Imagery

Visual art is becoming more and more like writing. Artists' thought processes, stripped of visual "tricks" (such as illusionism or perspective) and skillful seductions (such as expressive or beautifully made marks), have become the central issue, or text, in much art of the postmodern era. Images are regarded with a kind of caution, as they're increasingly seen as bodies of rhetoric that must be re-examined before being used. Consequently some artists have chosen to pare their imagery to a bare minimum, or to use images that are so ubiquitous or quotidian as to have predictable or controllable meanings.

The Torah - the first five books of the Old Testament - constitutes the heart of Judaism. Unlike the Christian Bible, which is commonly translated into pictures, the Torah exists for Jews as text. A pictorial Torah seems improbable until you see one, and then it looks perfectly natural. You can discover this for yourself at the Philadelphia Museum of Judaism at Congregation Rodeph Shalom, where a suite of 44 paintings by New York artist Archie Rand is on view through April 17. They're called the Chapter Paintings because the full suite represents the 54 weekly portions of the Torah (the Hebrew year has 54 weeks)

Over the years, Hollywood has conditioned us to believe that an epic film with a huge cast, staged battles and exotic locations requires an equally epic hero to brave the wrath of men and gods. Nobody has ever dreamed of framing an epic around the life of a victim instead of a victor. Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor is a triumph in its own right that takes precisely that risk. The story of Pu Yi, the emperor of China forced into a progressive abdication of royal powers, marks the restoration of one of the world's most gifted directors to his rightful place after a barren seven- year period in which his career has faltered.

Ted Bundy was a liar all his life. In a dramatic last-hour interview conducted by religious broadcaster James Dobson and televised the same day Bundy went to Florida's electric chair, we are asked to believe this serial killer one last time. Why? Because Ted Bundy's message was one that Dobson, as a former member of the Meese Commission, holds close to his heart. "Pornography made me do it" is the essence of the interview. The implicit message here is, of course, that we should censor pornography because it causes violence.

Photography, move over and make way for the computer age. That's the message proclaimed by Chris Wayne's solo show of computer graphics at the Franklin Institute. It reminds us of the fast-growing adversary relationship between computer graphics and photography. Now that videos and copy-machine art are being routinely included in art exhibits, Wayne is pushing the frontier a bit farther with his use of powerful new tools to produce computer-generated imagery. He belongs to the second generation of computer-literate artists, people who have brought their concerns about technology alive in art schools and universities, in studios and commercial-production houses.

An attack on society The cover of Aug. 22 damages the quality of life for the average African-American or Latino male young adult and our society as a whole. I am a 28-year-old black man. The cover reinforced negative stereotypes about young men of my age and ethnicity. It reinforced ideas that we are the enemies of society and civilization. That we are murders, rapists and drug dealers. Imagery of this type makes it more likely that young African-Americans and Latinos now will be killed out of fear.

Poignant beyond words, The Cats of Mirikitani is comparable to finding a pearl in a pile of oyster shells. In 2001, filmmaker Linda Hattendorf encountered street artist Jimmy Mirikitani, 80, huddled under the awning of a corner grocery near her SoHo studio. Initially, she was drawn by his fanciful sketches of cats. But when Hattendorf listened to what other passersby heard as the ravings of a street person, she made a human and artistic connection. She started filming their encounters, and the result is a compelling journal of their growing intimacy.

It is unrecorded whether New York's Cardinal John J. O'Connor pounded his breakfast table or spilled coffee on his pajamas when he saw Monday morning's New York Post. But he can be forgiven if he did. "O'Connor rips radical feminists:," shouted the front page headline. "GOD IS A MAN. " No, no, no, explained an archdiocesan spokesman the next day. His Eminence never said God is male - that would violate church teaching. The cardinal simply used his Father's Day sermon to remind the faithful that God should be described only in male terms, such as Father and He. God should not be described, he said, in female terms such as Mother and She. A generation ago that disavowal might have ended the matter.

Group Motion's 40th Anniversary show at the Painted Bride last weekend - a low-key event called "Shadow and Light" - bookended three modest dances with lovely receptions that gave longtime fans a chance to celebrate and reminisce about the company's impact on the dance scene in the South Street community and in its current location in West Philly's Community Education Center. Group Motion's roster has changed over time, but it usually has a few senior dancers who offer continuity with German expressionist dance, with which the company has never completely cut the cord.

