer, but the interesting thing is he puts a semicolon after that and then says, “but man can do his duty.” Darwin understands, he is a brilliant man,  what he has said undercuts all duty and all morals. So he adds as a faith sentence, “but man can do his duty.” It doesn’t fit really, but he adds it because he sees that he must say this because otherwise what happens to man? You can switch on further down the road and Darwin would be appalled to see where his own position has been taken, through Freud and Deterministic psychology. Modern Man has a dilemma because the word “duty” doesn’t have a meaning anymore. (Determinism: The doctrine that human action is not free, but results from such causes as psychological and chemical makeup which render free-will an illusion.)

You will remember the thing I have quoted to you about Richard Speck and the psychologists who would stand in the evolutionary stream of Freud. Let me read to you from Newsweek September 25, 1967, a review of the book by Marvin Ziporyn BORN TO RAISE HELL interestingly enough printed by Groth Press, which is this psychologist’s analysis of Richard Speck in Chicago who killed these nurses in Chicago. It runs like this:

Ziporyn who lost his post at Chicago for publishing his work with Speck, diagnosed his patient as a man unable to control himself as a result of his own medical and emotional past. You weren’t any more responsible for what you did than a man is responsible for sneezing. he said to Speck at one point.  That is Zoporyn’s biggest problem which is convincing Speck there is no difference in a sneeze and eight murders. Ziporyn admits he is a strict determinist and he is an adherent to Freud’s dictum that biology is destiny. He advocates rehabilitation. Determinists strive to change or regulate conditions rather than men but to avoid such tragedies as Richard Speck the scope of change it requires staggers the imagination.

The bigger dilemma is that man disappears. Who is hurt? The eight nurses are hurt, including their pain, terror and their sexual violation and it becomes nothing, zero in this type of analysis. Society has a terrible problem because there is no right and wrong in society, and that will deal with Darwin’s words “but man can do his duty” because those who take Darwin’s theory and extend it have eradicated the possibility of the word “duty.” …Darwin I think senses this but he doesn’t know how to handle it.

In Chapter 7, “THE MAN WITHOUT THE BIBLE,” of the book DEATH IN THE CITY, Schaeffer writes concerning Richard Speck and “Determinism”: 

This view raises three serious questions. First of all, what about the nurses who were killed, some of them in a very violent fashion? These must then be written off. With this kind of explanation they become zero. Second, what about society? Society and the problems of ordering it also are written off. In such a situation, order in society is merely like a big machine dealing on a machine level with little machines. Third, what about Speck himself? The psychologist’s explanation does the most harm to him, for as a man he disappears. He simply becomes a flow of consciousness. He, too, becomes a zero.

In our generation there is a constant tendency to explain sin lightly and think that such an explanation is more humanitarian. But it is not. It decreases the importance and significance of man. Consequently, we can be glad for the sake of man that the Bible’s explanation is so emphatic.
Paul repeats it in verse 25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature [that which has been created] rather than the Creator.” This is the second of the three repetitions.

Paul was thinking of the gods of silver and stone and also the worship of the universe or any part of it. He says men have made such gods rather than worshipping the living God. Even on the basis of what they know themselves to be, they should have known better. Isaiah said 700 years before, ‘Aren’t you silly to make gods that are less than yourself. You must carry them; they don’t carry you. Now isn’t it silly to make an integration point that is less than you yourself are.’ Paul used precisely the same argument on Mars Hill. Men who refuse to bow before God take the facts concerning the universe and man, push these facts through their own presuppositional grid, fail to carry their thinking to a reasonable conclusion, and so are faced with an overwhelming lie. Idols of stone are obvious lies because they are less than man, but so are non-Christian presuppositions such as the idea of the total uniformity of natural cause and effect in a closed system, the final explanation of the impersonal plus time plus chance, which ultimately makes man only a machine.

