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Arts+

Perpetual Tension

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
February 21, 2018

In artist Deborah Rosenthal’s gouaches and oil paintings, opposing ideas collide: figuration merges with abstraction, formalist rigor blends with an offhand style, and personal imagery bumps up against universal themes. Ms. Rosenthal’s paintings also…

Reinventing, Downtown

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
June 24, 2017

Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline urged a pair of friends to start an art gallery. Tibor de Nagy and John Bernard Myers followed their advice and, in 1950, on East 53rd Street, they opened the Tibor de Nagy…

Cubist Art, Fresh Angles

By CAROL DIAMOND, Special to the Sun
April 28, 2017

Two gallery shows of contemporary art in Manhattan bring geometry and tactility together with vibrant results. New York–based artist Celia Gerard is exhibiting her signature large-scale mixed media drawings alongside relief sculptures in ceramic and…

Raiding the Fridge for Inspiration

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
January 25, 2017

Philadelphia-based artist Aubrey Levinthal (b. 1986) raids her fridge for inspiration. She repurposes her leftovers, turning Tupperware containers packed with fruit salad and spaghetti into inventive still lifes. Milk jugs and the condiments in the…

Underworlds

By CAROL DIAMOND, Special to the Sun
December 13, 2016

Artist Thaddeus Radell’s current exhibit at Bowery Gallery presents recent oils by a painter at the top of his game. Though Mr. Radell’s commitment to furthering the tradition of figure painting dates back to his student days (he studied with New York…

Mind’s Eye

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
October 11, 2016

Visitors to artist Gregory Amenoff’s current exhibit might mistake the paintings on view as the work of a nature lover. The artist is displaying small, medium and large-size landscape-based abstractions teeming with organic shapes that suggest trees…

Art of War

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
August 26, 2016

For museumgoers already familiar with the Rococo masterpieces of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), a special exhibition at the Frick will illuminate a little-known aspect of his oeuvre. Filling a single gallery of the Frick’s lower level, Watteau’s…

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
May 16, 2016

In Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, the largest special exhibition ever mounted at the Frick Collection, towering portraits look very much at home on the museum’s velvet-covered walls. Van Dyck’s elegantly colored canvases in elaborately carved…

April Flowers

By Special to the Sun
April 4, 2016

“April Flowers,” a group exhibition organized by New York Sun Arts contributor Xico Greenwald, opens today at the Queens College Art Center. The exhibit presents floral-themed artworks by 22 artists. “From the vegetal patterns of Islamic tile design…

Portrait of a First Lady

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
March 15, 2016

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC is paying tribute to First Lady Nancy Reagan, who died March 6th at the age of 94. A painting on paper of Mrs. Reagan in a cherry-red dress by portraitist Aaron Shikler has been installed in the museum’s…

Janes’ Domain

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
January 13, 2016

New York School painters Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson lived parallel lives. Born in 1924, they died at 90, just a few weeks apart, a year ago. They came of age in an art world dominated by Abstract Expressionism, but opted to work…

Grand Tourists

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
December 14, 2015

Painters Zach Harris and Eleanor Ray supplemented their art school educations with modern-day Grand Tours of Europe, expeditions to view Renaissance masterworks in the churches and museums of Italy and France. The affects of their encounters with the…

The Scenery of Napoli

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
November 2, 2015

Occupying a townhouse on Park Avenue, the Italian Cultural Institute has filled its rooms with 19th century “Neapolitan School” paintings. Artworks from regions across Southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) range in style and subject but inoffensive…

By Giorgio, They've Got It

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
October 25, 2015

Nicknamed “Il Monaco” (The Monk), painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi (1890 -1964) is known for having lived a simple existence devoted to art. A lifelong bachelor, Morandi rarely strayed far from his hometown of Bologna, where he shared an…

What Caillebotte Is All About

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
September 21, 2015

Even the curators of the Gustave Caillebotte retrospective, currently on view at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., concede that Caillebotte “never achieved the kind of mastery of painting that Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Cézanne did.”…

