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by DeWitt Cheng August 30, 2025 It’s a Perfect Administration The best people, hired by a stable genius, make perfect calls. Until they don’t, and then … OUT! Zelenskyy Just Doesn’t Have the Cards Inspired by the second memorable red carpet summit with Putin and the May Oval-Office “ingrate” ambush of Ukraine’s leader by Trump, Vance, and MTG’s current beau. The Roberts Barons Club Our gang of six injudicious MAGA judicial giants will go down in history as cartoon characters. Americam Iteram Magnam Fac A Make America Great Again Relic from last days of Pax Americana, as United States unilaterally surrenders global pre-eminence in exchange for a racial fantasy world. Escape From Epstein Island Alcatraz Because Trump apparently conceived of restoring Alcatraz to active prison duty after watching a Clint Eastwood movie, the idea of combining Alligator Alcatraz with an Epsteinized version of the Jurassic Park sequel islands — and Trump’s famous souped-up golf carts — seemed inescapable,. By the way, Trump’s 3 hour 7 minute silence in the Oval Office kitchenette on January 6 is exactly the length of Peter Jackson’s 2005 film,  King Kong . Someone should look into that, strongly. No Voting Accident The 50th anniversary of JAWS, reminding us of Trump's well-known fear of sharks (and stated preference for death by electrocution to chart stack). Together they prompted my fantasy about moral regeneration from former MAGA confederates, now pardoned of their crimes. Reddy Kilowatt observes the tragedy from Robert Maxwell’s boat, while his daughter luxuriates and her victims commit suicide. DeWitt Cheng  is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and Bill Lasarow.

by Bill Lasarow August 30, 2025 Valerie Hegarty, “Stove with 4th of July Cake and Teapot (The Covid Diaries Series), 2020, foamcore, cardboard, paper-maché, magic-sculpt, wire, acrylic mediums, acrylic paint, 55 x 36 x 27”. Courtesy of the artist. America, the beating heart of the democracy revolution for 250 years, is rapidly forming a secret police force — a gestapo if you will — and constructing a network — a gulag — of detention centers. Let’s call them what they are: concentration camps. A word to the not-so Supreme Court, since nearly all lower court judges do seem to understand this not very complicated truth. Things like gestapos  and concentration camps  are not consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Not remotely close to it. Not in its plain language, not legalistically, not nuttin’. Yet the 2025/26 fiscal year budget for the federal government has been funded by Congress to spend $170 billion on just such an anti-Contitutional system. Congress and the not-so Supreme Court have stepped aside as the dictator overtly politicizes the Pentagon with test runs in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., with more assault plans waiting in the wings. With the new numbers dwarfing anything the evil empire of the Soviet Union ever spent on its system of totalitarian suppression, this will not be a system that anyone will return from once absorbed by it. Think these first several months have been troubling? The fun really gets started with the new fiscal year, November 1, 2025. Mark Bradford, “Amendment #8,” 2014, mixed media, 48 1⁄4 × 60”. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and © 2014, Mark Bradford. Test to the 8th Amendment: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Are you a high school student writing a column for the school paper? Are you a successful attorney who volunteers some of your free time to the ACLU? Perhaps you are a celebrity accustomed to the applause and accolades of a vast public? Maybe you publish a nice little art platform like SquareCylinder ? Constitutional rights today exist only on paper. No mater how innocent, good hearted, or publicly known you may be, once you are delivered into this system you will be released from it only at the pleasure of those who run that system, and ultimately only if the dictator points his thumb up. Most likely you will disappear into it, never to be seen again. Miranda rights, due process, cruel and unusual punishment, even a call to your attorney? Inconveniences now dispensed with. So while most (no, not all) media discussion revolves around the Big Bad Bill’s tax provisions going mostly to the 1% and shrinkage of Medicaid for the 50%, both topics legitimately important, that oppression-funding $170 billion detail remains too abstract and radical for most Americans to come to grips with. No matter what happens in next year’s mid-term elections the die has been cast. It will take more, far more, than a resistant Democratic House majority to prevent it from happening. Such a majority can only slow it down and, with sufficient political will, begin the process of reversal. But that is the necessary starting point. Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire: Destruction,” 1836, oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 63 1/2”. Courtesy of the New York Historical. Without at least that, however, the glide path will remain open no matter what the majority of American voters think. And within the three years leading up to 2028 the Founders’ vision will not be blurry but blinded, and the republic that they founded will be obliterated. Towards that end, the so-called Republican Party, today in fact the Fascist Party of America, is busy working to rig the upcoming 2026 mid-term and render elections for the foreseeable future moot and the America conceived by the Founders dead, dead, dead. Bill Lasarow , Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the  Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles  (1987); and  Visual Art Source  (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain . In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder  with co-publishers Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Margaret Hawkins August 30, 2025 T he Kohler Art Preserve in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which opened in 2021, is one of my favorite places. For starters, I like the name. It suggests a mission. To preserve something is to protect it from encroachment, extinction, or rot, like fruit or a forest. “Preserve” is both a noun and a very active verb. A preserve maintains things. Exterior of The John Michael Kohler Art Preserve in Sheboygan. Courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Photo: Durston Saylor. This particular Preserve, especially dedicated to outsider art, is fittingly located in a peaceful spot outside the city proper, near a river. Visitors enter through a façade of tall beams that look like a pile of building materials waiting to become something. The place is dedicated to preserving not only art but also the environments in which it was made or displayed, and while not every object here comes with or in an environment, when artwork and context are paired the combination makes the often-inscrutable work more intelligible. Mary Baber, Ray Yoshida in his apartment, c. 1974, Chicago, photograph. Courtesy of Mary Baber and The Kohler Art Preserve. As a satellite campus to the John Michael Kohler Art Center (JMKAC), also in Sheboygan, the Preserve, like its mother ship, is free to the public, completely supported by Kohler family money. You may recognize that name. Old man Kohler got rich the old-fashioned way, by making good products everybody needs, in his case high quality ceramic sinks, toilets, and water fountains. His daughter, Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, a former art teacher, wanted to share the wealth and in 1967 she and her husband built the JMKAC to champion self-taught and folk artists. The Art Preserve opened 54 years later, less than a year after its founder’s death. Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, “Untitled,” 1960-80, chicken bones and paint. Courtesy © Andrew Edin Gallery, New York. The place is both storage facility and exhibition venue, giving a feeling of accessibility rather than the standard preciousness of most museums. Visible racks of artworks line some of the walls. And the place is big. Artists get whole rooms rather than just wall space for one or two representative works. In 2012, JMKAC acquired Chicago artist Ray Yoshida’s collection, and has recreated Yoshida’s curation approximately as it appeared in his home. This intimately lit, densely hung exhibit at the heart of the Preserve is a mini-tour through one artist/curator’s psyche, a show within a show, a mix of ephemera, art, and artifact. Each of Yoshida’s choices highlights not only that object and its maker, but also the workings of the mind of the artist/collector who brought these works together and set them side by side. If the Yoshida Collection is tightly curated, The Art Preserve also makes room for sprawling, messy displays. Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, for instance, gets a huge expanse of real estate. Are there too many chicken bone sculptures, fashioned from what the Milwaukee-based art brutist culled from garbage bins at the fried chicken place next to his studio? Probably. But the excess makes a larger point about the obsessive nature of this artist, in fact artists in general. A side gallery with photographs of Van Bruenchenhein’s wife in various states of undress tells another part of the story. Levi Fisher Ames, untitled, c. 1900, gelatin silver print of L.F. Ames Museum of Art. Courtesy of Howard Jordan and Bonnie Cunningham. Animals are important here as they so often are to artists outside the mainstream. The creatures here are full of spirit and energy, unencumbered by the narrowing effects of language, as are so many artists. One of my favorites here is Levi Fisher Ames, an itinerant showman who traveled the Wisconsin countryside in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, showing his hundreds of miniature carvings of real and imaginary animals, telling stories and singing songs about them. He stored the carved creatures, sometimes in sets and pairs, in homemade wooden travel cases. Ames’s commitment to his fantasy world will inspire any artist, or anyone else, who has found themselves on a path that leads away from accepted reality. As does so much at The Art Preserve. Another favorite discovery on my last visit was Nick Engelbert’s “Lion.” Two disconcertingly soulful eyes stare out of the beast’s rough concrete body. Somebody is in there and has something to say. If only he could break out and make himself heard; we want to listen because we want to be heard ourselves. Nick Engelbert, “Lion.” Courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. All this odd gorgeousness so well displayed wouldn’t be possible without a lot of private money. Even an art-friendly government, which we currently lack, would never fund as eccentric a mission as this, and popular demand is not sufficient to support hefty admission fees. There have been times I’ve visited when I’ve had the entire third floor to myself. I’m grateful to the toilet king and his wise, wealthy daughter. Art and capitalism have made friends in Sheboygan, and the world is better for it. Which begs the question — what is a good society? How does capital get rerouted from base greed and sweetened into generosity, as it has here? What, occasionally, inspires people such as the Kohlers to share the wealth? I recently read Aldous Huxley’s “Island,”  his last novel, from 1962. It’s about a utopian society and the religious system he invented for it, a quasi-Buddhist credo with lots of other stuff thrown in. I knew I had to buy the book when I opened it and this sentence popped up: “You cling, you crave, you assert yourself, and you live in a homemade hell.” Nicole Eisenman, “The Triumph of Poverty,” 2009, oil on canvas, 65 x 82”. Courtesy of ICA Philadelphia. “Island” is Huxley’s manifesto about how he thought people should live. Some of it is just wacky. He touts psychedelic enhancement via government-grown mushrooms, beginning in childhood, as a fast track to religious enlightenment. He advocates hands-on sex education for children, to be taught in schools by matronly women. But he also paints a picture of a world where acquisition isn’t the goal of wealth, shared prosperity and universal enhanced living is. In Huxley’s utopia everybody does physical labor every day and works at different jobs throughout their lives — inefficient for the economy, he points out, but highly efficient for people's happiness and overall education. Nobody’s poor or hungry. A booming economy is not the point of this society. Human fulfillment is. Pieter Breugel, “Greed,” c. 1556-1560, engraving on paper. Courtesy of Artchive online art gallery. Spoiler alert that will surprise no one: It doesn’t end well. A greedy, autocratic man-child takes over and figures out how to sell the island’s natural resources for great personal profit, and one hundred years of peace and rational living end in gunfire. Sound familiar? It’s simplistic to dismiss capitalism as bad. Or to say it’s bad but argue that with checks and balances it’s better than any other system humans have devised. Or to say that, like everything else in a free society, its badness is directly proportionate to the badness of its practitioners. The trick is to design a society in which successful people with good intentions together with the means and resolve to choose to act on them, the Kohlers for example, also acquire the most cultural and political capital. Margaret Hawkins is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit  Margaret Hawkins’ website.

by Liz Goldner August 30, 2025 Tanks proceed down Constitution Ave. during the military parade for the Army's 250th anniversary celebration. Tyrone Turner/WAMU for NPR When Rocky Balboa, AKA Sylvester Stallone, enters the stage at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center (possibly renamed by then) this December to receive an award for his “lifetime artistic achievements,” the event will be part of another performance by the former reality TV star, Donald Trump. In fact, much of Trump’s life has been performance. As James Greenberg wrote in his Substack , August 17, 2025, “The comedy of manners in American life has long featured the self-made man trying to break into an upper-class world, lacking the polish or education to ever fully belong … a tragicomic figure chasing the trappings of aristocracy without its culture.” John Bolton’s wife Gretchen Smith Bolton outside of their Bethesda, Md. home on August 22. Courtesy of Reuters. Before life in the United States became dystopian once Trump reassumed the presidency, his behavior at rallies, interviews and impromptu appearances, along with his dicta, were often so bizarre that they were regarded as performances. Witness his 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape incident at which he said, with the camera filming him, "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Or on his 2004 to 2017 TV show, “The Apprentice,” at which he gleefully exclaimed at the end of each episode, to one desperate contestant, "You're fired!" Or his rally with Kristi Noem in Pennsylvania on October 14, 2024 when a medical emergency in the audience turned the event into a music and love fest with Trump and Noem swaying on the stage to his favorite popular music. Trump has turned our country into a maelstrom of Orwellian performances with his June 14 Flag Day Military Parade, with the National Guard increasingly invading our cities (now openly carrying weapons), and with the FBI’s recent raid on former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland home. Asco, “Instant Mural,” 1974, color photograph by Harry Gamboa Jr. Courtesy of the artist. © Asco; photograph © 1974 Harry Gamboa Jr. Yet before Trump’s antics invaded the airwaves, a more relevant form of performance art — live presentations featuring a wide variety of art forms, including acting, music, poetry and installations, presented by individuals or groups striving to convey their heartfelt and sometimes imploring messages — existed since the early 20th century, before earning that name in the early 1970s. In Southern California, the performance group, “Asco: Elite of the Obscure” (active from 1972 to 1987), a Chicano collective made up of Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón, and Patssi Valdez, used performance, public art, and multimedia to respond to social and political turbulence in Los Angeles and beyond. Often dressing up glamorously with costumes from thrift shops, Asco addressed the conditions of the Mexican American community, the depravity of the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of Chicanos drafted and shipped to Southeast Asia during that war, among other issues. Their performances also included “Day of the Dead” celebrations, “Instant Murals,” in which an Asco member (usually Valdez) was duct-taped to a wall, and “No Movies,” still photos of glamorous characters from made-up movies. Asco is the Spanish slang word for disgust or revulsion. Victoria Santa Cruz’s powerful 1978 performance of “Mi gritaron negra,” projected on the entry wall of the exhibition, sets the tone for “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985.” Courtesy of Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times. In 2017, the UCLA Hammer Museum’s exhibition “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985” presented the work of 100-plus women artists, representing 15 countries. The decades covered by the exhibition were a time of repression in many Latin American countries, oppressed by military dictatorships. Their citizens were forced to survive civil war, imprisonment, exile, torture, political violence, and censorship. April 5, 2025 Hands Off! Demonstration, Santa Ana. Photo by Ken Forbes. Among performances documented in that show was a 1975 film of Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta. She explored violence, exile, identity and her own naked body in her work. The film presented her lying in a part grave/part womb cavity dug on top of a rock, which was filled with crimson liquid. Also in the show, a 1978 film by Afro-Peruvian poet Victoria Santa Cruz revealed her yelling vociferously, “Black” to her audience, followed by a chorus of women responding, “Black, black, black, black, black, black!” Santa Cruz had appropriated the denigrating taunt of being called “Black” as a young child by white classmates, and turned that insult into part of her identity and hurled it back at her audience. As Trump and his minions increasingly and often illegally mount violent and slanderous performances, our main form of retaliation — itself bordering on performance — occurs at our country’s thousands — literally thousands — of protest rallies. As Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin recently remarked, “A protest a day keeps the fascists away.” As an attendee at some of these rallies in Orange County, I exult in being part of group chants, at which hundreds of people yell out, “This is not Normal,” “Power to the People,” and “Alone I am a single drop of water. Together we are a flood.” I’m also impressed by the creativity of the signs at these rallies. But there’s more to come. Journalist Carolina Miranda wrote in the Washington Post  on July 15 that at a small anti-ICE rally in downtown L.A. a Mexican norteño  band and a local act, “founded by day laborers in the 1990s, were performing on the back of a truck,” while volunteers distributed anti-ICE fliers to onlookers.  As we live in unprecedented repressive, authoritarian times, the gravity of which few of us have ever witnessed, I believe that the unbridled creativity that so many of us possess is about to burst forth into a variety of performances, as it did with Asco and with the feminist art movement a half century ago, and now at protest rallies. Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

