Manet at the Gardner

My latest for The New Criterion.

Édouard Manet, Reading, ca. 1868–73, Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing.

I reviewed “Manet: A Model Family” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for the December issue of The New Criterion. “Manet ‘round the family”¹ will be in print shortly and is online now. It’s paywalled, so let me know if you need access. That said, the December art issue is always a banger, and this one especially so: Leann Davis Alspaugh on “Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism” at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, David Platzer on “Figures of the Fool” and “A New Look at Watteau” at the Louvre, Eric Gibson on Ghiberti and Donatello, Benjamin Riley interviewing dealer Ben Hall, Michele H. Bogart on the statues of Central Park, Philip Rylands on the Venice Biennale, James Panero on the medallic art of the Gilded Age, and Paul Hayes Tucker on the new Monet biography by Jackie Wullschläger. If you’re not a TNC subscriber, you’re missing out on some of the best art criticism available, and there is a simple remedy.

I also have an essay in the current issue of Root Quarterly, Volume VI, #2, titled “The Case for Institutional Plurality.” RQ is print-only, and can be had here.

Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.

Our next title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Working Space by Frank Stella. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.

The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.

Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.

Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.

1. There is no good reason for this title except that I wanted to be the first author in The New Criterion to reference Rage Against the Machine.