Worth the Wait

By SETH LIPSKY, Special to the Sun
September 1, 2015

A rare exhibition of the works on paper by Ben Solowey is going up October 3 at the studio-cum-museum that bears his name, a cable from its director, David Leopold, informs us. His wire comes with the subject line “Worth the Wait,” and I have no doubt…

Bischoff, Right On

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
July 15, 2015

Artists Elmer Bischoff, David Park and Richard Diebenkorn helped form the Bay Area Figurative Movement in the early 1950s. Their paintings, often characterized as realism rendered with Abstract Expressionist–style brushwork, were equally influenced by…

Body and Soul

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
June 30, 2015

An exhibition of life-size figures by sculptor Bruce Gagnier, now in its final days, presents standing male and female nudes that seem to hover between gestures. The artist forgoes Classical contrapposto stances and serpentine lines in favor of…

The Whole Story

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
June 18, 2015

Jacob Lawrence was only 23-years-old when he created the “Migration Series” in 1941, a group of 60 paintings relaying the story of the Great Migration, the mass exodus of African-Americans from the rural South to the industrialized Northeast and…

Flaming June Is Here

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
June 9, 2015

Sir Frederic Leighton’s cantaloupe-colored canvas, “Flaming June,” c. 1895, on loan to the Frick from Puerto Rico’s Museo de Arte de Ponce, is turning up the heat in New York this summer. The dreamy Victorian-era painting of a sleeping beauty in a…

Under the Umbrian Sun

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
April 14, 2015

Langdon Quin’s paintings of the Italian countryside are simultaneously traditional and innovative. Made during the artist's yearly visits to Italy, the recent works now on exhibit at The Painting Center’s Project Room display the time-honored values…

Idealism in Albany

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
March 19, 2015

Eugene Speicher, named “America’s greatest living painter” by Esquire, was riding high in 1936. Museums bought up his canvases and celebrities commissioned portraits. But Speicher’s reputation collapsed after World War II, as realism fell out of…

In Full Bloom

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
March 9, 2015

At 88, Lois Dodd may be making her best paintings yet. A marvelous exhibition of over thirty recent oils at Alexandre Gallery presents unfussy landscapes and bare interiors – seemingly simple constructions that express a nuanced, poetic sensibility…

Zuccone and Company

By BRUCE M. GAGNIER, Special to the Sun
February 24, 2015

Donatello’s masterwork, known as the “Zuccone” or Pumpkin Head—a larger than life sculpture of a prophet—reigns supreme at a new exhibition of Renaissance sculpture. The centerpiece of Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces from…

Faith and Fantasy

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
February 16, 2015

The dramatic paintings of Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) once ignited the imagination of Florence. In Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Vasari said his work had “both draughtsmanship and grace,” adding, “it is certain that…

Married to the Model

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
January 27, 2015

Upon word of Paul Cézanne’s death, painter Émile Bernard said “he takes his secrets to the grave.” Nabis artist Maurice Denis mused, “I have never heard an admirer of Cézanne give me clear and precise reasons for his admiration.” It may be easier to…

Get Real

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
January 26, 2015

Though he came of age in an art world dominated by Pop and then Neo-expressionism, Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946) followed in his father’s footsteps, creating an extraordinary body of Realist artwork. With highly detailed canvases inducing the viewer to look…

Wax Poetic

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
January 8, 2015

The Center for Italian Modern Art, operating a new space in SoHo, has mounted a must-see exhibition of works by Medardo Rosso (1858-1928). This small yet invaluable exhibit illuminates the creative process of a sculptor who has been among the most…

Standing Tall in Wuppertal

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
December 20, 2014

Camille Pissarro- Father of Impressionism, on view at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany, presents a number of pieces from Camille Pissarro’s (1830-1903) oeuvre that are not well known to the public. The comprehensive retrospective…

Pop Sincerity

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
December 16, 2014

Mac Conner: A New York Life, in its final weeks at the Museum of the City of New York, is an exhibition not to miss. Illustrations by McCauley (“Mac”) Conner (b. 1913), a figure the museum calls “one of New York’s original ‘Mad Men,’ ” vividly evoke…

Untamed Rousseau

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
December 6, 2014

In the 19th century, America's vast tracts of unspoiled landscape inspired artists like Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) to create spectacular paintings of a virgin land for an enthusiastic public. Meanwhile, across…