by Liz Goldner August 2, 2025 Ed Bereal, "War Babies" Poster, 1961. L-R: Ed Bereal eating a watermelon, Larry Bell eating a bagel, Joe Goode eating a mackerel, and Ron Miyasharo eating with chopsticks on an American flag "tablecloth." | The art piece was on view during the 2011-2012 exhibition "Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California" at Laguna Art Museum. Listening to Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address on January 20, 2017 on KCET public television, I was disturbed but not surprised by the negativity he conveyed. When he said, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” I could not imagine any President spewing such toxic nonsense. But it was Friday, and I figured that I would hear a cogent explanation of his words on the PBS News Hour, to be broadcast later that day, particularly couched in the wisdom of commentators Mark Shields and David Brooks. Soon after, a violent rainstorm caused the power in my Laguna Canyon home to be turned off. I figured that the storm was nature’s response to the events occurring in Washington D.C. Then just before 6pm, the power came back on, and I turned the TV back on. Soon after, Shields and Brooks came on the air. View from the stage at The Happening music festival in Laguna Beach, 1970. Photo: Mark Chamberlain/BC Space. Shields explained what I felt in my gut: “I do know that it was unlike any inaugural address I have ever heard. It was a call to arms to those already enlisted in his army. There was no attempt to reach across the divide. There was no attempt to heal wounds. There was no attempt to reassure or allay fears of those who were apprehensive and had not supported him.” Then he said, “I just have never heard language quite like it or a tone quite like it in an inaugural address.” Eight and a half years later, I can still see and hear Shields (who passed away in 2022) addressing his audience about the depravity that we were about to experience with Trump as President. Even more significant, PBS was (and for now still is) the publicly supported station facilitating the airing of that message. Yet that show was just one in a long series of programs that I have enjoyed by watching public television almost since its inception. Deborah Kass, “OY/YO,” 2019, aluminum, polymer and clear coat, 96 x 194 1/2 x 52”. Courtesy of the Cantor Arts Center, Palo Alto. Photo: Farrin Abbott. In the 1970s my news junkie father discovered the newly launched PBS station WNET, broadcast throughout the greater New York City area. He often referred to “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” which premiered in 1976. Soon after its inception, I walked into our TV room to the strains of Donald Lamb’s original theme music and with my father watched the groundbreaking 30-minute news program, led by the congenial Robert MacNeill and Jim Lehrer. I was taken with the program’s in-depth reporting and analysis, which was so different from the news programs on most other channels at the time. I have followed public TV in its many permutations ever since, while witnessing “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” evolve over the years into the PBS News Hour. I’ve also grown and evolved with public television, enjoying so many of its programs with friends and family. I’ve been entertained by its cultural programs, entranced by its dramatic series, informed by its historical programs, and amused by its groundbreaking children’s series. Seared into my memory is a program I saw on KCET in August, 1990, broadcast from Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. It was a celebration of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein’s 72nd birthday  (which turned out to be his last), attended by illustrious performers he worked with over the course of his career. As the event was nearing its end, conductor Seiji Ozawa jumped onto the podium, looked at Bernstein and said, “Lenny, you’ve made our garden grow.” He then proceeded to conduct Bernstein’s song, “Make Our Garden Grow,” the finale of his operetta, “Candide.” All performers that evening joined in singing with great passion, while the camera periodically caught Bernstein sitting in the audience, overcome with emotion. The outpouring of so much genuine passion caused tears to stream down my face. “Fallujah,” still from Long Beach Opera performance. Photo: Joseph Kovar/Long Beach Opera. Public television became a yet more important part of my life in 2015, when an “Artillery” magazine editor suggested that I write for an arts journalism online platform published by KCET’s Artbound  series. Writing for that platform over five years, I delved into a range of topics, enhancing my understanding of the world around me, and hopefully enlightening my readers as well. Artbound’s  editor Drew Tewksbury had a nearly cinematic approach to writing assignments. He requested that I go beyond merely describing scenes, to bringing readers into them. In my article, “Laguna Beach in the Sixties: A Colony for the Arts,”  he inspired me to write the following about the Laguna Canyon 1970 "Christmas Happening:” “Although this 'Gathering of the Tribes' remained peaceful, the town officials were so unnerved by its presence that police soon blocked vehicle entry to the canyon, forcing people to walk miles or hike over the hills to get in. And before air space was restricted, one attendee parachuted in; and the local "Brotherhood of Eternal Love," an evangelical psychotropic drug dispensing group, flew a small plane over the site, dropping hundreds of postcards affixed with LSD (Orange Sunshine brand) tabs."  Nancy Buchanan, "Hair Piece” (detail), 1971-72, human and poodle hair. The piece was on view during the 2011-2012 exhibition "Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California" at Laguna Art Museum. Tewksbury also encouraged me to express my most profound reactions to an opera about the war in Iraq, produced by the Long Beach Opera Company. In my article, “Back to Iraq: ‘Fallujah’ Opera Reflects the Aftermath of War,”  I wrote, “’Fallujah’s’ message is about young men and their mothers who are dealing with a war that questions and even undermines their identities and relationships. It powerfully conveys the cultural/ethnic divisions and hatred that are created by war, in spite of the individual participants’ shared humanity. The opera also dramatizes the ways we react to violence and shows how we may heal from devastating experiences by sharing the pain in our hearts with others." I also wrote “The Roots of Radical Art at University of California, Irvine”  for Artbound , about a UCI exhibition, featuring its late 1960s to early 1970s art department, which became an imposing force in the advancement of radical performance and conceptual art. Tewksbury urged me to talk to students who attended UCI’s early, free-spirited art school. I wrote: “Charming gray-haired 84-year-old Barbara T. Smith … was there also. When asked about her lifelong obsession with sexually adventurous performance pieces, she smiled broadly, and proclaimed that she hasn't modified her attitude, but she also believes in some strait-laced values such as love. Photographs of her 1970 performance, ‘The Freize,’ at UCI, featured three nude people who she laboriously taped to the wall.” My association with Artbound  remains one of my most profound and inspiring writing gigs, five years after that eNewsletter ran out of funds to pay freelance writers. Sawdust Festival booth, 1969. Photo: Mark Chamberlain/BC Space. Public broadcasting, including National Public Radio and other programs, now faces the elimination of federal funding. I realize that the education, comfort and enjoyment I’ve received from the PBS world are irreplaceable. Yet there is hope. A July 24 New York Times  article reported, “Over the last three months, as the prospect of the cuts intensified, roughly 120,000 new donors have contributed an estimated $20 million in annual value.” Subsequent reporting in the Washington Post  indicates that the number of new donors continues to grow.  As Richard Wilbur’s concluding lyrics to “Candide” proclaim, “We'll build our house / and chop our wood / And make our garden grow.” Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

