Sagebrush and Solitude: Maynard Dixon in Nevada, by Ann M. Wolfe (Rizzoli): If, as the Bible tells us, God really formed man from clay, then few artists have captured our inborn earthiness better than Maynard Dixon (1875–1946). So honest are his depictions of the American West and its inhabitants that you’d think he mixed the soil itself into the paint. He treats landscapes and human subjects as if they were one and the same: human faces are made to look mountainous, and mountains are made to look sentient. Though the artist is chiefly associated with California, Utah, and Arizona, much of his most exemplary work was completed in Nevada’s high desert; Rizzoli’s new Sagebrush and Solitude brings the best of this output together in a handsome volume accompanying an exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art. —LL
“La Nuove Musiche: The Baroque Revolution Europe,” performed by Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, at Carnegie Hall (April 3): When Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI come to town, one must save the date. For more than fifty years, the Catalan gambist has proven himself a preeminent scholar of early music, bringing it to renewed life via thematic albums and concerts, with the help of the large stable of musicians and ensembles he sponsors. His achievement is to startle us with the vivid presentness of ancient and early music of the West and Near East, testifying to the kinship of musical traditions across time and space. This Wednesday, he returns to Carnegie’s Zankel Hall for a concert exploring the origins of the Baroque era, featuring a cast of composers ranging from the overlooked to the barely seen: Frescobaldi, de’ Cavalieri, Falconieri, Hume, Scheidt, and many more. —IS
Ravel, Webern, Strauss & Scriabin, performed by the New York Philharmonic, at David Geffen Hall (April 4–6): A single crack of the whip and we’re off to the races in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, the composer’s penultimate work and one that draws on the melodies of his native Basque country as well as the jazz clubs of Harlem. Alice Sara Ott makes her debut with the New York Philharmonic in the concerto this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, in a program that also brings us Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, and Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy. Karina Canellakis conducts, making her Philharmonic debut as well. —IS
“A Collecting Dynasty: The Rockefeller Family,” presented by The Winter Show: The Winter Show may have ended a few months ago, but we can still reap the benefits of that yearly concentration of cultural capital. The fair recently made public the video from their panel discussion “A Collecting Dynasty: The Rockefeller Family,” which brought together four participants, all of whom dealt with that remarkable family and their various collections (from folk art to Asian, and much besides). The talk is available on YouTube and was presented online in collaboration with Asia Week New York, which ended March 22. —BR
From the Archives:
“Francis Fukuyama and the end of History” by Roger Kimball (February 1992). On Fukuyama, Hegel & the world’s telos.
In the Press:
“They Who Also Served”
David Platzer, New English Review
Dispatch:
“Funeral march,” by Jane Coombs. On “Masters at Work” at New York City Ballet.