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Below is the larger biblical passage of scripture that Schaeffer was referring to in Chapter 7, “THE MAN WITHOUT THE BIBLE,” of the book DEATH IN THE CITY:

Romans 1:18-32New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Unbelief and Its Consequences

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ becausethat which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. ²⁵ For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

²⁸ And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,²⁹ being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; ³² and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

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In your article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, How Physics and Neuroscience Dictate Your “Free” Will, Physics and neurobiology can help us understand whether we choose our own destiny, May 7, 2012 |By Christof Koch, you noted:

In a remote corner of the universe, on a small blue planet gravitating around a humdrum sun in the outer districts of the Milky Way, organisms arose from the primordial mud and ooze in an epic struggle for survival that spanned aeons.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, these bipedal creatures thought of themselves as extraordinarily privileged, occupying a unique place in a cosmos of a trillion trillion stars. Conceited as they were, they believed that they, and only they, could escape the iron law of cause and effect that governs everything. They could do this by virtue of something they called free will, which allowed them to do things without any material reason.

Can you truly act freely? The question of free will is no mere philosophical banter; it engages people in a way that few other metaphysical questions do. It is the bedrock of society’s notions of responsibility, praise and blame. Ultimately it is about the degree of control you exert over your life.

Let’s say you are living with a loving and lovely spouse. A chance meeting with a stranger turns this life utterly upside down. You begin talking for hours on the phone, you share your innermost secrets, you start an affaire de coeur. You realize perfectly well that this is all wrong from an ethical point of view; it will wreak havoc with many lives, with no guarantee of a happy and productive future. Yet something in you yearns for change.

Such gut-churning choices confront you with the question of how much say you really have in the matter. You feel that you could, in principle, break off the affair. Despite many attempts, you somehow never manage to do so.

In my thoughts on these matters of free will, I neglect millennia of learned philosophical debates and focus on what physics, neurobiology and psychology have to say, for they have provided partial answers to this ancient conundrum.

Shades of Freedom
I recently served on a jury in United States District Court in Los Angeles. The defendant was a heavily tattooed member of a street gang that smuggled and sold drugs. He was charged with murdering a fellow gang member with two shots to the head.

As the background to the crime was laid out by law enforcement, relatives, and present and past gang members—some of them testifying while handcuffed, shackled and dressed in bright orange prison jumpsuits—I thought about the individual and societal forces that had shaped the defendant. Did he ever have a choice? Did his violent upbringing make it inevitable that he would kill? Fortunately, the jury was not called on to answer these irresolvable questions or to determine his punishment. We only had to decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether he was guilty as charged, whether he had shot a particular person at a particular place and time. And this we did.

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You can see easily why your comments reminded me of the Richard Speck case and Schaeffer’s comments concerning Darwin and Freud.

Why is determinism dangerous? Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? tells why it is dangerous:

Modern determinists have not presented only abstract theories.  Rather, there have been two practical results.  First, and most important, as their ideas about what people are have been increasingly accepted, people consciously or unconsciously have opened themselves to being treated as machines and treating other people as machines.  Second, each theory of determinism has carried with it a method of manipulation.  So even though many — even most — people may reject the concept that man is totally a product of psychological, sociological, or chemical conditioning, manipulation by these methods is still very much a live possibility.  In fact, these techniques are all at the disposal of of authoritation states, and they are in some degree already being used.

Paul Chopan has rightly noted:

Naturalism takes for granted the following tenets:

• Nature is all there is.
• All reality is comprised of or rooted in matter.
• There is no supernatural—no Creator, no miracles, no souls,
  no angels, no life after death.
• Science becomes the only (or best) means of knowledge.

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What is the answer to the problem of DETERMINISM? It is found in the Biblical view that the Bible is true and there was a place named THE GARDEN OF EDEN and the fact that God did create this world and it was not created by impersonal chance plus time. 

Francis A. Schaeffer on Human Free Will, THE GOD WHO IS THERE, (DOWNERS GROVE, IL: INTERVARSITY PRESS, 1968), P 131.

The historic Christian position is that man’s dilemma has a moral cause. God, being nondetermined, created man as a nondetermined person. This is a difficult idea for anyone thinking in twentieth-century terms because most twentieth-century thinking sees man as determined. He is determined either by chemical factors, as the Marquis de Sade held and Francis Crick is trying to prove, or by psychological factors, as Freud and others have suggested, or by sociological factors, such as B.F. Skinner holds. In these cases, or as a result of a fusion of them, man is considered to be programmed. If this is the case, then man is not the tremendous thing the Bible says he is, made in the image of God as a personality who can make a free first choice. Because God created a true universe outside of himself (or as an extension of his essence), there is a true history which exists, man as created in God’s image is therefore a significant man in a significant history, who can choose to obey the commandments of God and love him, or revolt against him.

Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology., 

You can hear DAVE HOPE and Kerry Livgren’s stories from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust in the Wind (Official Video)

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Adrian Rogers on Darwinism

Featured artist today is Pierre Soulages

biography

Pierre Soulages, “Peinture 130.2 x 162.5 cm, 27 juillet 1956” (1956) (all images courtesy Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin)

On the third floor of the Pierre Soulages show currently on view at Dominique Lévy gallery, viewers will discover paintings from the 1950s and 60s. Some are small and others medium-scale.  In each case, they are typically dense in their structure, but given to a more inadvertent openness than most of his recent work. These earlier paintings contain overlapping black and umber brushwork at vertical, horizontal, and diagonal angles, holding forth shimmers of light – discreet underpinnings of ochre and yellow – peering between constructed sections. While the boldness of the artist’s strokes is present, they have little to do with action painting. They are neither expressionist nor endowed solely through the immediacy of their painterly application. Rather they appear definitive in their positioning and precise in their execution. They are the kind of paintings that made an impression on important New York curators, such as James Johnson Sweeny, and gallerists, including Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Samuel Kootz in the late forties and early fifties. For many, Pierre Soulages was regarded as the Parisian counterpart to the abstract expressionists in New York.  The only problem was that the French audience, in general, appeared less interested in his work than the Americans.

Soulages’s paintings were then, and still are, given to sections more than a holistic intake. The early works suggest a more symbolic aspect than those presently included on the first and second floors on the walls of Galerie Perrotin and Dominique Lévy. Whereas earlier works, such as “Peinture 146 x 97 cm, 10 janvier 1951” and “Peinture 195 x 130 cm, mai 1953,” respectively in the collections of MoMA and the Guggenheim, suggest a kind of contradiction between form and space, between the gesture and the surface, between the support and its interior. These painterly ideas were closer to Soulages than the more metaphorical interpretations of being an expression of post-World War II trauma where hope lingers in the crevices between the charred remnants (a popular interpretation that Soulages attempted to discourage).

Pierre Soulages, “Peinture 157 x 222 cm, 6 avril 2013” (2013)

The surfaces in the recent work from 2013–14 reveals more literal variations of black pigment, often utilizing an uncompromising matt underpainting as a support for glossy black on top; or, alternatively, light refracting from severe cuts into a hardened density of pigment, unequaled in works associated with subsequent modes of pastiche used in some overworked paintings associated with painters of The New York School in the turbulent late fifties.  By 1979, Soulages had shifted his emphasis by moving away from former juxtapositions toward a more formally ordered surface, yet still latent with energy through his ability to discover light emanating from various angles, reminiscent in some way to the play of light on dark found in an extraordinary brick loggia designed by Josef Albers on the campus of Rochester Institute of Technology (destroyed 2001).  However, the focus on the presence of light continues in the paintings of Soulages to be borne from the blackness as made evident in the paintings of the last two years.

The most recent paintings constitute a latent subterfuge, whereby the light bounces rhythmically from one panel to another within a single painting Three of these are hung off the walls as they are suspended with thin wire to hold them in place in the open space of the galleries. Some paintings reveal a rough-edged contour over a smoothly chiseled surface. The affect reeks with a kind of abdominal essence, a respite from the normative facture found in earlier paintings. The assertion of light in Soulages’s resilient paintings is remarkable in its immediacy, given that the work not only exalts a heightened sensory elegance, but a clearly anchored youthful appearance. They are not at all the works of a retiring artist, but appear to have been made through the strength of accurate perception, thereby suggesting equivalence between the color black the truth of absence.  They are paintings that offer substance to the way we perceive light. The pigment literally emit light by refracting off the surface, a point of view closer to Eastern Taoism than to the traditions of Western painting that began in medieval times.

