Essays
City of the Soul
Rome has haunted the world’s imagination for centuries. When painters, writers, architects and photographers are confronted with the physical reality of the city, they are often transformed. As “City of the Soul: Rome and the Romantics,” a recent exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, demonstrated, the artists also transform... More »
A Review of the Culture Wars
A quarter-century has passed since the raging inferno of the American culture wars peaked, during the 1980s—although its embers still glow white hot in the dystopian darkness of today’s arts, civic projects, public education and academia, museums, media and popular culture. A well-chronicled defense of the negative fallout of that... More »
American Dreamland
It’s only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me.
Without your love
... More »
Mean Thought in the Arts
Intellectual meanness procures satisfaction to the minds of those who enjoy inflicting emotional pain, with the intention of causing feelings of inadequacy in a victim. Intellectual meanness requires a double talent: that of aiming correctly, and that of fittingly expressing meanness in a visual or verbal medium. The greater... More »