Color and Line

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
November 26, 2014

Dana Gordon’s artwork, on view at Andre Zarre Gallery, raises the age-old controversy of color versus line-quality in painting. The argument dates back to the Renaissance when painters in Florence considered design preeminent while Venetians…

Major Sargent

By SIMON CARR, Special to the Sun
November 17, 2014

For those to whom the experience of a great painting is essential nourishment, the new exhibition at The Frick Collection, Masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery, is a feast. Just ten artworks, this exhibit includes a panel by Sandro…

Get Your Zurbarán In Hartford

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
November 9, 2014

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) painted things as well as anybody. One of the great artists of Spain’s Golden Age, he gave baskets, fruits, cups and plates rock-solid form. Cloth was his specialty. When Zurbarán’s “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges…

El Greco, 400 Years Later

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
November 5, 2014

Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614), called El Greco, was born on the Greek island of Crete. He moved to Venice in his late twenties, where he was influenced by the paintings of Titian and Tintoretto. In Rome he saw the work of Michelangelo. It was…

Points Made

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
October 27, 2014

Pointillism is given a comprehensive survey in the exhibition Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music, now on view at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Led by painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Pointillist…

Uptown, Downtown

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
October 9, 2014

Two concurrent exhibitions, one uptown, one downtown, show off diametrically opposed approaches to art making. On the Upper East Side, an elegantly installed group show exhibits small works of great delicacy, carefully crafted pieces, some no larger…

American Son

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
October 3, 2014

In the early decades of the last century America was a young nation, restless, bold, and eager to capitalize on all that providence had bestowed upon her. And, like the train and the automobile, modern industry was the engine and wheels that would…

Not Just Paper

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
September 23, 2014

Exhibitions of works on paper can disappoint, often presenting thin line drawings or fragile watercolors. Not so with “Full Circle: Works on Paper by Richard Pousette-Dart,” a recently opened exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The works in…

Artist of All the Ages

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
August 21, 2014

One hundred years ago, Theresa Bernstein's name was as well-known in artistic circles as Robert Henri and John Sloan, Ash Can School artists with whom she frequently exhibited. She was friends with Edward Hopper and Stuart Davis. Yet, inexplicably…

Glackens in the Hamptons

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
August 13, 2014

William Glackens (1870-1938), a founding member of the Ashcan School, was at the vanguard of American art and later an effective proponent of French Modernism, responsible for bringing impressionist and postimpressionist masterworks to American…

Romantic Landscapes

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
July 17, 2014

The Morgan Library and Museum has teamed up with London’s Courtauld Institute of Art to present A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany. The first in a series of collaborative projects between the two museums, this…

Energy Without Grandiosity

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
May 11, 2014

When Clement Greenberg wrote in 1947 that it is in “New York Bohemia … below 34th Street, that the fate of American art is being decided,” the influential art critic and Abstract Expressionism advocate may have spoken too soon. One year earlier…

Wyeth's Windows

By ANN SAUL, Special to the Sun
May 1, 2014

Windows are an invitation to look, and Wyeth’s windows are enticing. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. exploits this very human impulse to look through a window in the exhibition, “Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In,” which opens on…

Family Reunion

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
April 25, 2014

For the first time in nearly 230 years, a family of six from Madrid is spending time together. In "Goya and the Altamira Family" the Metropolitan Museum of Art unites a set of portraits commissioned by the Count of Altamira, the director of what is…

Sky's the Limit

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
April 24, 2014

Though it seems obvious today, it was only after the mid-1700s that artists began painting directly from nature in the plain light of day -- a radical evolution at the time. Working outside the studio, painters were challenged to quickly capture the…

Back to the Futurism

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
April 22, 2014

Just two blocks up from the Neue Galerie's exploration of Nazi era "Degenerate Art," a Guggenheim exhibit on Futurism takes a different look at the tangled question of art and fascism. Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, billed…

'The Space Between Things'

By PATRICK WEBB, Special to the Sun
April 11, 2014

George Braque (1882-1963) is an important figure in 20th century art in part for his exploration of central philosophical concepts like being and presence in his painting. Late in life Braque said that he was interested in painting “the space between…

