The Gift of Pain: Dancing with the Unwelcome Messenger

The following is a re-write (in my own words) of my brother Dr. Ron Newman's article, "Seeking Balance in Pain Management," which originally appeared in the Hammonton Gazette. Ron has more than three decades experience as a psychologist and international speaker.

Pain is a paradox. It’s this raw, electric jolt in your brain, a signal screaming that something’s off. But here’s the twist: it’s also a gift. Without pain, we’d be clueless as our bodies broke down. Think of leprosy patients losing fingers to unnoticed cuts, or diabetics ignoring festering sores. Pain is the whistleblower, a friend who won’t shut up until you listen. Even phantom pain, the haunting of a missing limb, proves it’s not just flesh and bone. It really can be in your mind as well. 

In other words, pain is not just physical; it weaves through emotions, relationships, and the psyche too. Studies say psychological tricks can slash suffering by 25-30%, even 50-100% for some fortunate souls. So, what if we stopped fighting pain and started working with it? Here’s my brother's take on finding that balance—and why pain might just be the gift we never asked for.

Make Peace with the Messenger

Pain’s not the enemy—it’s the lookout. Without it, how would you know the stove’s hot or that a splinter’s digging in? It’s the same with emotional stabs—conflict, loss, regret—they point to what needs fixing. Befriend it. Let it guide you to the problem instead of just numbing it out. Next time your back aches or a fight stings, ask: what’s this telling me? It’s not here to ruin you; it’s here to save you.

Stare Down the Fear

Fear of pain is a beast—it grows when you dodge it. Therefore  Run too hard, and you’re sprinting straight into worse traps, like popping pills until you’re hooked. Face it instead. Let a little pain in—it keeps you real, humble, tethered to the dirt of life. It’s a signal, not a sentence. Ignoring it hands it the reins; confronting it keeps you in the driver’s seat.

Build Your Crew

Pain’s lighter with good people around. Lean on friends who get it—ones who listen, not lecture. Set boundaries on people who are demanding, the manipulators, or anyone peddling quick fixes that land you in deeper muck. Professional help or a wise friend can be gold here. You don’t have to carry it solo—God wired us for connection.

Toss the Blame Game

Forget “karma” or anyone smugly saying you earned this. That junk—your pain’s payback for some cosmic debt—just buries you in shame and helplessness. It’s not about past lives or ancestral curses; it’s about now. This type of thinking makes one feel more hopeless, powerless and passive. Reject it. It's the complete opposite of how you want to approach the issue at hand.  

Accept Responsibility

You’re not powerless. Take the wheel. If exercise and stretching helps, do it.  No one’s spoon-feeding you solutions—you’ve got to step up. Self-mastery isn’t sexy; it’s sweat and choice. But it’s where the gift starts shining—you’re not just surviving pain, you’re taking control.

Find the Good Stuff

Gratitude is a game-changer. Norman Cousins laughed his way through a killer illness, proving that a positive attitude can outpunch despair. It's a well-worn maxim that says laughter is the best medicine. Pain’s loud, but gratitude’s louder. Notice the coffee’s warmth, the sunset’s glow, a kid’s giggle. It’s not denial—it’s defiance. You’re telling pain it doesn’t own the story.

Grieving Is Healthy

Pain often drags loss in its wake—a leg gone, youth fading, dreams dented. Grieve it. Don’t bottle it up or fake a smile. A vet mourning a missing limb or an old-timer missing their prime—they’ve got a right to that ache. Grieving’s not weakness; it’s the slow burn that clears the way for something new. All loss has an appropriate grief cycle which is important to accept.  Give yourself permission to experience grief.  It will bear fruit later.

Push Back

Sometimes pain’s a glitch—your brain misfiring long after the wound’s healed. Overuse painkillers, and it might scream louder. Challenge it. Tell yourself, “I’m whole,” and act like it. It’s not mind-over-matter nonsense; it’s rewiring the signal. And if you’re leaning on faith, call on that too—God has got a track record of turning scars into stories.

Live Life to the Full

Don’t let pain bench you. Get a massage. Belt out a song. Stare at a painting or a forest until it sinks in. Push the limits—not reckless, but bold. Pain might tag along, but it doesn’t get to call the shots. God still has a purpose for you. Live like it.

Feed Your Soul

There are many great stories and books worth reading that deal with things you may be going through. Here are a few that my brother recommended in his article:

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, where a POW outlasts hell.