by Mark Van Proyen August 2, 2025 Adrian Ghenie, “Rest During the Flight into Egypt,” 2016, oil on canvas. Courtesy Pace Gallery, © Adrian Ghenie. In the early morning hours of November 5, 1991, British-Israeli media mogul Robert Maxwell fell overboard from his luxury yacht near the Canary Islands, with fatal results. Some said at the time this was an accident, others that it was suicide, and still others that he was assassinated by either (or both) the Israeli Mossad or British MI6. Over 30 years later no one knows for sure. We do know he was in serious financial trouble at the time of his demise, having been caught embezzling over $200 million from a pension fund to cover a mountain of debt that had something to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is of interest now that the name of the yacht was the Lady Ghislaine, after Maxwell’s youngest daughter, who is currently serving a 20-year stretch for her role in a longstanding international sex trafficking operation. I bring this up because it might shed some light on the current media frenzy about the potential release of the so-called Epstein files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly committed suicide in 2019 while in Federal custody awaiting trial. Epstein and Maxwell were longtime partners in crime, not to mention partners in sordid scandal. And thanks to ten of the most conservative, Q-Anon leaning members of the Republican Congressional caucus, the scandal is now consuming the Trump administration because their long-held conspiracy theory has been that many prominent Democrats would be implicated in Epstein’s private files. I’ll return to that shortly. Marilyn Minter, “Thigh Gap,” 2016, enamel on metal, 72 x 86 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York. Despite an almost daily barrage of attempted distractions on the part of Trump, the scandal still looms large in the news media’s imagination, partly because Trump’s and Epstein’s friendship is well documented. Trump was a frequent passenger on what was called “The Lolita Express,” a private plane shuttling back and forth to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. The Epstein Files comprise the evidence that the FBI collected from survivor testimony and other sources. To protect the innocent, it has been under lock and key as per the requirements of whistle blower laws and other court agreements. One of Trump’s campaign promises was to make the Epstein files public. Of course, he didn’t mean that any more than he meant to release his IRS records back in 2016. But the about face on the Epstein files continues to stick in the mind of the American public. Trump must have assumed that those court agreements would prohibit him from following through, but that seems to not be the case. Democrats have been notably restrained about all of this, but you can bet that if and when their votes are counted, they will act in unison to release the files, making strange bedfellows with the ten Q-Anon Republicans. David Altmejd, “L’oeil,” 2017, expanded polystyrene, epoxy dough, fiberglass, resin, epoxy gel, epoxy clay, synthetic hair, quartz, acrylic paint, glass eyes, steel, Sharpie, ballpoint pens, gold leaf, glass paint, artificial flower, and lighter, 37 1/4 x 30 1/2 x 26”. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. In this instance, the Democrats’ lack of noise can be seen as strategic: they do not want Trump to play the witch hunt card on this topic, preferring to let him sink in his own stew. Of course, he has played it anyway. Recognizing all of this, House Speaker Mike Johnson punted on third down by sending the House of Representatives on its August recess a week early. No doubt this was intended to give Trump time to influence enough House members to see the issue his way, even though Attorney General Pam Bondi has already confirmed that Trump’s name appears on Epstein’s list, indeed multiple times. There is a sad and frightening aspect to this drama. Trump has shown arrogant disdain and careless disregard for his Constitutional responsibilities ever since he was re-elected in 2024. Whether it be sending military troops into domestic urban zones without proper authorization from Congress (or that State’s Governor), incarcerating people into concentration camps without any due process, or having anonymous thugs manhandle duly elected members of Congress while they exercise their legitimate oversight responsibilities, fascist authoritarianism is on the rise and everywhere to be seen. Add to this the huge budget boost given to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and we have a veritable Gestapo on our hands. Already, ICE is handing out forty-five thousand dollar signing bonus payments to new recruits added to six figure salaries. Most public school teachers are paid less than half of that. Kara Walker, “The moral arc of history ideally bends towards justice but just as soon as not curves back around toward barbarism, sadism, and unrestrained chaos,” 2010, graphite and pastel on paper, 72 x 114”. Courtesy of Sikkema, Jenkins & Co., New York, © Kara Walker. House Republicans have been blindly indifferent to the Trump administration’s many mendacities, but there is something unique about the Epstein files that has roused (some of) them to action. Conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson has been leading the charge, exerting influence on the ten Republican House members insisting that the files be released. No doubt, they are also influenced by the good old moral revulsion for pedophilia. But there are other odd nuances to the story that bear closer scrutiny. One of them is the lingering question, “What did the Biden administration do about the Epstein files during its four years in office?” Answer: nothing. But why? The conventional assumption is that the files could incriminate as many Democrats as Republicans, not to mention their mega-donors. Bill Clinton was also reported to have traveled on the Lolita express multiple times. This line of explanation is a little on the simple side, but not entirely without basis. It does not account for the fact that, on July 24th and 25th, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche visited the incarcerated Ms. Maxwell, reportedly to work out the details of a potential presidential pardon (or reduced sentence) in exchange for testimony, no doubt fabricated, that might exonerate Trump. And what of the criminal damage done to hundreds of underage children? They thus far remain on the fringe of the story. CumWizard69420, “Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein,” 2022, watercolor on paper, 11 x 15”. Courtesy of the artist. The view of a bigger picture has many more dots to connect, some having been relegated to cold case status. This is where we reach back to the suspicious circumstances surrounding Robert Maxwell’s death. Even though Maxwell had been a member of British Parliament, just prior to his death it was revealed that he was a longtime asset of the Israeli Mossad. Although Maxwell was given a hero’s burial in Israel, the extent of his Mossad involvement has been disputed, as has that of Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein became involved with Maxwell starting about 1988, when his career as a “financier” began to take off despite his not having much in the way of documented financial acumen (in 1977 he was working as a high-school math teacher). It is also the time when he was closest to Trump, who was destined to file business bankruptcies four times in the ensuing decade, always landing on his financial feet soon thereafter, as has been well documented. All of this substantiates the possibility that Epstein was operating his island as part of an international blackmail and extortion scheme, working as an agent of one or more spy agencies, with Mossad at the top of the list. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet has dismissed that theory out of hand, but we also know that Epstein was closely linked to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who had extensive and regular contact with Epstein in 2015 and beyond. So, in the case of the Epstein client list, there may be much more than meets the eye. Most likely, we will never know how much of that roster we will ever see. Given that likelihood, beyond MAGA-land we should assume the worst, which may still not be as bad as it was. J.M.W. Turner, “The Deluge,” 1805, oil on canvas, 56 1/4 x 92 3/4”. Courtesy of the Tate, London. Another recommendation is that we do not let the media frenzy about the Epstein files distract us from the dozen or so major news stories that have been pushed aside. There are still wars going on in Gaza and Ukraine, and plenty of economic instability masked by the continued rise in the oversold equity markets. ICE is still running amok, and climate catastrophes are ravaging the Southeast and Midwest, not to mention other parts of the globe. Texas and other conservative-controlled states are redrawing congressional districts to the advantage of Republicans, without proportionate pushback from Democrats or the news media. The list goes on, as it always does. Mid-term elections are 15 months away. Mark Van Proyen  has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for  Art in America . In 2025 he relaunched Square Cylinder  with Bill Lasarow and DeWitt Cheng. Photo credit: Mary Ijichi

