BENVENUTI

WELCOME FIRST TIME VISITORS to postings on topics relating to a renaissance of the Renaissance. I have been called "the guy in the tricorne hat," but in reality I live fully in the present, and want our modern world to recover its capacity for Beauty. The best hope for this is the classical Humanist tradition of the Renaissance, and it's the signs of hope in that regard, or the impediments in the way, that I'll tackle as they come up. I co-edit with Taeho Paik the online Humanist Art Review and have a website showing my own work in the tradition, but here you'll find more topical matters addressed (and very, very few rants). Nothing collapses time and ambition like climbing a scaffolding to paint a new fresco in an ancient chapel, and having done precisely that I'm in a unique position to not only advocate or critique, but to hope.

EMULATION is a word that sums up our culture's missing link with the beauty of the past: neither humble imitation nor adventurous invention (although both have their place), emulatio means a competitive desire to equal or surpass previous achievements on their own terms. If there is an understanding of the past for which popular caricatures of servile imitators or romantic "creators" ill-prepare us, it is this, and laying out how we can recover its balance of respect and aspiration will be a lot of what I aim to address. I hope you'll find it rewarding reading.