Intelligent design and popular culture: Art critic in the NY Times?

A friend who receives the dead tree edition of the New York Times writes to comment on Ken Johnson’s thoughts about Vermeer's “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher”, on view at the Met

...Vermeer's young woman is bathed in the light of the Holy Spirit...All is painted with excruciating, reverential tenderness. To be sure, everything in the picture can be explained without invoking supernatural agency. In its slightly blurry, photographic realism, the painting presents an implacably empirical view of the world. The image looks almost as if it had been photo-chemically imprinted on the canvas without manual intervention, and the picture in turns stamps itself on our retinas. Optical nerves fire, neurotransmitters swarm and the image somehow appears in our minds. Whether you believe in intelligent design or Darwinian happenstance, it is pretty miraculous.(12/31/10)

Friend notes,

When ID wanders into the analysis of a NY Times art critic, the idea is making cultural inroads.

Yes, I think so.

I can remember googling “intelligent design” a decade ago and coming up with the Web sites of firms selling non-walloping window blinds.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy: