Work Is a Four-Letter Word

by Eve Tushnet

Kayla Rae Whitaker’s debut novel about two cartoonists, The Animators, asks whether the overexamined life is worth living. Continue Reading »

13 Dec 2017

Cult of the Cutting-Edge

by Peter Wood

Ruben Östlund's film The Square questions the assumption that art should aspire to be “cutting-edge.” Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2017

Can Moral Monsters Make Good Movies?

by Peter J. Leithart

Should we really despise certain movies simply because they're made by despicable men? Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2017

The Florentine Pietà

by Catesby Leigh

In the late 1540s, an aging Michelangelo embarked on what he intended to be his culminating sculptural work, commonly known as the Florentine Pietà. Still heavily tasked with official commissions—foremost among them the rebuilding of St. Peter’s—and sometimes incapacitated by . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Dec 2017

Anselm Kiefer's Beautiful Apocalypticism

by Elliot Milco

Anselm Kiefer's paintings attempt to come to terms with Germany's past, yet always transcend the reminders of guilt and suffering.  Continue Reading »

24 Oct 2017

“Decadent Poverty” at the First Things Gallery

by Alexi Sargeant

Approaching the paradox of the Passion in art. Continue Reading »

10 May 2017

On Roman Holy Days

by Br. Michael Baggot

The September 14 liturgical feast of the Triumph of the Cross celebrates a radical revolution in our approach to human debility. The lame, the disfigured, the abandoned are no longer burdens upon society’s limited resources, doomed to a frustrated existence. Instead, they can clutch the cross that recalls the one who knows their woes and gives meaning to their anguish. Continue Reading »

14 Sep 2016

Hans Friedrich Grohs: From Bereavement to Benediction

by Timothy George

He was born four years after Kaiser Wilhelm II ascended the German imperial throne; he died nearly a century later, in the same decade that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. He was drafted as a soldier in both world wars and experienced firsthand the Nazi reign of terror in between. Few artists have lived so fully, or recorded so faithfully, such a vast sweep of human history. Continue Reading »

5 Sep 2016

Click Fix

by Marc Barnes

The camera-phone has inaugurated an era of therapeutic photography. It is a photography less concerned with producing photographs and more concerned with the act of taking a picture, the “click.” In Snapchat, the actual photo disappears after being taken and sent. It is the mode of most of our . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2016

Brush with Greatness

by John Murdock

Many Beautiful Things lives up to its title. With lush visuals from the English countryside, the deserts of North Africa, and the watercolors of its subject Lilias Trotter, the latest from filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson pleases the eye while asking questions of the heart. If Trotter’s name sounds . . . . Continue Reading »

2 Mar 2016