Pierre Soulages, “Peinture 175 x 222 cm, 23 mai 2013” (2013)

The concurrent showing of work by Soulages at Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin is his first exhibition in New York since 2005, nearly a decade ago. The previous exhibitions were also concurrent, then shown at the Robert Miller Gallery and at Hain Chanin Fine Art. On that occasion, which I believed important, I did an interview with Soulages in which we discussed the emergence of his work independent of any direct influences either in Paris or New York, suggesting that he was a kind of renegade painter in spite of the efforts of a few French gallerists and writers to help him. What made him a renegade was his commitment to the color black, which I believe he understood as a color.

Before 2005, Soulages had not shown in New York since the mid-1970s, which constituted a breath of thirty years. Yet, in spite of the intervals of his relevance to New York, his presence here remains central to the history of the advance in abstract painting shared between the European continent and the United States. Stated succinctly in a talk given by critic Brooks Adams at the opening of this masterfully executed exhibition on Madison Avenue, “This show is a proposal about Post-War abstraction.” Adams’ point is that a reevaluation concerning the painting exalted in this era where silent linkages appear between the two continents is well in order. Soulages is a central figure within this revisionist history, given the highly esteemed, renegade painter that he continues to be.

Pierre Soulages continues at Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin (909 Madison Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through June 27.

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Setting the record straight was Will Provine’s widow Gail when she stated, “[Will] did not believe in an ULTIMATE meaning in life (i.e. God’s plan), but he did believe in proximate meaning (i.e. relationships with people — friendship and especially LOVE 🙂 ). So one’s existence is ultimately senseless and useless, but certainly not to those whose lives we touch here on earth.”

Many humanists today try to leave the impression that nothing is lost by giving up belief in God, but Will Provine made it clear that  one’s existence is ultimately senseless and useless in the big scheme of things. Sadly many humanists are living in denial. Will Provine was a very kind man who had many close friendships and lived a fulfilling life and I salute him for his observations in this area.

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Photo taken in 1944 after a reading of Picasso’s play El deseo pillado por la cola: Standing from left to right: Jacques Lacan, Cécile  Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Pablo Picasso, Zanie de Campan, Valentine Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, Brassaï. Sitting, from left to right: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Leiris, Jean Aubier. Photo by Brassaï. –

Why am I doing this series FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE? John Fischer probably expressed it best when he noted:

Schaeffer was the closest thing to a “man of sorrows” I have seen. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost and he knew why. He was the first Christian I found who could embrace faith and the despair of a lost humanity all at the same time. Though he had been found, he still knew what it was to be lost.

Schaeffer was the first Christian leader who taught me to weep over the world instead of judging it. Schaeffer modeled a caring and thoughtful engagement in the history of philosophy and its influence through movies, novels, plays, music, and art. Here was Schaeffer, teaching at Wheaton College about the existential dilemma expressed in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blowup, when movies were still forbidden to students. He didn’t bat an eye. He ignored our legalism and went on teaching because he had been personally gripped by the desperation of such cultural statements.

Schaeffer taught his followers not to sneer at or dismiss the dissonance in modern art. He showed how these artists were merely expressing the outcome of the presuppositions of the modern era that did away with God and put all conclusions on a strictly human, rational level. Instead of shaking our heads at a depressing, dark, abstract work of art, the true Christian reaction should be to weep for the lost person who created it. Schaeffer was a rare Christian leader who advocated understanding and empathizing with non-Christians instead of taking issue with them.

Francis Schaeffer below pictured on cover of World Magazine:

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There is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true asSchaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? There is a basis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This linkshows how to do that.

Francis Schaeffer in Art and the Bible noted, “Many modern artists, it seems to me, have forgotten the value that art has in itself. Much modern art is far too intellectual to be great art. Many modern artists seem not to see the distinction between man and non-man, and it is a part of the lostness of modern man that they no longer see value in the work of art as a work of art.” 

Many modern artists are left in this point of desperation that Schaeffer points out and it reminds me of the despair that Solomon speaks of in Ecclesiastes.  Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chanceplus matter.” THIS IS EXACT POINT SCHAEFFER SAYS SECULAR ARTISTSARE PAINTING FROM TODAY BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED ARE A RESULTOF MINDLESS CHANCE.