There are four characters in The Mojo and the Sayso, the play opening Venture Theater's season, and then there's the car - a prop so dominating of the stage and the attention of the audience that it takes on the status of a fifth character. The car is indicative of both what is right and what is not so right about Aishah Rahman's play and H. German Wilson's production at Temple University Center City's Stage III theater. The automobile (actually the front half of a small MG sports car)

Brian Lipstein, 28, of Manayunk, is CEO of Henry A. Davidsen Master Tailors & Image Consultants, which he founded in 2006. From a shop on 17th Street near Spruce, the Penn graduate creates a custom-tailored look that fits the image a client wants to project. Clients have included Flyers coach Peter Laviolette, former Eagle Ron Jaworski and radio/TV personality Danny Bonaduce. Q: How did you come up with the idea for the company? A: I started selling high-end custom suits for $2,500.

YOU WANT TO focus on the little signs of progress - on the lights flickering back to life, the bulldozers pushing piles of sand, the subways and trains carrying commuters once again. But the pure horror that Hurricane Sandy visited upon the Northeast earlier this week still finds ways to take your breath away. The Daily News on Thursday hovered in a helicopter above Seaside Heights, where jagged pieces of the Casino Pier pointed toward the surf and the twisted remains of a roller coaster that plummeted into the water.

Some audience members said they were in shock and awe after Compagnie Marie Chouinard's opening-night performance Thursday of Rite of Spring at the Annenberg Center, as the Montreal company began its first visit to Philadelphia in 17 years. But after seeing Chouinard's Rite in Phoenix in 1996 and longing to see it again all these years, I was just in shock. It was so unlike the original, my favorite of many Rites I've seen. Company agent Paul Tanguay said audiences at a planned appearance in Shanghai in October will see the original, with the white- and tan-colored leotards and Rober Racine's 12-minute prelude, Sound Signatures . But we get a bargain-basement version, without the Racine or the costumes.

He loves soccer. Can't get enough of it. So when Jarrod Skole was told in 2006, at age 10, that he had cancer, his first question was "Will I still be able to play soccer?" Now a freshman at Lenape High School in Medford, handsome, friendly, and blessed with a wry sense of humor, Jarrod doesn't remember everything about that strange night when everything changed. But the last few years have left an indelible mark, changing his family and leading Jarrod and his father to write a first-of-its-kind book.

VIENNA, Austria - Iran has allowed a top U.N. atomic inspector access to a site where it is developing advanced centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear fuel and to arm warheads, diplomats told the Associated Press on Tuesday. The diplomats said Deputy Director-General Herman Nackaerts of the International Atomic Energy Agency also was allowed to tour Iran's heavy-water production plant for the first time. Heavy-water reactors - like the research unit Iran is building - produce plutonium, which, along with enriched uranium, can be used for the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

IT WAS A terrible time of anger and rage in America. There was harsh rhetoric blaring from a newer form of political media - talk radio - and a hard-fought election in which Congress turned sharply to the right. Then an alienated young man committed an act of unspeakable violence. Hardworking federal employees died, and so did young children. The president of the United States sought to change the national conversation. "Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear," the young commander-in-chief told a grieving nation.

'In this season of discontent, it will be women who can transform the national rage and demoralization into hope. " Sounds like a potential campaign slogan for Meg Whitman, the newly anointed Republican gubernatorial candidate in California. Or Carly Fiorina, now the Golden State's GOP Senate candidate. Or Nikki Haley, who won the most votes in South Carolina's Republican primary for governor. Actually, it's a line from a column written for this page by Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women.

In Germany these days, one sees swastikas only in history books, museums, and the movies. The public display of the Nazi symbol is banned in any form, for the good reason that unspeakable crimes were committed under it there. I know laws are different in this regard in the United States, for the good reason that the Constitution protects freedom of speech. Still, as a German in America for the past summer of conservative discontent, I couldn't help but find it bizarre to see swastikas on protesters' posters next to the face of the U.S. president - a man who, because of the color of his skin, would have been a certain victim of the Nazis' murderous ideology.

Group Motion's 40th Anniversary show at the Painted Bride last weekend - a low-key event called "Shadow and Light" - bookended three modest dances with lovely receptions that gave longtime fans a chance to celebrate and reminisce about the company's impact on the dance scene in the South Street community and in its current location in West Philly's Community Education Center. Group Motion's roster has changed over time, but it usually has a few senior dancers who offer continuity with German expressionist dance, with which the company has never completely cut the cord.