How To Cut A Pomegranates

Politics of the visual

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

In this photograph by Sonia Jabbar, Hajra Begum of Bandipora holds a framed photograph of her four sons killed in Kashmir and another who disappeared in 1990.

IF the common-sense saying “Seeing is believing” is anything to go by, the visual arts play an important role in making one believe in what an artist chooses to express or even question such a belief. It was this quality of art that led Okakura Tenshin, the founder of the Nihonga (roughly translated, swadeshi) school of art in Japan, to say, “Art does not exist without being regarded as art, in other words without a discourse on itself.” So, as a product of its own discursive practices, it is political. This view, expressed, in his book Ideals of the East (1903), was the final challenge to the 19th century Romantic slogan of Art for Art's Sake, held by Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire and even Alexander Pushkin.

The political content of the slogan was clearly explained by none other than the Russian aestheticist and philosophical theorist G.V. Plekhanov, who pointed out how “the belief in Art for Art's Sake arises whenever the artist is out of harmony with his social environment”. So, we find that both from the position of a renaissance Asiatic idealism and from European Marxism, by the turn of the 20th century the political character of art was no longer in doubt.

Pakistani photographer Salima Hashmi catches the magic of the hand-driven wheel in a curious blend of the past and the present.

The aesthetic battle then was about how this character was to be expressed in art. Okada Tatsuo, the Japanese critical thinker, made it clear in the mid 1920s that “art cannot become the fuse for a social revolution, nor an individual revolution, nor a revolution in the life of the masses”. Art as visual communication could indeed be a witness. It could evoke feelings about certain events or positions. But in the last resort, the viewer is free to decide on his own. Artists have used this capacity very effectively. For instance, in Francisco Goya's “Third of May”, machine-like faceless French troops of Napoleon's army shoot visually powerful unarmed Spanish patriots, one of them reminiscent of a crucified Christ. It is interesting how around the same time, 1819, we have Theodore Gericault's “The Raft of the Medusa”, evoking the 150 victims whom the captain and officers of the French ship of the same name left on a raft to die off the coast of West Africa while they escaped on lifeboats themselves. Both works, on two sides of the border, attacked the callous attitude of those in control to those they oppressed and those they exploited as “cannon fodder”, both at home and abroad. The message comes across clearly as the works are not only aesthetically powerful but also, when we put them together, give us the understanding of a similar situation on both sides of the border. This reflects how the works carry a feel of genuine objectivity.

Crunchy Catholic Momma: Tutorial tuesday: How to cut a pomegranate ...

Yeah I am busted.  I have purchased non-local non-seasonal fruit at the store.  I had to have it but I can stop whenever I want to.  Pomegranates are actually a local fruit but are not ready until fall here.  My own pomegranate trees only still have a few flowers on them. I just needed some little rubies for my salad and if you have ever tried a pomegranate you will understand my deviance. I am a homeschooling mom of 8 wonderful children here on earth and 2 in heaven. We live on a small farm called Moss Flower Farm, where we raise chickens, ducks, fish and a miniature milk cow and tend to an orchard and gardens where we grow alot of the herbs, fruits and veggies we consume. We work hard everyday at reskilling ourselves and getting back to living a simpler more natural life. I believe that if we each take responsibility for ourselves, where our food comes from, where we spend our money, instead of depending on our government, pharmaceutical and retailing companies, then we can start to reverse the things that are not right with our society. One person at a time, one family at a time. None of us are experts for most of us have lost the art of self-reliancy but I am inspired by those people who are trying to figure it out also. As for me, besides the hats I wear as a mom and executive housewife, I am by trade a cake designer as well as crafter, farm hand, herbalist and real food foodie. I hope my blog will be of help to you in achieving your goals.

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