Gauguin the Primitive

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
April 6, 2014

"Gauguin: Metamorphosis," presenting nearly 160 works reassessing the unusual career of Paul Gauguin, is, surprisingly, the Museum of Modern Art's first major exhibition to focus solely on the self-taught and influential 19th-century painter…

Birds of a Feather

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
March 31, 2014

Orson Welles once remarked that Chaucer's England was a world where the sky was a little bluer and the hay a little sweeter. The same can be said of John Audubon's America. In "Audubon's Aviary: Parts Unknown," the second of a three-part series, The…

The Last Laugh

By JOHN V. BENNETT, Special to the Sun
March 29, 2014

Attendance is up 50% in recent weeks at the Neue Galerie, the museum reports, and the draw is "Degenerate Art," a recreation of an exhibit by the same name put up by the Nazi regime in 1937. The crowds waiting to get in Friday stretched around the…

Serious Schooling

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
March 28, 2014

A 1963 opinion piece in Art News titled “What’s Wrong with U.S. Art Schools?” by painter Mercedes Matter (1913-2001) bemoaned the state of art education at that time and advocated for an atelier program that would “strip away everything but its basic…

Unpolished Expression

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
March 18, 2014

An exhibition of artworks by William Henry Johnson (1901-1970) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Arthur Ross Gallery tells the story of a gifted painter’s search for authenticity – and the tale of an artistic legacy rescued from obscurity. Johnson’s…

Patriarchs of the Pentateuch

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
March 8, 2014

Once in 835 years qualifies as a rare event, and for the first time since their creation in 1178 six very fine and incredibly beautiful stained glass windows are on display outside of England's Canterbury Cathedral. With "Radiant Light: Stained Glass…

Retro Prints

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
March 3, 2014

An exhibition of woodcuts at the Morgan Library and Museum makes a fine argument for a coarse print technique. Displaying books and pages of prints drawn almost entirely from the Morgan’s collection, Medium as Muse: Woodcuts and the Modern Book…

Game of Immortals

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
February 3, 2014

To decompress from the Super Bowl, why not hasten over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art? An exhibit up until February 10 has its own lineup of immortals. "Gridiron Greats," a small show of football cards, offers visitors an overview of the game’s…

Poignant Figures

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
January 22, 2014

Swiss artist Hans Josephsohn’s (1920-2012) debut solo-exhibition in New York came late in his life. It was an arresting show of five large-scale bronze figures at Peter Blum Gallery in 2006 by the then-85-year-old. Now a posthumous exhibition at…

A Puzzling Enigma

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
January 22, 2014

A carefully focused exhibit of four devotional works by Piero della Francesca, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents works never seen together before while highlighting the 15th-century painter's mastery of mathematical perspective…

Da Vinci's Hand

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
January 9, 2014

2013 is over. But “The Year of Italian Culture,” a public relations effort by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has not yet run its course. The program brought a number of artistic treasures to the United States in 2013, including “Boxer at…

Last call for 'Mr. Time'

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
December 12, 2013

An exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery of art by Boris Chaliapin, Time Magazine’s most prolific cover artist, is now in its final weeks. Chaliapin (1904-1979), a Russian-born illustrator, was nicknamed ‘Mr. Time,’ a fitting…

Danish Surprise

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
November 9, 2013

The metamorphoses that swept European painting in the 19th century were dramatic, often abrupt, and stylistically further apart than their dates would suggest. In "Danish Painting from the Golden Age to the Modern Breakthrough," on display at…

Stone from Delphi, Water from Rome

From the poems of Seamus Heaney to the paintings of Wendy Artin

By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH, Special to the Sun
November 1, 2013

Opening tonight at Gurari Collections in Boston, "Stone from Delphi" features a series of astonishing watercolors by Wendy Artin, produced for and inspired by a collection of poems by Seamus Heaney. Artin, who currently serves as the Artistic Advisor…

Venetian Urgency and Grace

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
September 29, 2013

Venice catches our attention with a strange, opulent theatricality, like brightly colored banners fluttering in the afternoon sun. In Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings, which opened on Friday, The Morgan Library…

