This week: Stuart England, Jacobus Vrel, Donald Judd, bureaucracy & more.
The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603–1689, by Jonathan Healey (Knopf): As the Oxford professor Jonathan Healey sets out in his new book, Stuart England was indeed a society in flames. Political and cultural upheavals abounded under the Stuart monarchs, ranging from James I’s and Charles I’s dissolutions of Parliament to the Civil War and Interregnum, to the Restoration, Great Fire of London, and bubonic plague of the 1660s, and then to the collapse of James II’s rule. Underlying the conflicts of the century were the extreme religious and cultural tensions among Catholics, Arminians, and Puritans. To be sure, the English peasant in the seventeenth century lived a life much closer to starvation and squalor than in the centuries before. And equally sure, the monarch’s power was never the same after the establishment of the Bill of Rights and the “Dutch Invasion” of William of Orange—or the Glorious Revolution, as it’s more commonly known. For a compelling survey of “revolutionary” seventeenth-century England, look no further than The Blazing World. —JW
“Vrel: Forerunner of Vermeer” at the Mauritshuis, The Hague (through May 29): While the Vermeer show in Amsterdam has drawn the crowds, it was a smaller show I saw this week in the Netherlands that most rewarded close study. “Vrel: Forerunner of Vermeer,” at The Hague’s glorious Mauritshuis, sheds light on an enigmatic predecessor to the much better known Vermeer. For a full accounting of both shows, see my forthcoming piece in the June issue of The New Criterion. Those who won’t be in the Netherlands before the end of May can learn more about Vrel in an excellent catalogue published in 2021 by Hirmer. —BR
“Donald Judd Spaces” with Rainer Judd, Flavin Judd & Mahfuz Sultan, presented by the Judd Foundation and McNally Jackson (May 8): In March 2020, the Museum of Modern Art opened the doors to its stellar Donald Judd retrospective, the first such in over thirty years, which was happily extended into January 2021 after the interruption of the pandemic. Concurrent with that exhibition was the publication by the Judd Foundation of Donald Judd Spaces, a handsome survey of the environments in New York and Texas, interior and exterior, where Judd lived and worked. On Monday, May 8, Rainer and Flavin Judd will be joined by the architect Mahfuz Sultan at McNally Jackson’s Seaport location to celebrate the release of a newly expanded second edition. Tickets are $5 apiece. —RE
“Re-empowering Human Agency: A Forum with Common Good” hosted by Common Good and the Center on Capitalism and Society, Faculty House, Columbia University (April 19): Common sense dictates that good government can and should administer public services, such as offering decent public schooling or building and repairing infrastructure. Yet the current overgrowth of institutional bureaucracies has restricted all means of government responsibility. This Wednesday, Common Good and the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University will host a panel discussion to answer the question of how to restore bureaucratic accountability and end our frustration with our seemingly all-powerful institutions and agencies. Among the panelists is the institutional-reform expert Philip K. Howard, the author of Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions (Rodin Books). —JW
From the Archives:
“Bonnard in Paris,” by Hilton Kramer (May 1984). On retrospectives for a Post-Impressionist painter.
Dispatch:
“A genius of absorption” by David Platzer. On “Giovanni Bellini: Crossed Influences” at the Musée Jacquemart André, Paris.