Norman Rockwell & the Rediscovery of America’s Moral Compass

By Matthew Ehret A great poet once said that you can judge a nation by how it honors (or fails to honor) its artists. In many ways, the soul of a nation is entirely shaped by the artists which that society has produced. This makes perfectly good sense, as an artist is able to portray…

Kirk Douglas, Trumbo and JFK: When Hollywood Patriots Resisted the Deep State

By Matthew Ehret In recent decades, barring a few exceptions, Hollywood (just like much of the mainstream media) has become a branch of the CIA and broader military industrial complex. While fake news agencies as CNN spin false facts to the intellects of mushy-minded Americans, Hollywood prepares the fertile soil for those false seeds to…

Cultural Warfare and the American Revolution (Franklin, West and Morse Revisited)

In this lecture delivered as part of the Rising Tide Foundation series “Towards an Age of Creative Reason”, Matthew Ehret introduces the fight to establish a cultural revolution in the arts and sciences initiated by Benjamin Franklin, and a small international network of co-conspirators of the 18th century which was then understood to be the vital…

Symposium: Rediscovering the Infinite Through Classical Art

The Rising Tide Foundation presents the Symposium: Rediscovering the Infinite Through Classical Art, which opened with a presentation by Cynthia Chung on Shakespeare and the use of tragedy in elevating an audience’s knowledge of human nature in order to break free from tragic dynamics within us. This was followed by a lecture delivered by Matthew…

Sparks of a New Renaissance in Painting Emerge from China

By Matthew Ehret It is rare to see new artistic movements arise. It is even rarer that such artistic revolutions manage to respect the best traditions of the past while at the same time infuse something new and improved into society. The fatal error made by many innovators attempting to break with the often stultifying…

Virgil or Aristotle… Who is Contemplating the Bust of Homer?

By Gerald Therrien One of Rembrandt’s greatest paintings is known by some people as ‘Aristotle contemplating the Bust of Homer’. Since no surviving records exist from either Rembrandt’s hand nor the patron who commissioned this masterpiece in 1653 AD, speculation has run rampant for over 350 years as to the true identity of the mysterious…

Unifying Spirit between East and West: Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), Italian Renaissance painter in the Forbidden City.

By Matthew Ehret “In pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative, we should ensure that when it comes to different civilizations, exchange will replace estrangement, mutual learning will replace clashes, and coexistence will replace a sense of superiority. This will boost mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual trust among different countries” -Xi Jinping, Belt and Road…