Gambling, Debt, and Literary Fortune
Dostoevsky lost everything at the Wiesbaden casino, but the episode seemed to finally reveal to him the true depth of his habit, that it threatened not only his marriage but the life of his wife.
Christoph Büchel Superstar
The crude outlines of the Fondazione Prada exhibition form a critique of socially responsible capital, the benevolent art world, and the charity complex, too.
A Chilling Work of Cinema
If we are to ever fully grasp all of the ghastly dimensions of the Holocaust’s horrors—and if we wish to prevent another one—we need to understand the cold, calculating efficiency with which the Final Solution was implemented, and how so many ordinary human beings were able, psychologically speaking, to do what they did to other human beings.
Is Alex Garland’s 𝘾𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙡 𝙒𝙖𝙧 Believable?
In Garland’s film, the protagonist’s agency is much the same as that of the director—taking photos. The search is on for objectivity. A divided country needs an absolute truth, and this is what a photograph pretends to offer.
The Authentic Warhol?
Can one write an effective biography when its subject eradicated himself from much of his artwork (even, ironically, in his self-portraits), intentionally misled friends and reporters, and left behind an archive that is as vast as it is confounding?
Redemption is Possible
Ruth is about all those components of a nation: family, clan, townsmen, the interaction of citizens and foreigners, and all of these acting in relationship to the law, or to God’s words. “It is a prosaic story of ordinary life… whose raison d’être is to enact the sanctification of everyday life in the home, on the land, and with one’s neighbors.”
Time-Traveling with Line
The question of line depth and how it changes the viewer’s perception play out especially in the exhibition’s white gesso and clay reliefs.
Africa Rising
Although Sub-Saharan Africa holds 60% of the world’s not-yet-cultivated arable land, food scarcity is a top concern, particularly in view of the worsening climate crisis.
Retelling the Story of American Music
Dvořák practiced what he preached, and the result was (in the view of many) the finest work of American classical music ever written.
A Trans-Atlantic Migration
Bois and his colleagues at October changed, for a few decades, the way that art historians dealing with modernism in America worked.
The Apples of Cézanne
If you’re to understand Cezanne’s marginal artworld status, which remained important through most of his lifetime, then it’s important to consider a claim that will surprise most present day viewers. To most early critics and even to many fellow late nineteenth-century artists, he seemed simply to be an incompetent painter. And, in context, that judgment wasn’t crazy.
God’s Friends
Sigrid Undset, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928, is without question one of Norway’s most famous and influential novelists.
A State of Speechless Wonder and Awe
For Adams, beauty is “a synonym for coherence and structure underlying life… beauty is the overriding demonstration of pattern that one observes.”
A Love For All Humanity
Hildegard Bechtler’s minimalist sets, centered around a revolving circular platform and high, unadorned walls, never distracted from the importance of the text and provided the opportunity for the nuns to be the center of attention. Her postmodern, industrial design felt vacant and made the cloistered nature of the convent palpable.
Two Great Frenchmen in Seventeenth-Century Rome
Genre fantasies, which were popular in the seventeenth century, played a significant role in the process by which two French-born men who worked in Rome became identified as French painters.
A Journey on the Way of Bach
Moller situates Bachian counterpoint between the Renaissance, with its emphasis on harmony (who listens to Palestrina for the tunes?), and the modern popular musical era, with its apotheosis of melody (who listens to Elvis for the harmony?).