by Bill Lasarow August 2, 2025 Georges de la Tour, “The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame,” c. 1638-40, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Nearly a year before it reopens, and the images of LACMA’s newly built David Geffen Galleries have me pining to bring back the old LACMA, or at least a very different new one. I’m old enough to recall William Pereira’s blue collar Ahmanson building. That truly unattractive fountain announced its presence, and the interior’s central atrium featured a vast, empty space that pushed all of the galleries so far out as to make the collection feel like an afterthought. By 1975 the fountain was replaced with a sculpture garden. After that, filling in the atrium allowed for a lot more art to be shown. So that’s what an art museum does! Fortunately, the museum’s current Wilshire Boulevard campus never sunk into the adjacent tar pits as many imagined it would at the first major earthquake (we’ve had two since it opened in 1965). The museum was originally consigned to the basement of the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. Mom and her friends were regulars at the Wilshire and Fairfax location — not to consume culture, but to shop at the May Company. That building’s architect, Albert C. Martin, who also designed L.A. City Hall, exemplified the so-called Streamline Moderne style. May Company’s gold cylinder feature on the northeast corner, so awkward as to be memorable, announced you were entering the Miracle Mile much more emphatically than any ordinary sign could have. Now the Saban Building and home to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the survival of Martin’s original gives it an ironic last laugh. As network TV and movie theaters slowly fade away, for someone my age that ridiculous but lovable gewgaw planted on a busy street corner serves as a reminder of a world that no longer exists. I’m grateful that the Saban Building still stands, if only for a little while longer. Those memories are sweet. For younger generations the more likely response may be “what the fuck is that?” View of the new Geffen Galleries from Wilshire Boulevard, facing west. Chris Burden's "Urban Light" is to the left. Courtesy of © Museum Associates/LACMA. My point is that perfection of both design and function has long eluded L.A.’s greatest public art museum, maybe by a country mile. So the present-day trustees, in their wisdom, basically decided to scrap the whole damned thing and start over. But the result strikes me as an aesthetic and civic disaster waiting to happen. I sure hope I am wrong about this new amoeba motel. But these eyes can see and the mind still works reasonably well, and I fear that I am right. Exterior view of the 1965 campus by William Pereira. The view of the original central plaza, which hovered above shallow pools, in 1965. Courtesy of © Museum Associates/LACMA. Once the works from the collection receive their first installation and temporary exhibitions begin a new outline of curatorial purpose, such negative impressions of the empty building may evaporate. We can only hope. But I fear otherwise. Having driven east and west along the Miracle Mile for my entire life, I began to imagine the museum expanding across Wilshire to make use of a nondescript parking lot the day after the museum’s underground Pritzker Garage opened in 2010. An addition spanning Wilshire Boulevard always made sense, particularly with the new Metro station opening later this year. With the Fascist Party currently in control of the federal government and the not-so Supreme Court, we are seeing active stirrings of a highly politicized and aesthetically barren return to a Neo-Classical style that fairly announces its imperial pretensions. I guess we must at least take comfort that Peter Zumthor’s failed solution is still far better than any neo-Speer monstrosities to come. The parade of 20th-century modernist styles is to be thanked for having marched us out of the previous oligarch-ridden Gilded Age. This 21st-century model nonetheless suggests that we have reached a low point in that quest for the new. If the political overwhelms the cultural, Zumthor’s vision may end up looking far more adventurous, even rebellious, than it really is. Or it may descend into the aesthetic demiworld of regimentation and repression that caters to the very worst impulses of fascism. Image of LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor designed David Geffen Galleries, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times. What my eyes see, particularly driving west, uncomfortably resembles the kind of apartment complex I rented in my student days. The new LACMA is hardly a statement of budgetary restraint or populist emotion; those of us who follow such things know the price tag. The fusion of brutalist minimalism and its relentless concrete with the gauzy lyricism of organic expressionism is a too obvious hedging of an aesthetic bet. Radical it most certainly is not. It’s a rehash that promises to feel outdated from the day it opens. And if the museum should ever need to expand vertically, the new building, and squat as it is it has one e-nor-miss footprint, can only stand in the way unless it is, in its turn, entirely demolished. The perimeter curving corridors face floor to ceiling windows. Are we to be seduced by the views of Wilshire Boulevard that will inevitably compete with the art, whatever art is hung on the corridor walls directly opposite? And those street views lack an inspiring expanse. Nor do they even present the Miracle Mile corridor much differently from what we see in our cars. I’ll take instead the escalator ride up nearby Beverly Center and the unfolding view of the Hollywood Hills it affords any day of the week. Image of LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor designed David Geffen Galleries, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times. The extended overhangs along the bank of windows repeat the quote of the kind of low budget architecture that had its day in the decades immediately after World War II, now viewed from inside the building. They mean to allow light in and simultaneously reduce the glare. That diffusion is clearly intended to be a strength. But isn’t the main function of such windows to let in the light? So which way shall we have it? We are given to understand that the potential for any long-term damage caused by the hours of the most direct sunlight will be controlled with the installation of drapes or blinds, thus negating, at least at certain times of the day, even that bit of seduction, and adding a distracting visual element. Then there will be the ever-present option either to look at the art or turn in the opposite direction toward the Big Screen. The prospect that the views of Wilshire Boulevard become the signature image representing the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago induce a sinking feeling. At least there remains Chris Burden’s installation of 202 restored street lamps, “Urban Light.” The Director’s plan for the permanent collection is to liberate, or perhaps subjugate, it to regular rotations. Aside from the constant patching of the concrete (which may turn out to be one of the most satisfying visual details of the entire exercise because it will evolve organically), my heart goes out to LACMA’s lighting designers. Perhaps over time both the pattern and presentation of the collection will settle in. Regular museum visitors may be rendered distraught for some years before that happens, however, as they search for beloved works which, once found, may or may not work as well in location A as in location B. Image of LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor designed David Geffen Galleries, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times. Then there are the interior galleries, which feel compressed and oppressively weighty in spite of their high ceilings, which come into the world bereft of natural ceiling or clerestory light. Particularly the smaller galleries, which when empty feel like dungeons, lacking any feeling of liberating openness. I anticipate many great works will sink into the expanse of monochromatic gray and weight of concrete. It is tiresome just to think about. Perhaps once the collection selections are installed the hue and consistency of the background will favor many of the works. The endless gray neutrals of concrete will perhaps prove an asset to how we see and understand beloved masterworks from the Olmec Stone Heads to Georges de la Tour to René Magritte to Robert Irwin. But all must either be attached to these unfriendly walls via ball and chain or stand in the gallery space before them. Robert Irwin, “Untitled,” 1966-67, acrylic on shaped aluminum, 60” diameter. Courtesy of LACMA. The timeline for this new architecture feels flipped on its head. The four buildings that were demolished to make way for Mr. Zumthor’s fiasco-to-be — the Ahmanson, the Hammer, Art of the Americas, and the Leo S. Bing Center — could have been updated and poised to welcome a new addition, not removed entirely for what is about to be foisted on Los Angeles. So, can we go back to the drawing board and take a mulligan? That’s about as likely as getting a redo of the 2024 election. Bill Lasarow , Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the  Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles  (1987); and  Visual Art Source  (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain .  In 2025 he relaunched Square Cylinder  with Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

