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Oct 24, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Douglas Murray |James Piereson |Theodore Dalrymple |William Logan
“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” says Puck in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The mercurial fairy first pronounced his criticism of distraught human beings on the Bard’s stage around 1595. But the character—a supernatural being who sprinkles mischief on humanity’s doings while pointing out its flaws—is deeply rooted in the pre-Christian mythology of the British Isles.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Douglas Murray |William Logan |Simon Heffer |Myron Magnet
FeaturesThe profundity of evilEmily Dickinson at the post officePevsner revised“The Power Broker” in perspectivePoemsReconsiderationsA lion in ZionTheaterMisshapen identitiesArtShapeshifting StellaYour donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries. MusicNew York chronicleThe mediaIrony deficiencyBooksThe sun also setsSaxon semi-successesStrong convictionsMerci pour Magna CartaNotebook
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Douglas Murray |Theodore Dalrymple |James Piereson |William Logan
Anyone who has worked in a prison for any length of time, as have I, is likely to have had his night’s sleep disturbed occasionally by a dream in which he enters the prison not as a free man, but as a prisoner himself. This is all the more frightening because prisoners, on the whole, do not take kindly to imprisoned prison officials, and tend to persecute them.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Douglas Murray |James Piereson |Theodore Dalrymple |William Logan
The Library of America is something of a publishing curiosity. Its declared aim is to preserve America’s literary heritage “by publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America’s best and most significant writing.” Yet, unlike those produced by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in France, these “authoritative editions” offer minimal editorial matter. Their most notable feature is a year-by-year biographical outline of the author in question.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Douglas Murray |James Piereson |Theodore Dalrymple |William Logan
It is difficult to believe that Frank Stella (1936–2024) is no longer with us. For six and a half decades, beginning with the first exhibitions of his implacable Black Paintings in 1959, when he was twenty-three, he was a powerful presence, an unignorable, demanding artist who made us all—including other artists—question our most cherished assumptions about what a painting could be.
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Aug 22, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |William Logan |Michael Mandelbaum |Allen C. Guelzo
On “Willem de Kooning and Italy” at the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice. On the life & work of Joe Zucker. On Rex Whistler: The Artist and His Patrons by Nikki Frater. On “Paris 1874” at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. On “Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism” at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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May 26, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |William Logan |James Piereson |Victor Davis Hanson
On Friday night, Evgeny Kissin played a recital in Carnegie Hall. He will repeat the program in another recital, in the same hall, this coming Wednesday. I have been reviewing concerts in New York since the 1990s. I don’t remember another time when a recitalist gave the same program in Carnegie Hall twice. Mr. Kissin played, and will play, a wonderfully mixed program—a program without a theme and without politics (broadly speaking). Just a series of great or good piano works by four great composers.
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May 24, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | James Piereson |Gary Saul Morson |Glenn Ellmers |William Logan
Viola jokes are a staple of musical life. (Some of them are very good.) Ultimately, though, the joke is on the jokesters, because the viola is a marvelous instrument. Sofia Gubaidulina, the Russian composer born in 1931, has long been a friend to violists.
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Apr 26, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | William Logan |James Panero |Isaac Sligh |Gary Saul Morson
Over the years, we have known big pianists who like to accompany singers. (By the way, “accompany” is not a dirty word in my book. If it is in yours—you’ll need to find another critic!) Richter accompanied Fischer-Dieskau. So did Horowitz, on one occasion. Jean-Yves Thibaudet likes to accompany singers. So does Mitsuko Uchida. In an interview, Yefim Bronfman once told me that it was accompanying singers that really taught him how to play Schubert.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
newcriterion.com | James Panero |William Logan |Isaac Sligh |Gary Saul Morson
Still, it is undeniable that the Al Thani space sparkles. The collection has rightfully been praised as a twenty-first-century version of the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities. Many of the pieces on display in “A Taste for the Renaissance” are very small—bringing a magnifying glass is a good idea. One such object is a hat badge of enameled gold, diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, thought to be from 1550s Paris, executed in a style we now call Mannerist. It depicts the akedah, the sacrifice of Isaac.