Your Scars are Beautiful to God by Sharon Jaynes. 

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, wrestling with suffering’s "why" questions.

Even Lord of the Rings, with Frodo hauling that ring through Mordor. 

Watch films that lift you—tales of guts and grace, and overcoming. They’re not just stories; they’re fuel for the fight. Here are three that came to mind as I thought about these things: 127 Hours (James Franco) about a hiker trapped by a boulder in a remote canyon; The Pursuit of Happyness (Will Smith) about a homeless single father's battle to overcome poverty and rejection to become a stockbroker; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the memoir written by Jean-Dominique Bauby after a massive stroke in which he could move only one eyelid. All three are amazing true stories.

* * *

Pain can be a brutal gift, no question. But it’s also a teacher, a compass and a nudge toward something bigger. Balance isn’t killing it—it’s dancing with it. Acceptance and defiance, grace and grit. That’s where the magic hides. What’s your pain pointing you toward today?

Recommended Reading: 
Stigmata X, a poem by Terry Anderson, a journalist who was taken hostage in Beirut in the 1980's. When released after seven years he shared his story in a powerful book titled Den of Lions.

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2008/01/stigmata-x.html

Free Speech, Gag Rules and Lessons for Today

Yesterday I was able to visit the Karpeles Manuscript Library in Duluth in order to catch the last day of its "Man's Inhumanity to Man" exhibit. The title comes from a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns: "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," a line I have quoted all too often over the course of a lifetime. 

The Karpeles Manuscript Library here in Duluth is one of a several such Karpeles Manuscript Libraries around the country. It is purportedly the world’s largest private collection of original manuscripts and documents, an amazing collection that includes the original Bill of Rights, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, the first printing of the Ten Commandments from the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, the world's first baseball card, and Richard Wagner's Wedding March. It's an impressive collection, assembled by a Duluth high school graduate who went off to make a fortune in California real estate.

The collection I studied yesterday featured items from the French Reign of Terror, the Manson family, Lenin, Stalin, the Trail of Tears and much more. Sadly, the exihibit placed a spotlight on a very small slice of humanity's horrorific treatment of their fellows. Nevertheless, it was enlightening and I hope to share a portion of this in the days ahead.

The purpose of an exhibit like this is so that we can learn from the errors of our forebears. Unfortunately, as we read today's headlines it's apparent we've not learned much.

* * * 

One of the kiosks I looked at was about free speech. Or rather, gag orders on free speech in the late 1830s.

PETITION TO CONGRESS FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

In the mid-1830s there began a massive campaign petitioning our government to abolish or outlaw slavery. Around 1836, Congress had received more than 130,000 anti-slavery petitions from the American people in a single year. The first "gag rule" was passed on May 26, 1836, during the 24th Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Pinckney Resolutions, authored by Henry L. Pinckney of South Carolina. This was the first in a series of "gag rules" aimed at stifling anti-slavery petitions. 

The petitioners described slavery as "incompatible with moral justice, Christianity, and the spirit of our general government." The petitioners also pointed out that Congress forbade human trafficking among sailors as part of their anti-piracy laws, so they urged Congress to apply the same morals and outlaw slavery on U.S. soil.

PETITION TO RESCIND CONGRESS'S PRO-SLAVERY GAG RULE

On February 13th, 1837 Congress responded. Frightened by the flood of anti-slavery petitions which were pouring into Congress, the House of Representatives ignored the pleas of the people by passing a new series of gag rules. 

These gag rules were used to limit or ban discussion of slavery. In the document on display at Karpeles, the writers couldn't even use the word "slavery." Instead, they refer to it as "a certain subject." 

In response to Congress censoring their demands, the people responded with another petition. The second petition (also displayed at Karpeles) demanded that Congress rescind (cancel) their most recent gag rule. In this petition, the abolitionists reminded their state representatives that it is their responsibility to listen to the "expressions of the public mind." They also point out that a republic such as the United States get that and that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits rules which restrict speech. 

More gag orders followed. The Patton Resolution was passed in late 1837. This petition recognized the inhumane treatment of enslaved people and claimed that the cruelty of slavery did not align with the ideals and morals of the Constitution. 

Building on the Pinckney precedent, these reaffirmed the automatic tabling of slavery-related petitions. Passed by a wider margin (129 to 69), they reflected growing Southern resolve to choke off debate as abolitionist pressure mounted—by 1840, an estimated 415,000 petitions had hit Congress. 