by Liz Goldner July 1, 2025 Violins from Mr. Weinstein’s collection on display in his workshop. Many in his collection had been owned by Jews during the Holocaust. Courtesy of Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Violins of Hope is a collection of magnificently restored violins that had originally belonged to European Jews before and during the Holocaust. The violins, repaired by two Israeli luthiers  (violin repairmen), are used in recitals and concerts around the world to honor those silenced by the Nazis.   Spearheading the project is Tel Aviv-based Avshi Weinstein who founded it with his late father Amnon Weinstein. who passed away in 2024. The father and son team have been bringing the violins to concert level quality for decades. Their mission is to bring back to life the voices of those who lost their lives during the Holocaust through the playing of violins, violas and cellos. Their concerts convey the message of hope and transformation through music. Dennis Kim, Pacific Symphony Concertmaster with members of the symphony’s string section at University Synagogue, Irviine, CA. All images courtesy, Philharmonic Society of Orange County. Violins of Hope traveled to Orange County during the first half of June. They were played in four museums, a university, a concert hall and a synagogue. Performers at these events included virtuoso Pinchas Zukerman and Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim. At each event, sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, dozens of magnificent instruments were displayed in the manner of fine art. The events also included informal talks by Avshi Weinstein about the origins of select violins, the people who played them, how they found their way to Amnon’s Tel Aviv workshop after World War II, and Weinstein family stories. The more than 60 Violins of Hope have been played throughout the world, including Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Paris, Cleveland, Nashville, Berlin (celebrating the anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp liberation), Mexico City, Guadalupe and Calgary. The project is next scheduled to travel to Colorado for a series of August events. Avshi Weinstein, Co-Founder, Violins of Hope. The history of Violins of Hope in fact features three generations of Israeli men, all of whom suffered personal losses of relatives, friends and acquaintances to the Holocaust, and who transformed those losses into hope. Amnon’s father Moshe, the first luthier in the family, was in his Tel Aviv workshop soon after the war ended when he was informed that up to 400 of his relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust.   Amnon and Moshe also witnessed the immense suffering of Holocaust survivors in their own homes, communities and businesses. Many survivors moved to Tel Aviv soon after the war ended, and Moshe generously welcomed several of them to stay in his Tel Aviv apartment as they recovered from their death camp horrors. Amnon, born in 1939, was still a child when he witnessed Holocaust survivors grapple with their demons. He was haunted for years by what he saw and the stories he heard from them. Niv Ashkenazi on Violin, Jason Stoll on Piano at University Synagogue, Irvine, CA. In the 1980s a man with an Auschwitz prisoner identification tattoo arrived at Amnon’s workshop with a severely damaged violin that he wanted repaired. Amnon nearly turned him away, but after agreeing to repair it, he discovered within it ashes from the crematoria of Auschwitz. Other Holocaust survivors began bringing their instruments for repair or to donate; these Amnon generously accepted and repaired. He also began documenting the survivors’ stories. In the 1990s, he spoke about his experiences with the violins on the radio and requested that people bring him more instruments for repair or donation. Many showed up at his workshop with violins that they had stored away, relating to him their own and their families’ stories about the death camps. In his book, “Violins of Hope” (2014), James A. Grymes wrote that Amnon had finally decided to reclaim his lost heritage, including violin playing, which has been an important aspect of Jewish culture for hundreds of years. He also met with members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, many themselves Holocaust survivors. Visitors viewing Violins of Hope on Display at Hilbert Museum of California Art, Orange, CA. In the early 2000s, Amnon and Avshi began touring the world with their violins. In 2006, at a concert in Paris, a friend suggested that they name their project, “Violins of Hope.” During those concerts, Amnon began relating to the audience his own and others’ experiences during the Holocaust. Avshi continues to follow his father’s mission, telling many compelling stories about the Holocaust and about his family. One story that he often relates regards the 2008 Film, “Defiance,” which dramatized the real-life adventures of four Jewish resistance fighters in 1941. They hid out in a forest to escape the Nazis, gathered to them many other resistance fighters, and built a school and nursery in their compound. The film’s plot was based on the story of Amnon Weinstein’s father-in-law. In 1975, Amnon married Assaela Bielski Gershoni, whose father was one of the resistance fighters profiled in that film. The story of the Weinsteins and of their Violins of Hope project is more than just a compelling drama, but a moral vision still in the early stages of being shared with the world. Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

by Margaret Hawkins July 1, 2025 Julien Creuzet, Venice Biennale installation, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Recently a six-year-old girl named Sophie was taken to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago for the first time. Standing in front of a hanging sculpture by French artist Julien Creuzet, she asked the question that must ring most often in the minds of museum goers everywhere: “Why is this an art?”   The question is brilliant, always appropriate. Its brilliance is two-fold. Fold 1: Why do we regard some objects art and the same or similar ones we do not?  Aesthetics , you might answer, but that would be a dodge. Why is Tracy Emin’s unmade bed art and mine is not? Is it more beautiful than mine, or rather, more aesthetically ugly? Ditto, readymades? Is art only art in context and isn’t that terribly classist while pretending not to be? And haven’t we agreed by now that art is for the people? Is every site of disarray involving swirling sheets potentially a work of art? Is everything art, placed in the proper well-lit venue?   Tracy Emin, “My Bed,” 1998. Courtesy of the Tate, London. Here's another question. Can something that is not recognizable as an expressive interpretation of something else be called art? The answer in the world of visual art is yes, of course. We agreed on this well over a century ago. But definitions vary from form to form. Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Wolcott was also an accomplished painter, albeit a traditional one who favored seaside views of his native St. Lucia. He clung fiercely to the idea that the job of art is to represent and interpret the real world. For him, mainly a poet and playwright, this meant representing events, ideas, and emotions with words. Which makes sense, for a writer. To most writers, beautiful words without meaning and subject are pointless. So, Fold 2: Intuitive expert at grammar that she is, six-year-old Sophie placed an article in front of her noun, thereby managing also to interrogate the idea of meaningful distinctions between forms.  Robert Rauschenberg, “Bed,” 1955, oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet on wood supports, 75 1/4 x 31 1/2 x 8”. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I am glad these thoughts are being entertained by the youngest generation of Americans. I’m grateful they have enough energy to think about art, and not only about whether there will ever be anything for them to eat, as children today must in some parts of the world. Which brings us to the thoughts of the oldest generation and Donald Trump, art critic, invader, and butcherer of international aid. Our president, who recently celebrated his 79th birthday with a military parade and has established himself a master of public spectacle, has decreed himself arbiter of art. He now decides what plays at the Kennedy Center and what hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. He has expressed a strong preference for realism and patriotic subject matter, in paintings (especially of himself) and in sculpture (as in the parade of statues he has ordered up with NEA money).   It’s amazing to some that Trump is so interested in art, but he at least feigned such interested as far back as when he hung out at Studio 54 and earned a one-line dismissal from Andy Warhol. But it shows how much he knows and cares about gaining power over people’s thoughts. He senses correctly that art, and the freedom it confers, is a powerful rival for hearts and minds. He wants to win, and to do that he’s trying to control human imagination.    