A Definite Swagger

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun
September 26, 2013

In the period between the American Civil War and the outbreak of World War I the United States became a rich and powerful nation. "Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America," opening Friday at The New-York Historical Society, examines the…

Artist's Calling

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
September 6, 2013

Though Theo Stavropoulos was an accomplished painter and draftsman, his professional reputation faded during his lifetime. After the New York City gallery that represented him closed in 1980, Stavropoulos spent his last decades making artworks in…

Seeking ‘American-ness’

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
August 26, 2013

In the first half of the 20th century art movements that originated in Europe were adopted by a number of American artists to tell distinctly American stories. American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe, now on view at The Museum of Modern Art, drawn almost…

Wings of Pissarro

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
August 16, 2013

Camille Pissarro (1839-1903) was central to the development of Impressionism, mounting the First Impressionist Exhibition with his friend Monet. At the vanguard of cutting-edge trends in painting, he took young Cezanne and Gauguin under his wing and…

Evans and Brandt Revisited

By LISA TANNENBAUM, Special to the Sun
August 5, 2013

Bill Brandt and Walker Evans were both early 20th century photographers and were contemporaries active in the 1930s. Though they worked on different continents, they often took on similar subject matter, with Walker Evans capturing pictures of…

Marsh’s ‘Honest Vulgarity’

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
June 21, 2013

During the Great Depression, the dancers at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, down-and-out men on the Bowery, burlesque shows and Coney Island crowds provided social realist painter Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) with subject matter for multiple-figure…

Braque on a Grand Scale

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
June 7, 2013

Braque or Picasso? Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., chose Georges Braque, saying “time may rank the mellowed craftsmanship and enchanting artistries of the reserved Frenchman higher than the restless virtuosities…

Inside the Artist's Studio

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
May 23, 2013

John Lees left New York City more than twenty years ago for the seclusion of an upstate attic studio where the painter found the physical and psychic space to make personal artworks from excavated memories. For Maria Calandra, a young Brooklyn-based…

Japan’s Most Beautiful Women

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
May 15, 2013

Where are the most beautiful women in all of Japan hanging out these days? It turns out to be Dartmouth College, where the Hood Museum of Art has mounted a magnificent show called "The Women of Shin Hanga." Shin Hanga, which means new print, is the…

Method of the Masters

By XICO GREENWALD, Special to the Sun
February 25, 2013

Two exhibits on view now in New York offer an up-close look at artistic method, examining how paintings develop from initial inspiration to final image. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Matisse: In Search of True Painting, through March 17, has been…

The Monarch of Painting Appears

Piero della Francesca at the Frick Collection

By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 19, 2013

The Frick Collection recently opened an exhibition of seven paintings by Piero della Francesca, painter, geometer, and prime mover of the Italian Renaissance. This is the first Piero show ever to appear in the United States, and is cause for…

Alone Together

Karen Dow at Giampietro Gallery

By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 8, 2013

Karen Dow's exhibition of geometric abstractions opened last week at Giampietro Gallery in New Haven. According to the gallery, "She sets parameters, beginning with a basic grid, and then goes along for the ride, making intuitive edits - which…

Surety and Uncertainty

Kyle Staver at John Davis Gallery

By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
February 5, 2013

John Davis Gallery opened an exhibition last week featuring the work of Kyle Staver, whose paintings have turned to the old stories. “Lately I have been painting dragons, distressed maidens, and bulls with bad intentions," says the artist. "Titian…

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered

By FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH
January 22, 2013

Last week the International Center of Photography opened a comprehensive exhibition of the work of Roman Vishniac. "Vishniac created the most widely recognized and reproduced photographic record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World…

 

Artificial Inspiration

By JOHN V. BENNETT, Special to the Sun
May 14, 2014

“It wants to be read in a big voice,” Tennyson once challenged a would-be reciter of his work. “Can you make yours big enough?” The Victorian Poet Laureate was referring to a bold mode of public speaking, one that has fallen out of favor today, not…

Iraq War Veterans, in Their Own Words: 'In Conflict'

