Scholars, help me out with this. How long do you consider scholarly work to remain viable? How long before it’s “out of date” — doomed to the dustbin of scholarship by newer scholarly ideas or methods?

A commentater on one of my recent posts chastised me for referring readers to H.D.F. Kitto’s The Greeks, originally published 58 years ago. She (I assume it was a she) scorned something written more than 50 years ago, wishing instead I’d referred to “a more recent work that takes account of advances in feminist theory and readings of history.” The comment reminded me of the wonderful British comedian Eddie Izzard saying — with exaggerated shock — in a routine about American tourists with a shallow sense of history marveling at the age of Art Deco buildings in Miami Beach: “Over 50 years ago! My God,...

Aha!

Revisionist art history rattles the way we see art. For example, when it turned out that Michelangelo didn't really paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while lying on his back, the way Charleton Heston did it, but rather standing up in a sort of leaning back pose, I don't know about you, but me? Wrecked the whole damn ceiling. C'mon. Even I know anybody could paint that silly thing if given the chance to stand up. The four-year-long lying down stint was the hard part, and it was the reason I liked the ceiling in the first place. Wasn't it yours?

Now comes the discovery (maybe, anyway) by a couple of German art historians that Van Gogh actually didn’t cut off his ear in a fit of romantic madness over a prostitute. Nope. Gauguin did it, using a sword, in a fit (or maybe in self-defense) while the two were squabbling. According to the two scholars, there are some oblique references...

A view of Menerbes from below, with the Dora Maar House on the left (photo by Laurie Fendrich)

Je suis ici. For those worried my French wasn't passable enough to get me to my destination, rest assured. I managed to get from the plane that arrived in Paris to the TGV that took me to Avignon, and from there to Menerbes. (OK, admittedly, the latter part was easy since I was picked up and driven by car.) And I've now settled into my room and studio at the Dora Maar House, where I'm doing a residency for the month of May.

I've been here four days now and have completed three drawings -- the result of some pretty long days of concentrated work in my studio. Earlier this morning I started the fourth drawing. This is the first time I’ve worked in a studio with windows on two sides — and clear windows, at that. (I keep them open most of the time, since the air is so clear and fresh.) In fact...

Here’s to the women of Kenya! Tired of the acrimonious divisiveness within Kenya’s coalition government, and afraid that their country is on the edge of a resurgence of the violence of 2008, a coalition of women’s groups known as the “G-10” has called for a week-long sex strike. The purpose is to urge the government (made up of men) to get its act together. The G-10 wants women all over the country to refuse to have sex for a week in order to get men to stop their endless bickering and get something done. What a gutsy, humorous, hopeful, impossible, and profoundly beautiful political move.

Since when do women anywhere in the world have the power to tell men to get out of the bedroom? Individual women have always had tricks to effect particular results with men, to be sure, but collective female power has always been...

Tomorrow I leave for France to do a month-long residency as a Brown Foundation Fellow at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes — a tiny cliff town in the south. I’m anticipating a pretty sweet time there — the place looks beautiful on the Web site. It’s a chance for me to work with complete concentration in the studio (I shipped my art supplies over about a month ago). My goal is to complete a suite of 60 drawings (if you knew my drawings, you’d know this is ambitious), some of them to be included in a retrospective exhibition that opens next year at Scripps College in California. I’ll be given a studio, and a bedroom and cooking privileges in the common kitchen of the house. From what I understand, there will be about a half dozen fellows, both Americans and Europeans, in the maison during my stay.

I see myself now, shopping in the petit village for légumes and fromage. For one blissful...

Everyone has flashes of insight while vacuuming, rolling over in the middle of the night, or driving. For example, while zooming along as a passenger in a car on New York’s West Side Highway this past week, on the stretch between 59th and 72nd Streets, I experienced a Eureka moment. I’d been thinking that Trump City, which seems as if it’s finally finished, was a pretty ugly place when the thought was suddenly displaced by a new one: All architecture, no matter how ugly, will eventually become a part of nature.

Although this sounds very Zen, what I was really thinking was that with time, even the depressing lineup of steel and glass that constitutes the ugly Trump City will no longer be ugly. Instead, it will merely be a part of the general landscape. It’ll become like a mountain range, or a row of boulders, or a cliff that’s always been there. A couple of bug-eyed tourists may notice...

Although Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Vermont are now permitting same-sex marriage, few gay activists are sitting back to count their blessings. A majority of states still define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. But with the general attitude (especially among younger people) toward marriage inching gradually toward a philosophy of “live and let live,” it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that within a decade or so all but the most diehard conservative states will permit same-sex marriage.

It’s deeply ironic, then, that even while gay couples are struggling for the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage, straight couples are avoiding it like the plague. The proportion of American households consisting of straight married couples — with or without children — has been in the minority...

Those against abortion consider it to be nothing but legalized murder. Those in favor of abortion rights consider abortion to be a matter of the right for a woman to control her own body. They believe that legally forcing a woman to carry every pregnancy through to birth gives the state unwarranted control over a woman’s body.

Questions for anti-abortion rights advocates

1. Why, since you believe that human life begins at conception and abortion is murder, don’t you lobby for tax laws granting families deductions for individuals from the moment of conception (i.e., if conception occurs in the calendar year previous to birth, the parents get a tax deduction dating from the year of conception)?

2. Why, since you believe that human life begins at conception and abortion is therefore murder, don’t you insist on women who miscarry being investigated, and perhaps prosecuted for murder, ...

Mostly, I turn to television when I want to watch murder mysteries or true crime stories. I’ve definitely never fallen for talent shows. The one time I watched American Idol I wanted the people to go away. I’m no judge, and slogging through wannabes while waiting for real talent to show up isn’t worth the excruciating embarrassment I feel for no-talents or semi-talents who insist on showing off. Even worse, I’m offended by the way talent shows offer spiritual redemption through show business. No one stands up to show off how they’ve taught themselves orthopedic surgery or math or carpentry. No, it’s always a performer passionately hugging a humungous round mike.

Catching the start of the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old unemployed Brit who was on last Saturday night’s Britain’s Got Talent (the British equivalent of American Idol), was different. When she first shows up, I saw...

In my day, freshman orientation was a rather sloppy deal. You arrived on campus a little early, set up your room, met some other freshmen and a couple of juniors and seniors, and took a tour of the library. At the time, Mount Holyoke College, my alma mater, was fairly lily white and pretty much middle- and upper-middle class. There was no talk whatsoever about “diversity.” The idea was that freshmen could manage to mix together on their own and help form the college’s own little melting pot.

Nowadays, colleges openly promote diversity and make it a point to both recruit and welcome students with a wide variety of religious, racial, ethnic, cultural and even sexual backgrounds. Many freshman orientation programs today even include pre-orientation programs designed to give students — many of whom have little experience mixing with people who are not like them — a head start on the...