Fortunately, in the long run, that’s not possible. Forcing ideas on people is the exact opposite of art. The whole point of art, as much as, indeed more than beauty, is freedom. Freedom plus beauty equals art. To rein in national art institutions and hobble them with capricious rules about what they can and cannot display is not only bad and dangerous. It’s stupid. Stupid because it’s boring and will not hold our attention. Add imagination to freedom and beauty, though, and you get good art, art that people actually want to look at and think about. Add a bunch of laws and policies and bureaucrats and tanks in the streets and old-timey tropes and you get art that is devoid of substances and complexity — you end up with propaganda. What is Trump’s motivation for trying to control our imaginations? What does he want to win? Our love! He wants to make us love him. It’s why he’s so slippery. He’ll do anything to keep us paying attention to him. He keeps changing tacks, changing sides, alternately surprising us with roses and threats. Tim O’Brien, best known as the author of the Vietnam War-themed novel “The Things They Carried,” wrote about the psychology of politics in his fifth novel, “In the Lake of the Woods.” He tells the story of a charismatic but troubled veteran whose fast-track political career craters when secrets emerge about his involvement in the My Lai massacre. Summarizing the psychology of those who run for office, O’Brien writes this: “Politics is a love thermometer.”   The book was published in 1994, but that line could have been written about our current president in 2025. It explains his erratic behavior, based not on principle or pragmatism but on personal need. He’s betting that leading us to the brink of war, then snatching us back, will make him a hero. Everybody loves a hero.   Still from “In the Lake of the Woods,” 1996 film based on Tim O’Brien’s book of the same title. O’Brien’s book is sad and gruesome, not only for the victims. The grunts conscripted to fight a war staged by cynical politicians lost their lives, too, if without literally dying. Now here we are at risk of entering another war.     I keep returning to Sophie’s question, which implies another: Why does art matter? The answer is that it may be the most freeing form of resistance. Margaret Hawkins  is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit  Margaret Hawkins’ website.

by DeWitt Cheng July 1, 2025 Hands Off Democracy/No King Ocean Beach The tide is turning, finally. The basic numbers: over 2,000 demonstrations, 5-6 million Americans came out to peacefully air their grievances. Many revealed their elite educational background by showing they still know how to participate in a card section. GOP Party Poopers Stayed Away in Droves 50,000 celebrants can’t be wrong; that’s way more than 5 million because he told us it is. We left him alone to play with his toys and new friends. Tank Man Graveyard Dead No more Mister Nice Guys, human scum! Try to rain on his parade and you will be met with overwhelming force and a cabinet that knows how to perform in choral harmony. Heavy Force Promised for Lèse-Majesté The emperor was so well prepared for attacks on his agents of deportation. Turns out that the claim of an revolt was an excuse to begin a military occupation of the blue city, leaving his militia free to squash nannies and strawberry pickers. You were forewarned. Making The World Safe … for whom exactly? It just has to be done every now and then, preferably before elections, so why now? His little buddy Bibi softened the target enough to the gladiator cosplay to waltz in and gobble up as much of the credit as possible for as little result as was produced. DeWitt Cheng  is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020.

by Bill Lasarow July 1, 2025 Vik Muniz, “The Tower of Babel, after Pieter Brueghel (Gordian Puzzles),” 2007, photograph of puzzle pieces, 72 x 96 1/2”. Courtesy of the artist. A defining feature of Trump34’s political method has long been to jump to conclusions based on nothing approaching due diligence. But there is an inevitable second part to it, because usually (not always  to be fair — which he never, ever is himself), his conclusions are wrong. Once proven wrong he dispenses blame and returns to the original falsehood. The third part of this formula is that the false conclusion is not just repeated, it is repeated performatively with increasing insistence. It is this last that is his true talent, and it is a talent that has been honed for more than 40 years. He may have been taught how to do this by the truly malign Roy Cohn, who first tried to obliterate democracy through the vehicle of Joseph McCarthy; but today Trump34 is the unsurpassed master of this style of deception. It is the most singular reason he once more occupies the White House. Today — along with his assault on immigrants living in America and his budget bill now before the Senate — the bombing of Iran once again proves it his aggressive know-nothingism is his primary weapon in transforming the American presidency into a dictatorial perversion of the Founders’ vision. Johannes Vermeer, “The Art of Painting,” 1666, oil on canvas. The irony is that it is also the source of his greatest vulnerability. Let’s review how this is now playing out in the days since the bombing of three major Iranian nuclear facilities. On June 22nd, less than one week ago as this is written, it followed a brief bombing campaign by Israel’s Netanyahu government and at the Prime Minister’s urging, our largest non-nuclear warheads were loaded on a squadron of B-2 Spirit bombers, which dropped their payloads on three underground nuclear facilities. They returned to base with no loss of American lives or hardware. From a tactical standpoint this was a successful operation. Reniel Del Rosario, “Gun Depot” from installation of “Guns, Beauty, Donuts,” 2025. Courtesy of Gallery 16 San Francisco. Also, consider the regime that we attacked. The Islamic Republic of Iran has wielded a barbaric single-party dictatorial theocracy over 90 million Persians for nearly half a century. It is overtly antisemitic and anti-American, and no American or Israeli government has failed to recognize this — though to listen to Trump34 tell his fictitious tale you would think at least the three Democratic presidents during that time collaborated with the mullahs. Thus the explicit snap judgement he delivered on June 23rd, ahead of any assessment based on actual evidence, sounded like great news: total obliteration of Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity along with all of its high grade material. This declaration was just as fact free as so many of Trump34’s other past leaps of self-serving faith, starting with the insurrection of January 6, 2021. What crosses the usual ethical and legal red lines is that once facts start to emerge, the original wishful thinking does not change. It becomes dogma and the very yardstick of personal loyalty by subordinates. Kent Monkman, “Resurgence of the People,” 2019, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 264”. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Let me share my personal view of the Islamic Republic, just to be clear: the world would be better off without it. They deserve what both Trump34 and Netanyahu say they delivered, and therefore just hearing those words uttered, in spite of everything done to destroy our Founders’ enlightenment-era project, felt wonderful. My emotional inner voice was all: Gosh, I sure hope that “obliteration” is what occurred. My artist’s eye, however, told me: This looks and sounds all too familiar, let’s wait and see. There is no doubt that the Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), along with Tomahawk missiles released massive destructive power, and that they carried out the strategy laid out by Netanyahu. The damage done to each facility was undoubtedly severe. Mark Bradford, “Mithra”, 2008, plywood, shipping containers, steel, 840 x 240 x 300”. Courtesy Mark Bradford and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Joshua White / JWPictures. But that is not what Trump34 has settled on as his narrative. It is that the facilities were obliterated, that the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambition has been reset back to square one. And now, as a result, the U.S. president becomes the great peacemaker, calling for a full ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and the promise that the U.S. will be generous with a vanquished enemy. Needless to say, starting with reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA, which has not been permitted access to directly inspect the bombing sites), the truth is that the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program was extensive but limited, nothing more, since the damage is underground. Further, satellite images have widely reported that a convoy of trucks appeared at the Fordow facility days prior to the bombing mission. The likelihood that the facilities were evacuated along with fissile material and centrifuges may be a matter of speculation, but Iran’s subsequent response, their bombing of an American air base in Qatar that followed their warning to clear out personnel, suggests that a regime that truly belongs in history’s dustbin instead sees the past few weeks as a temporary setback, not an existential threat. Bill Lasarow , Publisher and Editor, is a longtime practicing artist, independent publisher, and community activist. He founded or co-founded ArtScene Digest to Visual Art in Southern California (1982); the  Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles  (1987); and  Visual Art Source  (2009). He is also the founder (2021) of The Democracy Chain .  In 2025 he launched Square Cylinder  with Mark Van Proyen and DeWitt Cheng.