Congressional leaders were not warmed by the appeals of their constituents. Instead they responded with. more gag rules.  New Mapshire Democrat Charles Atherton pushed through a still harsher gag resolution that banned all discussion of slavery petitions. Naturally the harsher the rules, the more outraged the response from the public. 

This resulted in the most infamous of them all, The Twenty-First Rule of 1840. On January 28, 1840, the House made it permanent with the Twenty-First Rule. Unlike earlier resolutions, this was a standing House rule that barred even the reception of anti-slavery petitions—not just their discussion. Former President John Quincy Adams now had to fight to repeal a fixed rule, a tougher slog than blocking renewals. By 1844, shifting politics—boosted by Northern backlash and the Whig surge in 1840—enabled Adams enough clout to muster a 108-80 vote to kill it on December 3 and Adams was able to reintroduce slavery discussions in Congress again.  

The eight-year run of gag rules not only deepened national divides, they arguably hastened the road to Civil War. They not only muted Congress, they radicalized the North, turned Adams into an abolitionist icon. 

These gag rules were a sustained campaign from 1836 to 1844, driven by Southern fear of abolitionist momentum. Before 1835, House rules gave petitions a fair shake. They were read aloud, printed, and assigned to committees. But when the American Anti-Slavery Society unleashed its petition deluge, pro-slavery forces flipped out. 

I believe these events from our history have some real lessons for us today. What do you think?

 

Related Link

Treasures of the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum

Seeking Fame? Have You Got the Right Stuff?

The Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7
launching John Glenn, the first America
to orbit the earth.

While sifting through notes from an old journal (circa 1984) I came across a few observations that I extrapolated from Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. The book is a compilation of stories about the test pilots who put their lives on the line during those early experiments with rocket-powered, high-speed aircraft.

In The Right Stuff, Wolfe chronicles the grueling process those pilots (and later astronauts) went through. Testing comes first: pushing planes past Mach 1, Mach 2, 2.5, flirting with the sound barrier and beyond, risking death to prove they’ve got the guts and skill. Selection follows—only a few, like Chuck Yeager or the Mercury Seven, make the cut. For the astronauts, assignment comes next: strapped into a capsule, blasted into orbit, riding a controlled explosion into the unknown. The order’s rigid—Testing --> Selection --> Orbit. Each step is necessary to prove you’re worthy of the next.

The other night I watched a documentary about Eric Clapton, focused specifically on the Sixties, the first ten years of his career. While watching, the thought entered my mind that those early years before Clapton became famous were all part of a process that determines who is capable of handling success and fame, and who is not. 

Testing could be the grind—years of work, auditions, failures, bad decisions, or whatever crucible someone endures to stand out. Not all pass; most wash out. Selection is the moment of recognition—picked by the crowd, the industry, or sheer luck. Then orbit: the launch into stardom, confined in a pod, hurtling through a surreal space where normal rules don’t apply. Like test pilots, those chasing fame push barriers—convention, obscurity, self-doubt—hoping to break through. [EdNote: I think here of the "27 Club" that sadly includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.]

Wolfe’s pilots didn’t just chase speed; they chased mastery over fear and physics. Fame’s seekers do the same with ambition and exposure. Mach 1, Mach 2, Mach 2.5—each milestone ups the stakes, and the “barrier” shifts. But here’s the kicker: in both, you don’t know if you’ve got the right stuff until the test’s over, and even then, the ride’s never fully in your control.

We've often heard it said, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." My observation has been that when we get what we want, we usually get more than we bargained for. 

Related Link 

Magnificent Desolation: Buzz Aldrin's Moonwalk and Its Aftermath

Exploring Daniel Botkin’s Visual Tribute to Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man

I've been following Daniel Botkin's art for many years now, always impressed by one common denominator, his ability to surprise.

Mr. Tambourine Man, by Daniel Botkin. (Click to enlarge)

Daniel Botkin’s painting Mr. Tambourine Man is a captivating visual tribute to Bob Dylan’s iconic song of the same name, weaving together a rich array of artistic influences into a singular, evocative work. Featured on the cover of Botkin’s book Visions of Dylanna, this piece is more than a mere illustration—it’s a fusion of musical inspiration and art-historical homage, layered with meaning and creativity.

