Since we have to keep a certain social-distancing in real life, social contact online is important. I am inviting all to join me in online streaming "live" art history and art discussions. Skype (mark.staff.brandl), Facebook ("Mark Staff Brandl" or "Dr Great Art"), or Microsoft Teams. Contact me at Facebook Messenger or the Dr Great Art Email to set up a time.

A shorter episode, I call a "mini." This time with interesting little facts about Pablo Picasso.

A cursory breakdown of the first chapter from my in-the-works philosophy book for Bloomsbury Press for the "Aesthetics and Contemporary Art" Series, tentatively titled Visual Metaphor in Contemporary Art and Analytic Philosophy. A discussion of what metaphor is, in general, as a lead up to my philosophy of visual metaphor.

The Blues ethos as a strategy of persistence against melancholy. The Life Blues got me. I had a few slaps upside the head and they affect my art inspiration and production.

Immaturity, maturity, and the desire for the latter in art and the repression of that desire in culture at large.

An 'academicist' in the arts is someone who over-idealizes the art academy; one who follows the precepts taught there and insists others do so as well. Here is a short history of academicism and thoughts about the problem now.

Epistemology: the philosophical analysis of the search for knowledge. Does it exist in art? How and what can we know? Will it replace the ubiquitous ontological expressions in Postmodernism?

A short, yet gloomy, podcast for summer. My mother Ruth Staff Brandl passed away very recently at the age of 87. In this tough, sad time, my mind still approaches the world through art, yet I find it hard to find any comfort therein. In our artworld nowadays, it seems almost ridiculous. Grief, though, like most important and complex human emotions, has been the subject or inspiration for many great works of art

Her obituary is at: http://brandl-art-articles.blogspot.com/2019/07/ruth-staff-brandl-obituary.html

The creation of a term for one of the problems in the artworld, one very obvious around June each year when we all go to the Basel Art Fair, often the Venice Biennale, documenta etc.  A phrase for the convenient conformity of (small) minds to have identical tastes in order to achieve hegemony.

Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-French philosopher, offers in her theorization hope for resistance against ruling ideologies within artworks themselves. Artists can produce "openings" by creating metaphors through serious play, turning rules upside down, displaying pleasure, laughter and poetry which include thoughtful critique --- delightful, anarchistic, alternative visions that are embodiments of and empower other forms of resistance.