Ginny Stanford, “Portrait of The First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,” 2006, acrylic on canvas, gold leaf on wood, 108 x 81 1/4”. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. On March 28th the world awoke to a refreshing op-ed in the New York Times. Hillary Clinton, who has been mostly absent from the political stage in recent years, skewered the by-now infamous Signal group chat in which highly placed government officials discussed their plan to bomb the Houthis in Yemen. Incredibly, the text chain included not only Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, but also, by some fluke, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Discussing war plans on a platform as insecure as Signal, even without copying a journalist, constituted a monstrous security breach that endangered the lives of American servicemen and women.     Clinton was uniquely qualified to comment. Investigation into her own milder security breaches probably lost her the 2016 election. That exaggerated scandal inspired multitudes to chant “Lock her up!” every time her name was mentioned. The refrain seems even more ridiculous now. (Note that the same crowd is not calling to lock up Hegseth, despite additional, earlier accusations of sexual assault.)   Andres Serrano, from exhibition “The Game: All Things Trump,” 2019, fake dollar bill signed by Donald Trump showing Hillary Clinton behind bars. Courtesy of the artist. For a moment, the old acerbic, hyper-articulate Clinton resurfaced. Her brief return made me remember why I love her, despite all the reasons not to. For starters, she’s such a good writer. Her lead: It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me it’s the stupidity.    I miss that voice. Hearing it again pains me, makes me think what a waste it was, and is, to lose the brilliant leadership she offered. It was there for the taking but for James Comey’s last minute reopening of the investigation into her emails, plus maybe a missed campaign stop in Michigan and qualms about her “style.” (Read: being female.) Sure, she had baggage and not only her emails; but her opponent’s baggage exceeded hers many times over. In retrospect, Clinton’s seems like the lightest of carry-ons compared to what came next.  Video clip of UNCF  public service announcement: A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Reading her piece, a particular sorrow descended on me at the thought of what might have been. It wasn’t only sorrow for every terrible thing that’s happened in this country since Trump’s second inauguration, though there’s that. It’s also sorrow for the waste of one woman’s full potential, what it could have meant for the world. Maybe, too, my pain was compounded by the project I was working on that morning. I’m revising a book about my sister, whose life was derailed by schizophrenia. Reliving that story makes me think of the derailed lives of so many that have been sidelined and silenced, especially women. But schizophrenia is an incurable disease that results in lives that don’t fully bloom. It’s terrible to think that natural human ability is far more often sidelined by choice and prejudice — racism, antisemitism, sexism.   Of course, people have treated each other unfairly throughout history. Power and opportunity have never been distributed evenly. And Clinton has lived a life of extraordinary privilege and accomplishment. Being underestimated is nothing compared to the cruelties visited on whole populations, few of them among the upper class. But her unique case makes me think of women in general, possibly the single largest brain-drain in history. Hillary contributed much. But as president of the United States, she could have done far, far more, for far, far many more of our own citizens and people throughout the world.   Some will remember the public service announcements from the United Negro College Fund that ran on TV in the 1970s and ‘80s: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” It still holds true.  Yoko Ono as a witch with John Lennon at the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, 1968. Hillary’s brief reappearance recalls another controversial and powerful woman who has returned to the news lately, a woman also connected to an even more powerful man. Yoko Ono, now 92, is seemingly everywhere these days. Her retrospective, “Music of the Mind,” closed at the Tate Modern last fall and is coming to Chicago in October 2025. “One to One,” a new documentary about her life with John Lennon has just been released in a few theaters and will be available on streaming soon. Fifty years after her villainization, Ono’s image is under repair.    Ono, you will remember, was castigated for supposedly breaking up the Beatles. She was derided for stridency and aggressiveness and weirdness, for being a conniving, ambitious woman who emasculated and domesticated her rock star husband. She was characterized as a kind of sorceress who put Lennon under an evil spell. The documentary argues that, if anything, Ono was responsible for delaying the band’s inevitable breakup. She grounded Lennon, it claims. If not for her, he would have left sooner.  “One to One” presents a picture that was always clear to anyone who followed their story. Lennon wasn’t kidnapped. He chose to be with Ono. He loved her talent. He wanted a creative partner, not another fan. In many ways he was a true male feminist, despite his myriad personal problems. He wasn’t especially nice. But he always defended her. He acknowledged her as his collaborator, an edgy and successful artist before she ever met Lennon, who was seven years her junior. Perhaps it was this level of talent and success that was most threatening to a public accustomed to seeing male rock stars hanging out with smitten groupies. Race prejudice didn’t help.  Francisco Goya, “Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat),” 1821-23, oil on canvas, 55 3/8 x 171 1/2”. Courtesy the Museum del Prado, Madrid. But that was 50 years ago. Not enough has changed. A woman like Ono was dangerous then and she still is — too smart, too independent, too powerful, too outspoken. In a promo clip advertising the movie’s release, young Ono sums up public sentiment: “I used to be considered a bitch in this society. Since I met John, I’ve been upgraded to witch.”     Right. Blame a woman’s talent on dark supernatural powers. Promote bitches to witches. We know what happens to them. Margaret Hawkins  is a writer, critic and educator. Her books include “Lydia’s Party” (2015), “How We Got Barb Back” (2011) a memoir about family mental illness, and others. She wrote a column about art for the Chicago Sun-Times, was Chicago correspondent for ARTnews, and has written for a number of other publications including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Art & Antiques and Fabrik. She teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Loyola University. Visit  Margaret Hawkins’ website.