At first glance, the painting’s surreal composition draws the viewer into a dreamlike space. A guitar floats ethereally against a stark black sky, a deliberate nod to Salvador Dali's "Christ of St. John of the Cross.". In Dalí’s masterpiece, Christ hovers above the earth in a striking, otherworldly perspective, and Botkin mirrors this positioning to imbue the guitar—Dylan’s instrument of choice—with a sense of transcendence. It’s as if the music itself has taken flight, rising above the mundane to resonate in a cosmic void.

Dominating the upper portion of the canvas is the titular “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a figure whose pose echoes William Blake’s Ancient of Days. In Blake’s work, a divine creator bends forward, compass in hand, shaping the universe with precision and power. Botkin adapts this stance for his Tambourine Man, suggesting a godlike mastery over melody and rhythm, orchestrating the song’s hypnotic pull. Yet, this figure is no traditional deity. With black skin and multi-colored hair inspired by Milton Glaser’s famous Dylan poster, the Tambourine Man bursts with vibrant, modern energy—a striking silhouette against the dark expanse.

Botkin’s reverence for Dylan’s Jewish heritage shines through in the figure’s attire. Adorned with a tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries), the Tambourine Man becomes a bridge between the spiritual and the secular, blending Dylan’s cultural roots with the universal language of his music. This thoughtful detail grounds the painting in identity while elevating it into the realm of the symbolic.

Scattered across the composition are tambourines, each bearing the image of a man modeled after Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Da Vinci’s figure, with its perfect proportions and outstretched limbs, represents humanity’s quest for harmony and balance. Here, Botkin places this “man” on the skins of the tambourines, perhaps suggesting that the song’s rhythm pulses with the essence of human experience—universal yet deeply personal.

Music, of course, is the heartbeat of the painting. Floating in the sky are the opening notes of the melody: “Hey, Mister Tambourine Man, play a song for me. I’m not sleepy…” These notes drift like stars, guiding the viewer through the composition. At the bottom left, a small boat carries the tune “Hey, Mister Tambourine Man” in musical notation. As Botkin notes, the boat’s modest size limited him to just these opening notes—a constraint that underscores the painting’s intimate scale and attention to detail.

Mr. Tambourine Man is a testament to Botkin’s ability to synthesize diverse influences into a cohesive whole. From Dalí’s surrealism to Blake’s mysticism, Glaser’s pop-art flair to da Vinci’s classical precision, the painting is a dialogue across centuries and styles, all in service of Dylan’s timeless song. It’s a celebration of creativity’s boundless reach, inviting viewers to lose themselves in its layers just as listeners lose themselves in Dylan’s lyrics.

For fans of Dylan, art enthusiasts, or anyone intrigued by the intersection of sound and vision, Botkin’s Mr. Tambourine Man—and its showcase on the cover of Visions of Dylanna—offers a journey worth taking. It’s a reminder that art, like music, can transport us beyond the everyday, into a space where imagination reigns supreme.

 

Thank you, Daniel, for allowing me to share your work with my readers.

Related: Visions of Dylanna

Throwback Thursday: It Happens Every Spring

It happens every spring. Baseball returns, a new season begins. Here's a blog post from April 2011 with a few memories about the game I loved while growing up.

This week I finished Ken Burns' epic documentary Baseball which is a masterful re-telling of the history of baseball from its roots to the present. But it is more than about baseball. Burns chose to use Baseball to tell America's story, a story filled with mythology and with many unpleasant realities we sometimes close our eyes to in order to enjoy the dream. One of those darker shadows in our history is race relations, and Burns handles this with such finesse while unflinchingly keeping it in our consciousness that we have a problem here.

Joseph Campbell once wrote, “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” Baseball has been a very public dream in America. We love these heroes, the gods who descended Olympus to be with us for a few seasons.

I grew up watching the Cleveland Indians in the fifties, glory years of the Yankees, our arch-adversary. Mickey Mantle was in his prime then, and when we moved to New Jersey in 1964 I had the privilege seeing the Mick play in Yankee Stadium as well. My biggest thrill was Bat Day in the mid-1960s, a game in which Mantle did not start but watched most of the game from the dugout. In the bottom of the eighth, with the Yankees down 2-1 and the bases loaded, Mickey Mantle was called in to pinch hit. The entire stadium was on its feet holding their bats skyward screaming for their hero to come through. The voltage was so high in that electrified crowd that would couldn't imagine it going higher. Suddenly the pitch and a swing and that most beautiful sound in the world (no doubt drowned out that afternoon by the noise, but I can imagine it because it is the most beautiful sound in the world, the meat of the bat striking a baseball). The ball shot out like a cannon burst in a line drive deep into left field, striking the grass and bounding on one hop over the wall, a ground rule double. The two runners who scored put the Yanks up by one, and an inning later that's how it ended. Every person there was satiated. They had feasted on the Mick, and the Mick did them good.

