Noteworthy reads from the last week (or so):
“Agnes Martin: The Essentials of a Minimalist Master,” Peter Plagens
“Martin achieved an artistic style that fused universal order and symmetry with a profoundly beautiful, subjective, oscillating human touch. Plato wouldn’t have believed his eyes.”
“Romancing the Romanovs,” Gary Saul Morson
“As any student of Russia from Peter to Stalin knows, Russian modernization, for all its embrace of Western technology, somehow missed something essential about being civilized.”
“‘And then one day, the Jewish children were all gone,’ [my aunt] said in another phone call many years after she shared the story of the wedding cups.”
“From Attica to Harvard Law Students: A Message from Behind the Wall,” John J. Lennon
“Ignorance is ugly, particularly in prison. It’s loud and obnoxious and violent. It tumbles into my cell right now as I write this. But for some, education can quell that.”
“How John Berger Taught Us to See,” Colin MacCabe
“Berger was always committed to both criticism and creation: to the production of painting and fiction. ”