A Wizard Casts His Spell in the Stable: 'Equus'

Mamet Versus Mamet

By KATE TAYLOR

Bad Trip

By JOHN V. BENNETT, Special to the Sun
May 11, 2014

Edgar Allan Poe dedicated his final great work, a “prose poem” called “Eureka,” to “those who feel rather than to those who think—to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities.” Such readers, and theatergoers, will find…

Decent Melodies, Bad Wigs: 'A Tale of Two Cities'

A Pre-Feminist Fantasyland: 'The Marvelous Wonderettes'

New $200K Playwriting Prize Goes to Kushner

Into the Breach, Out of the Chaos: 'Beast' and 'Anger/Nation'

Dancers, Ogres & Horses

 

Books

The World's Oldest Sickness

By JANET TASSEL, Special to the Sun
August 26, 2013

The Jew as spider? Yes, and as octopus, rat, snake, pig,-- virtually any repulsive creature in the bestiary. The Jew is also depicted as a vampire, and as a (sort of) man with a huge, ugly hook nose, in Chassid garb, spilling blood, and killing babies…

Remembering the Reporter Who Inspired 'On the Waterfront'

By SAUL ROSENBERG
July 26, 2010

In May 1948, in a scene that might have come from a gangster movie, a man leapt out of a sedan and fired seven shots at a stevedore named Tom Collentine, three into his prostrate body. As had become routine in previous decades, most New York papers…

How Quest for American Dominance Drove Roosevelt, Eisenhower

By SAUL ROSENBERG
June 27, 2010

Delivering a magisterial account of Franklin Roosevelt’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s roles in World War II, situated within their separate lives and presidencies, may seem an outright impossibility in the space of 100 pages. Yet it is what Philip Terzian has done in Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century.

A Towering Spiritual Leader Finds His Biographers, At Last

By SAUL ROSENBERG
June 21, 2010

Menachem Mendel Schneerson is the subject of an important new biography by Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, professors at City University and Israel’s Bar Ilan respectively. They describe how Menachem Mendel partially separated himself from Chabad as a Parisian engineer, returning to the fold in flight from the Nazis, shortly afterwards to emerge as Chabad’s undisputed spiritual leader.

Greece in the Shadow of the Nazis

By SAUL ROSENBERG
June 8, 2010

In the most common type of thriller – conservatively, 99 examples out of 100 – a protagonist pieces together puzzling events until the dastardly plans of an antagonist are discovered – and there ensues a game of cat and mouse, or a race against time, so that the good guy(s) can defuse the bomb, or stop the speeding bus, or whatever, five seconds before the world explodes.

Half Way There

By SAUL ROSENBERG
May 26, 2010

Christopher Hitchens is prolific indeed. Now, after books on a dozen subjects from Cyprus to Jefferson, Paine, and, most recently, the general badness of religion, he turns his attention inwards in Hitch-22, named for the paradoxical style of Catch-22. Hitch-22’s chief paradox is that of simultaneously maintaining against militant Islamic absolutists and Western relativists that “there is no totalitarian solution while also insisting that, yes, we on our side also have unalterable convictions and are willing to fight for them.”

Trading Places: ‘Famous Amis’ Runs Into ‘Hitch-22’

By BRENDAN BERNHARD, Special to the Sun
May 21, 2010

Probity, Not Policy

Two Timely Reiusses

By Saul Rosenberg, Special to the Sun
April 26, 2010

American public anger at its financial system has perhaps not run higher in almost a century. Banks are booking record profits while the American consumer on the other end of what was a shared crisis just a year go continues to struggle. Curiously, at about the same time 1st quarter results came out, two volumes at once very different and very much to the point were reissued to little notice on the same day by General Books, a club that republishes classics...

To Plumb Modern Israel Jabotinsky’s ‘My Life’ Is the Place To Start

By LOUIS GORDON, Special to the Sun
August 18, 2016

For anyone seeking to understand the continuing prominence of the Likud Party in Israeli politics the story of its progenitor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, is essential. A talented writer raised in an assimilated Odessa family, Jabotinsky threw himself into…

All Alone: Two New Books on Loneliness