Mantle is the subject matter of Jane Leavy's The Last Boy, an audio book I started reading yesterday and which promises to be good. Mantle, like many American heroes, is a flawed man. His time in history was a period of innocence in which the sportswriters knew he was a man different from his iconic image. In those days the sportswriters could lose their jobs for writing some of the things they knew, Leavy notes. And today sportswriter might lose their jobs for not writing about what they knew. We live in a different time, a time of innocence lost.

When I was a kid you bought baseball cards both for the players you idolized and for the noise they made in the spokes of your bicycle. During the baseball card craze of the early nineties, kids bought cards looking for the ones with potential, sometimes throwing the rest straight into the garbage. Sometimes throwing them all straight into the can.

Ansel Adams said, “Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.” Perhaps this is what Jane Leavy and Ken Burns are trying to do when they examine the mythological heroes and legends of our history, trying themselves to understand something about themselves because they are themselves one of us.

Food for thought as you await the next pitch.

Related Links

Ken Burns' Baseball and a Memory of the Mick

Baseball

John Updike On Ted Williams

A Pearl of Strings: Notebook Excerpts, Part One

In the early Nineties, when I was more single-mindedly devoted to writing fiction, I thought it might be usefl to sift through my previous years of journals to see what I might find that could be of use for future projects. It was not anentirely futile search, but it did surprise me how little of real value there was. 

Someone once wrote, "Writers’ journals are sacred chaos—raw, unpolished portals into the mind’s wild dance. Unlike polished novels or sculpted poems, these pages pulse with immediacy: scribbled doubts, half-formed dreams, and fleeting epiphanies snatched from the ether. They’re the writer’s petri dish, where ideas mate and mutate, unshackled by perfection’s glare." 

Virginia Woolf once called her diary a “capacious hold-all,” a space to wrestle demons and chase muses. For some, it’s a mirror; for others, a map through creative fog. What follows are a few excerpts from my 1980'a journals. I won't describe ay of this as "glimpses of genius in the rough" but I did find some fragments that might me considered stimulating or amusing.   

* * * 

A mind whose feet teetered under the weight of a thousand rickety tensions.

Sometimes life gets in the way of living.  

What do you demean by that?  

How'd they get so jaded?

Waisted Minds slogan: A Waist is a terrible thing to mind.

"Red is the soil of Burma, Red also are its cliffs." (from The Harp of Burma)

The great battle for significance is a battle against irrelevance.

"If I'm so successful, why am I so lonely?"

How to get blessed: Be a blessing.

Why are Texans so Austintatious?

Song of the Matrix

The Four Atomic Sons of Madame Fauvre [title]

Jimmy Johnson's Message to his team after Super Bowl Victory: "This feeling of love that you share right now you will have the rest of your lives."

A man who needs nothing can afford to risk everything.  

Freestyle Frost Flicker --> Name of Product for cleaning windows

"The melancholy of all things done." (Buzz Aldrin, after returning from moon)

"The footprints we left on the moon were not ours but were for all mankind." Aldrin

His blood turned to wine and sang through his veins.

Knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who uttered mystic nonsense.

"I'm gonna max out my Monkey card." (newspeak)

The Power Cafe (name of a restaurant)

* * * 

If you're a writer, do you keep a journal for capturing ideas and observations?

A Century of Rebellion: Exploring 20th-Century Art Movements

Henri Matisse. Woman with a Hat.
Public domain.

The 20th century was a crucible of chaos—wars, tech booms, cultural upheavals—and its art mirrored that turbulence, violating norms and redefining creativity. From Fauvism’s wild colors to Conceptual Art’s brain-bending ideas, artists didn’t just paint or sculpt; they revolted, experimented, and dreamed. Here’s a romp through 10 art movements that left their mark, each being an influence in various ways, upon impressionable fine arts students like myself. 

The century kicked off with Fauvism around 1904, when Henri Matisse unleashed bold, screaming colors and fierce brushstrokes. Forget realism—these “wild beasts” (fauves) shocked Paris salons, paving the way for Expressionism’s emotional roar. Growing up in JerseyI had the privilege of having access to so much art it was mind-blowing. On one occasion saw a Matisse retrospective beginning with his very first painting all the way through to the end of his life.

