I picked up by chance a children's book one fine art, on the cover of which is Paul Klee's 1928  Cat and  Bird. At once I was taken ...

Oh the unpredictable, discursive paths of the internet. I was searching for a particular picture of the Harpies, the mythological creatures...

Complaints about a lack of diversity usually come from politically motivated quarters, but it's not a useless or inappropriate question...

Ours is a complex age, contemporary wisdom advises. Everyone is so busy and there are so many people bustling about, doing different things...

The philistine is one of the most curious species of our happy hominidal tribe. Sure, Erectus might impress with his haughty posture and Ne...

Daphnis ego in silvis hinc usque ad sidera notus formonsi pecoris formonsior ipse. –Vergil. Eclogue VI. 43-44 The connection between ma...

Something curious happened to many NYC neighborhoods during the last five or so years. Houses once characterized by aluminum awnings, concr...

I vaghi fiori Giovanni Palestrina A heated debate followed one of The Atlantic ' s puffy articles this week when  Benjamin Schwar...

In the great taxonomy of baffling statements a special place is reserved for those which guarantee that the author has no idea what he'...

It is often remarked that tough times try men's souls, and that in such times they are found firm or lacking. True enough. Less often b...

This WSJ review of a new book architect and urban planner Leon Krier  brings a considerable question into relief: can an idea inhere in a w...

After today's early tea, I came across an illuminating comparison of the two largest ocean liners of their ages, the infamous HMS Tit...

This week I spent three days on jury service. It is of aesthetic crimes, however, that I wish to speak. The court sits a horrendous glass-a...

T. S. Eliot famously observed the nature of the heretic as, "a person who seizes upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it...

Part I | Part II | Part III

Art critic Robert Hughes wrote and narrated this documentary on Caravaggio in 1975. The section below begins Part III, the film's highl...

"The modern world meant for [Tolkien] essentially the machine. . . He used ["machine"] very compendiously to mean. . . almo...

Pious men of strict observance can hardly see in art an obedient maidservant. . . rivalry begins, first, in rivalry between the religious s...