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Existentialism and the Meaningful Life [The Common Room]

Reason is Dead

The  hallmark of the Enlightenment had been “Reason Is King.” The leading thinkers had consciously rejected the need for revelation. As Paul Hazard in European Thought in the Eighteenth Century says, they put Christianity on trial.91
Gradually, however, the problems of this enthronement of human reason emerged. The reason of man was not big enough to handle the big questions, and what man was left with relative knowledge and relative morality. The noose around the humanist’s neck tightened with every passing decade and generation.
What would he do?
Ironically, even though the basis of the humanists’ whole endeavor had been the central importance of man’s reason, when faced with the problems of relative knowledge and relative morality they repudiated reason. Rather than admit defeat in front of God’s revelation, the humanists extended the revolution further – and in a direction which would have been quite unthinkable to their eighteenth-century predecessors. Modern irrationalism was born.
We could go back as far as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in philosophy and to Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) in theology. Modern existentialism is also related to Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). However, our intention here is neither to go into the history of irrationalism, nor to examine the proponents of existentialism in our own century, but rather to concentrate on its main thesis. It is this that confronts us on all sides today, and it is impossible to understand modern man without understanding this concept.
Because we shall be using several terms a great deal now, we would ask the reader to attend carefully. When we speak of irrationalism or existentialism or the existential methodology, we are pointing to a quite simple idea. It may have been expressed in a variety of complicated ways by philosophers, but it is not a difficult concept.
Imagine that you are at the movies watching a suspense film. As the story unfolds, the tension increases until finally the hero is trapped in some impossible situation and everyone is groaning inwardly, wondering how he is going to get out of the mess. The suspense is heightened by the knowledge (of the audience, not the hero) that help is on the way in the form of the good guys. The only question is: will the good guys arrive in time?
Now imagine for a moment that the audience is slipped the information that there are no good guys, that the situation of the hero is not just desperate, but completely hopeless. Obviously, the first thing that would happen is that the suspense would be gone. You and the entire audience would simply be waiting for the axe to fall.
If the hero faced the end with courage, this would be morally edifying, but the situation itself would be tragic. If, however, the hero acted as if help were around the corner and kept buoying himself up with this thought (“Someone is on the way!” – “Help is at hand!”), all you could feel for him would be pity. It would be a means to keep hope alive within a hopeless situation. The hero’s hope would change nothing on the outside; it would be unable to manufacture, out of nothing, good guys coming to the rescue. All it would achieve would the hero’s own mental state of hopefulness rather than hopelessness.
The hopefulness itself would rest on a lie or an illusion and thus, viewed objectively, would be finally absurd. And if the hero really knew what the situation was, but consciously used the falsehood to buoy up his feelings and go whistling along, we would either say, “Poor guy!” or “He’s a fool.” It is this kind of conscious deceit that someone like Woody Allen has looked full in the face and will have none of.
Now this is what the existential methodology is about. If the universe we are living in is what the materialistic humanists say it is, then with our reason (when we stop to think about it) we could find absolutely no way to have meaning or morality or hope or beauty. This would plunge us into despair. We would have to take seriously the challenge of Albert Camus (1913-1960) in the first sentence of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”92 Why stay alive in an absurd universe? Ah! But that is not where we stop. We say to ourselves – “There is hope!” (even though there is no help). “We shall overcome!” (even though nothing is more certain than that we shall be destroyed, both individually at death and cosmically with the end of all conscious life). This is what confronts us on all sides today: the modern irrational-ism.

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Robert Zaretsky, Author, “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning,”7 Things You Didn’t Know About Albert Camus,“Posted: 11/07/2013 7:38 am, “Camus was not a pessimist. Sure, he liked to remind us that there was no reason to hope. How could one in a universe of “tender indifference” to our repeated demands for meaning? But this was never a reason for despair. Think of the scene from “Annie Hall,” where Woody Allen puts the moves on a young woman who, while staring at a Jackson Pollock canvas, replies with an apocalyptic vision of the world. Like Allen, Camus would have asked if she was busy tomorrow night and, upon hearing she planned to commit suicide then, would pause only a moment before asking if she was busy tonight.”

How can we reconcile the statement of Zaretsky with Camus’ own words: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

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Image via Complex / APJAC Productions

Film: Play It Again, Sam (1972)

In 1972’s Play It Again, Sam, Allen plays a film critic trying to get over his wife’s leaving him by dating again. In one scene, Allen tries to pick up a depressive woman in front of the early Jackson Pollock work. This painting, because of its elusive title, has been the subject of much debate as to what it portrays. This makes for a nifty gag when Allen strolls up and asks the suicidal belle, “What does it say to you?”

