Recent stories of note:
“Worse than woke, Smithsonian art is bad”
Gage Klipper, The Spectator World
As the Trump administration seeks to reform the Smithsonian’s cultural offerings, Gage Klipper has provided a useful synopsis of some of the laughable exhibitions currently on view across the Smithsonian’s collection of museums. With displays ranging from paintings of an immigrant family climbing over the border wall, to works featuring a black and transgender Statue of Liberty, the Smithsonian has seemingly come to believe that “the increase and diffusion of knowledge” (its founding mission) simply means the increase and diffusion of progressive talking points. While purging the Smithsonian of divisive democratic-socialist realism is laudable, the real challenge will be to identify and bring in talented artists who are not so ideologically driven.
“Decadent Ideology, Decadent Fraternity”
Richard M. Reinsch II, Law & Liberty
Something is rotten in the state of France. Despite virtually unparalleled government programs designed to create a basic level of comfort for all citizens, the French seem increasingly unsatisfied with their lot, at least judging by the rise in popularity of both the Far Right and the Far Left in recent elections. As Richard M. Reinsch II maintains in his review of Chantal Delsol’s recent book Prosperity and Torment in France, the malaise stems both from France’s fixation on ideologies of secularism, republicanism, and egalitarianism, and from the maternalistic style of French government. All this leads to an “isolating individualism that results from the existence of only two densities: man and the state.” The analysis is persuasive, but Reinsch seems to underplay the role of Muslim mass migration in bringing France’s underlying contradictions to the surface. In reality, the question of how to integrate people who do not wish to subscribe to supposedly universal French values lies at the heart of France’s current crisis.
“The Gentleman of Verona”
Ingrid D. Rowland, The New York Review of Books
In her review of the Veronese exhibition at the Prado in Madrid, Ingrid D. Rowland recounts the lightning-fast rise of Paolo Spezapreda’s star in the Venetian art world in the 1550s. Less than a decade after his arrival to Venice from his native Verona (hence his moniker) in 1551, Veronese had proven himself to be the equal of La Serenissima’s greatest masters, Titian and Tintoretto. Faced with a changing geopolitical reality in which Venetian dominance in Italy and in the Mediterranean Sea was increasingly challenged, “Venetians responded by retreating into patriotic fantasy,” as Rowland describes. This troubled context explains Veronese’s popularity, as he, more than any of his contemporaries, knew how to create the enormous and opulent but calm scenes that could serve as comfort to his Venetian patrons.