Then came Cubism in 1907, where Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is regarded by many to be the birth of modern art.  It wasn’t just painting; it rewrote how we see space—sculpture, even architecture, felt the ripple. It was a break from tradition that incorporated primitism and scandal, though provocative subject matter wasn't really all that new in the art world. Nevertheless, the piece made an impact n art hisory.

By 1909, Italy’s Futurism roared in, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, author of The Futurist Manifesto. The movement was obsessed with speed, machines, and modernity. I recently watched Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times and it's easy to see the energetic dynamism of a world in motion. Loud and aggressive, the movement briefly flirted with fascism before fading. 

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp
Photo by Alfred Stieglitz
Public domain

In Zurich during the second decade of the century World War I gave birth to Dadaism, a middle finger to logic and tradition. When Marcel Duchamp plopped a urinal on a pedestal (“Fountain”) and called it art, critics debated whether there was profound seriousness here or a profound joke. The Dadaists generated pure chaos. (If you're in the neighborhood, there is a room at the Phildelphia Museum of Art with a collection of some of Duchamp's most famous works including Nude Descending a Staircase, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors and Chocolate Grinder No. 2.

Out of the chaos of dada came  Surrealism, André Breton’s lovechild with Freud’s psychoanalysis. Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks and Max Ernst’s eerie landscapes, unearthing images from the unconscious and captured in paint.

Post-WWII, New York stole the spotlight with Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s. (For context, keep in mind the German occupation of Paris, which drove droves of artists, writers and thinkers to America and elsewhere.) Jackson Pollock became a sensation by dripping his soul onto canvas; Mark Rothko’s vast color fields swallowed viewers whole. America was now the art world’s heavyweight.

The 1950s brought Pop Art, where Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein raided comic books and ads. Campbell’s Soup Cans became icons—high art meets low culture--and the line blurred. (I myself never "got" Lichtenstein. It seemed boring to me.)

Then Minimalism stripped it all back in the ‘60s—Donald Judd and Agnes Martin went for clean lines, simple forms, industrial cool. No emotional mess, just detachment. 

It was during this same period that I myself was in the fine arts program at Ohio U. Happenings, Foreign Film Festivals and all manner of experimentation was taking place. Op Art tricked eyes with Bridget Riley’s dizzying patterns and Victor Vasarely’s pulsing grids, a scientific twist on perception. Through I never aspired to do Vasarely-like work, it did impress me.

The turning point here was Conceptual Art that flipped the script. Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth said the idea outranked the object—art could be instructions or a dictionary definition. Art became a mind game. It wasn’t about beauty; it was about thought. Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word was a scathiing dissection of this game.

As one who loved the act of laying paint on a surface, of creating visual imagery in whatever medium, Conceptual Art was a throwback to where I'd started my college studies: in philosophy. (You can read my take on this in my story Terrorists Preying.)

These movements weren’t just styles—they were the 20th century’s pulse, reacting to its madness. Take Dada, for instance. As a young art student, I fell hard for Salvador Dalí’s incredible precision (whose gift matched the classical mastery of Vermeer). His surreal clocks led me to De Chirico’s empty plazas, Ernst’s haunting woods and strange birds, Yves Tanguy’s alien blobs, and Magritte’s sly riddles. Somewhere along the way, I learned Surrealism drank deep from Dada’s well. 

At the time, my mind latched onto this story of Dada's roots: European artists in 1916 Zurich, sick of war, picked “Dada” randomly from a dictionary—eyes closed, finger pointed. Anti-art, I thought. While digging deeper this week, I found that tale to be a little murkier. Some say a knife stabbed the page for drama; others tie it to Romanian artists Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco muttering “da, da”—a sarcastic “yeah, yeah” in English, “yes, yes” in Romanian. And Dada wasn’t anti-art—it was anti-war, born in WWI’s heart. Their work mirrored the senselessness of a world gone mad, and artists held up the mirror.  

So what’s art reflecting now? War’s echoes, AI’s hum, NFTs, the dehumanizing effect of technology? Cultural fragmentation? These 10 movements of the last century show that artists don’t just follow; they provoke, question, redefine. Who are the most influential artists today? Where is the center of the art world today? Is influence the measure of great art, though? Perhaps the truly great work is being done by people who are beyond the need for recognition, fame or fortune. Or who will not achieve the recognition they deserve until another lifetime comes along. 

Related Links

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