Fencing Bear at Prayer

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click to enlarge Key to Red Bear's allusions in panel 4 1. Bricolage : "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available; a work created by such a process" (Wikipedia) 2. Walter Benjamin, " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction " (1936) 3. Andy Warhol, especially Campbell's Soup I (1968) Historical note: the first pet I had as a child was a dog named Puppy. Our cat was named Kitty. So, yes, my toys really are named Fencing Bear, American Girl, Red Bear, Teddy Bear and (unusually) Sugar Bear. I'm not sure whether this makes me a nominalist or a realist at heart, although I suspect I am a realist (names carry essences, if not universals) with nominalist tendencies (it takes many names to pray to God because no one name can ever be adequate to express divinity). Perhaps it makes me a Hobbit. In my head, I live in the City by the Lake and teach at the University. You get the idea.

click to enlarge To be continued... N.B. Fencing Bear has obviously been reading too much in John of Damascus 's defense of the icons against the iconoclasts , although she seems to have gotten the argument somewhat backward.* John argues that all reverence given to the image redounds unto the prototype, thus images should be permitted in Christian worship: "But since some find fault with us for worshipping and honouring the image of our Saviour and that of our Lady, and those, too, of the rest of the saints and servants of Christ, let them remember that in the beginning God created man after His own image. On what grounds, then, do we shew reference to each other unless because we are made after God's image? For as Basil (the Great, c. 330-379), that much-versed expounder of divine things, says, the honour given to the image passes over to the prototype. Now a prototype is that which is imaged, from that which the derivative is obtained." --John of Damascus, Expos...

click to enlarge To be continued...