Reviews and News:
What’s wrong with art today? It’s almost entirely preoccupied with identity. “Today’s leading artists focus almost singlemindedly on issues of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. Beauty and truth are not merely subservient to the ‘identitarian’ agenda, they are excised from the conversation altogether”
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The life of an 18th-century hack: “Goldsmith had a career governed by the immediate demands of the marketplace – by life in Grub Street. As its title implies, Norma Clarke’s book is a study of this life. Goldsmith’s name appears only in the subtitle because this is less a biography than a study of a literary world.”
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What makes a successful story?
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The science of popularity: People don’t want something new. “They want something newish.”
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In Case You Missed It:
The environmentalist who unintentionally killed millions
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When Europe was united…sort of
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Victorian bodies: “Why did Charles Darwin grow a beard? What was wrong with George Eliot’s hand?”
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Michelangelo’s miscalculation: “His magnificent design for Pope Julius II’s tomb turned out to be the worst case of project overrun in art history.”
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Interview: Sam Leith and Michael Rosen talk about the disappearance of Émile Zola
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Classic Essay: Walter Berns, “Why America Celebrates Lincoln”
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