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Woody Allen in Play It Again Sam

Uploaded on May 20, 2009

Allan: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?

Museum Girl: Yes, it is.

Allan: What does it say to you?

Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?

Museum Girl: Committing suicide.

Allan: What about Friday night?

Awesome Jim Dine Artist #9 Jim Dine Artwork

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Title : Awesome Jim Dine Artist #9 Jim Dine Artwork

Jim Dine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jim Dine
Jim Dine, surrounded by photographers, at the inauguration of his work Walking to Borås (behind him on the left), May 16, 2008.
Born	Jim Dine June 16, 1935 (age 81) Cincinnati, Ohio
Nationality	American
Education	Ohio University. University of Cincinnati
Known for	painting, drawing, sculpture,printmaking
Movement	Neo-Dada, Pop Art

Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935) is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement.^[1]

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Early life
• 2Career
  • 2.1Birth of American “Pop Art”
  • 2.2Representation
  • 2.3Pinocchio Art
• 3Collections
• 4See also
• 5Further reading
• 6Sources
• 7References
• 8External links

Early life[edit]

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati. In 1953, he took evening classes at The Art Academy of Cincinnati from the influential abstract painter and instructor, Paul Chidlaw.^[2] Dine received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957.

Career[edit]

He first earned respect in the art world with his Happenings. Pioneered with artists Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow, in conjunction with musician John Cage, the “Happenings” were chaotic performance art that was a stark contrast with the more somber mood of the expressionists popular in the New York art world. The first of these was the 30 second The Smiling Worker performed in 1959.

Birth of American “Pop Art”[edit]

Job #1 by Jim Dine, 1962, Honolulu Museum of Art

In 1962 Dine’s work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Norton Simon Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first “Pop Art” exhibitions in America. These painters started a movement, in a time of social unrest, which shocked America and the art world. The Pop Art movement fundamentally altered the nature of modern art.

In the early 1960s, he began attaching objects, particularly tools of autobiographical significance, to his canvases.^[3] Job #1 from 1962, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, which incorporates paint cans, paint brushes, a screwdriver, and a piece of wood is an example of such a pop art work. These provided commercial as well as critical success, but left Dine unsatisfied. In September 1966 police raided an exhibition of his work displayed atRobert Fraser‘s gallery in London, England. Twenty of his works were seized and Fraser was charged under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, Dine’s work was found to be indecent but not obscene and Fraser was fined 20 guineas.^[4] The following year Dine moved to London and continued to be represented by Fraser, spending the next four years developing his art.

Returning to the United States in 1971 he focused on several series of drawings. Since 1976 Dine has been represented by The Pace Gallery. In the 1980s sculpture resumed a prominent place in his art. In the time since then there has been an apparent shift in the subject of his art from man-made objects to nature.

According to James Rado, co-writer (with Gerome Ragni) of the rock musical Hair, it was a Dine piece entitled Hair which gave them the name.^{[citation needed]}

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts purchased six works by Dine, and in 1983 he was a juror in “The Next Juried Show” at the VMFA, judging prints and drawings. The juried shows at the VMFA were a series of biennial exhibitions covering all areas including Communication Arts, Craft Media, Painting & Sculpture, Photography, Video Arts, and Prints and Drawings, each on an every-other-year schedule. “The Next Juried Show” was the last of the series, however.

In 1984 the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, exhibited his work as “Jim Dine: Five Themes”. 1987 saw the publication of the book Jim Dine: Drawings 1973 – 1987,^[5] to coincide with a touring exhibition. In 1989 the Minneapolis Institute of Arts hosted Jim Dine Drawings: 1973-1987. In 1983, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.

In 2004 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. organized the exhibition “Drawings of Jim Dine.” In the summer of 2007 he participated in the Chicago public art exhibition “Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet.” In Canada, he first exhibited at the Galerie de Bellefeuille alongside artists Chuck Close, Tom Hopkins and Jennifer Hornyak in 2009.^[6] Dine also exhibited regularly with the Alan Cristea Gallery in London and had a show there in April 2010.^{[citation needed]}

Representation[edit]

As of 2016, Jim Dine is exclusively represented by Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago and New York.^[7]

Pinocchio Art[edit]

Dine at the Galerie de Bellefeuille, Westmount, Quebec, Canada, 2009

On May 16, 2008, Jim Dine formally presented a nine meter high bronze statue depicting a walking Pinocchio, named Walking to Borås to the city of Borås, Sweden.

Dine previously worked on a commercial book, paintings, and sculptures that focused on Pinocchio.

Another large bronze sculpture of Pinocchio by Jim Dine exists near the entrance of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Collections[edit]

Dine’s work is part of numerous public collections including the British Museum, London;^[8] the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Honolulu Museum of Art;^[9] the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.;^[10] and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va.^[11][12]

See also[edit]

• Cy Twombly
• Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walls, a 1995 documentary
• Marcel Duchamp
• Michael Woolworth

Further reading[edit]

• Chris Bruce, compiler, with an essay by Jim Dine. Extending the Artist’s Hand: Contemporary Sculpture from the Walla Walla Foundry. Pullman, Washington: Museum of Art, Washington State University, 2004. ISBN 978-0-9755662-0-6
• John Coplans, “New Paintings of Common Objects”, Artforum, November, 1962. (Illustrations)

Sources[edit]

• Encyclopedia of Artists: Volume 2 (2000), William H. T. Vaughan (ed), Oxford: OUP ISBN 0-19-521572-9

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Hodge, Susie (2012). Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That: Modern Art Explained. pp. 154–55. ISBN 9783791347356. LCCN 2012940064.
2. Jump up^ Dine, Jim; Celant, Germano; Bell, Clare; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum (1999-01-01). Jim Dine : walking memory, 1959-1969. New York : Guggenheim Museum : Hardcover edition distributed by H.N. Abrams.
3. Jump up^ Honolulu Museum of Art, wall label, Job #1 by Jim Dine, 1962, accession TCM.1991.22.16.ab
4. Jump up^ Jones, Jonathan (November 3, 2001). “My name is Jimmy”. London: Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-02-07.
5. Jump up^ Lafferty, S. R., (1987) Jim Dine: Drawings 1973 – 1987, Contemporary Arts Center, ISBN 0-917562-50-X, ISBN 978-0-917562-50-1
6. Jump up^ Vanderstaay, Marilynn, “Don’t miss Galerie de Bellefeuille’s holiday show” Westmount Examiner. Montreal: 15 Dec. 2009. Web.
7. Jump up^ Pogrebin, R. (2016, June 2). William Eggleston Joins Zwirner Gallery. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/arts/design/william-eggleston-joins-zwirner-gallery.html?_r=0
8. Jump up^ [1]. Jim Dine’s gift of prints to the British Museum.
9. Jump up^ Honolulu Museum of Art, wall label, Job #1 by Jim Dine, 1962, accession TCM.1991.22.16.ab
10. Jump up^ JIM DINE : SELECT PUBLIC COLLECTIONS, Pace Gallery, Retrieved 15 July 2014.
11. Jump up^ Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia.
12. Jump up^ Dine, Jim. “Red Robe with Hatchet (Self Portrait),” permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

External links[edit]

• Richard Gray Gallery
• Drawings of Jim Dine at the National Gallery of Art
• Past Exhibition of Drawings of Jim Dine at the National Gallery of Art
• Jim Dine on ArtCyclopedia
• Dine, Jim. “Tools in the Earth”. New Mexico Museum of Art. Retrieved 28 April 2014.

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 61562057 LCCN: n80040132 ISNI: 0000 0001 1065 4057 GND: 118679546 SUDOC: 028507673 BNF: cb12032993v (data) ULAN: 500028463 NDL: 00543531 RKD: 23210

Categories:

• 1935 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American painters
• 21st-century American painters
• American printmakers
• Jewish painters
• Jewish American artists
• Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Members of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin
• Modern painters
• American pop artists
• Ohio University alumni
• University of Cincinnati alumni
• Artists from Cincinnati, Ohio
• Neo-Dada
• Rome Prize winners
• 20th-century American sculptors

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