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In today’s edition:
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight- An abstract look at spring, and a painfully concrete one at Rafah
- Don’t shoot the standardized-test messenger
- Elon Musk wants to be a MAGA contractor (but not really a philanthropist)
Let this be your first minute of spring
I can’t much describe for you visual artist Amy Sillman’s minute-long masterpiece “Spring: Abstraction as ruin,” because what I see is going to be very different from what you will see. This is the beauty of abstract art.
A very basic primer, from Sillman herself: “Spring,” created for Post Opinions to mark the coming of the season, is a “one-minute-long animated piece made up of 300 drawings of a quasi-torso struggling to establish its own outlines amid a bunch of garbled calligraphy, set to a slapstick score by my friend, the artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld.”
Now, watch it (with sound on!). I’ve watched it, like, six times already.
Each time, I come away with something new — sometimes whimsy, sometimes dread and sometimes, yes, Sillman’s intention of “the feeling in your gut as you turn away from the news and gaze downward in anguish at your own paunch. … That is how I have always thought of abstract art in general: the bandaging together of critical thinking and not-quite-knowing, the intimate labor of form that stays close to the body.”
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If you’re questioning the utility of pretty absurd abstract art in a world on fire, know you’re not alone. In her artist’s note, Sillman herself questions the power abstraction has to fix anything, beginning with a “barbaric war in Gaza.”
The dispatch of Atef Abu Saif, the minister of culture for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is anything but abstract. His recounting of his mother-in-law’s death in a tent in Rafah, the last refuge for displaced residents of the Gaza Strip, is immediate and raw.
“For the two weeks before,” Saif writes, “her skin seemed to have been decomposing, big blood-red stains all over her body.”
He explains the powerlessness he felt trying to get his loved one into a hospital so overwhelmed it was treating patients in nearby alleyways, as well as the grief of watching relative after relative die in Gaza.
Chaser: Sen. Chuck Schumer said out loud last week what many of Israel’s friends are thinking, E.J. Dionne writes: Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is no longer up to governing the country.
From Megan McArdle’s column on colleges’ return to standardized-test requirements, after many experimented with making them optional during the pandemic. Well, during and after.
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“The colleges’ policies continued long after we had excellent vaccines,” Megan writes, “in part because those tests gave us a lot of very unwelcome information” about disparities in test performance across class, race and gender.
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The truth, Megan says, is the SAT really is a decent indicator for how a kid will perform in college, no matter how much dubious data the naysayers massage to suggest otherwise. And it’s a problem, obviously, that there are such wide gaps in how students from different backgrounds perform.
But the fact that news is bad doesn’t mean we should blame the test that bears it.
More politics
Elon Musk appears to want to be the country’s No. 1 MAGA influencer. He also appears to want to be its No. 1 government contractor. Alas, Max Boot writes, trying to be both is a big problem.
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“He is presiding over a fire hose of falsehoods on X about familiar right-wing targets,” Max writes, “from undocumented immigrants to ‘the woke mind virus’ to President Biden … while reaping billions from Biden’s administration!”
And this doesn’t merely offend sensibilities; consider that Musk’s SpaceX operates the world’s largest constellation of satellites and a space-based broadband network. That has huge military, commercial and foreign-policy implications, Max points out.
What Musk, apparently, is not trying to do is give to charity in any meaningful way. Adam Lashinsky digs into the seedy fashion Musk has availed himself “of a section of the tax code that encourages rich people to be philanthropic in exchange for lowering their taxes” — while minimizing (or at least … optimizing) the actual philanthropy part.
Chaser: President Biden should push plug-in hybrids with his climate program, the Editorial Board writes, not just fully electric vehicles such as Tesla’s.
Smartest, fastest
- Natasha Sarin explains “the real reason” women are having fewer kids these days — and what to do about it.
- U.S. religious freedom effort gets an unwelcome message in Saudi Arabia, Colbert King reports.
- The House’s move against TikTok goes both too far and not far enough, Jen Rubin writes.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Abdominal art
Fortifies the belly with
Beep-boop abstraction
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
I can’t much describe for you visual artist Amy Sillman’s minute-long masterpiece “Spring: Abstraction as ruin,” because what I see is going to be very different from what you will see. This is the beauty of abstract art.
A very basic primer, from Sillman herself: “Spring,” created for Post Opinions to mark the coming of the season, is a “one-minute-long animated piece made up of 300 drawings of a quasi-torso struggling to establish its own outlines amid a bunch of garbled calligraphy, set to a slapstick score by my friend, the artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld.”
Now, watch it (with sound on!). I’ve watched it, like, six times already.
Each time, I come away with something new — sometimes whimsy, sometimes dread and sometimes, yes, Sillman’s intention of “the feeling in your gut as you turn away from the news and gaze downward in anguish at your own paunch. … That is how I have always thought of abstract art in general: the bandaging together of critical thinking and not-quite-knowing, the intimate labor of form that stays close to the body.”
If you’re questioning the utility of pretty absurd abstract art in a world on fire, know you’re not alone. In her artist’s note, Sillman herself questions the power abstraction has to fix anything, beginning with a “barbaric war in Gaza.”
The dispatch of Atef Abu Saif, the minister of culture for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is anything but abstract. His recounting of his mother-in-law’s death in a tent in Rafah, the last refuge for displaced residents of the Gaza Strip, is immediate and raw.
“For the two weeks before,” Saif writes, “her skin seemed to have been decomposing, big blood-red stains all over her body.”
He explains the powerlessness he felt trying to get his loved one into a hospital so overwhelmed it was treating patients in nearby alleyways, as well as the grief of watching relative after relative die in Gaza.
Chaser: Sen. Chuck Schumer said out loud last week what many of Israel’s friends are thinking, E.J. Dionne writes: Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is no longer up to governing the country.
From Megan McArdle’s column on colleges’ return to standardized-test requirements, after many experimented with making them optional during the pandemic. Well, during and after.
“The colleges’ policies continued long after we had excellent vaccines,” Megan writes, “in part because those tests gave us a lot of very unwelcome information” about disparities in test performance across class, race and gender.
The truth, Megan says, is the SAT really is a decent indicator for how a kid will perform in college, no matter how much dubious data the naysayers massage to suggest otherwise. And it’s a problem, obviously, that there are such wide gaps in how students from different backgrounds perform.
But the fact that news is bad doesn’t mean we should blame the test that bears it.
Elon Musk appears to want to be the country’s No. 1 MAGA influencer. He also appears to want to be its No. 1 government contractor. Alas, Max Boot writes, trying to be both is a big problem.
“He is presiding over a fire hose of falsehoods on X about familiar right-wing targets,” Max writes, “from undocumented immigrants to ‘the woke mind virus’ to President Biden … while reaping billions from Biden’s administration!”
And this doesn’t merely offend sensibilities; consider that Musk’s SpaceX operates the world’s largest constellation of satellites and a space-based broadband network. That has huge military, commercial and foreign-policy implications, Max points out.
What Musk, apparently, is not trying to do is give to charity in any meaningful way. Adam Lashinsky digs into the seedy fashion Musk has availed himself “of a section of the tax code that encourages rich people to be philanthropic in exchange for lowering their taxes” — while minimizing (or at least … optimizing) the actual philanthropy part.
Chaser: President Biden should push plug-in hybrids with his climate program, the Editorial Board writes, not just fully electric vehicles such as Tesla’s.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Abdominal art
Fortifies the belly with
Beep-boop abstraction
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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