Jeremy Clarke: Spectator Low Life, The Final Years, by Jeremy Clarke (Quartet): The late Jeremy Clarke (1957–2023) might have been faced with an impossible task. Writing the “Low Life” column in The Spectator following the death of the inimitably drunken Jeffrey Bernard (famous for occasionally missing a weekly column, resulting in a byline reading “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell”), Clarke could hardly be expected to manage the louche languors of his predecessor. But Clarke brought his own brand of seediness to the role, introducing us to surly barkeeps, conspiratorial taxi-drivers, ugly French communists, and all the other sorts that it takes to make a world. The columns collected here in an edition published by Quartet to mark the one-year anniversary of Clarke’s death date from Clarke’s diagnosis with prostate cancer, a constant source of grim humor for the author and an event that raised his prose to morbidly hilarious heights. —BR
Artemisia Gentileschi and the Business of Art, by Christopher R. Marshall (Princeton University Press): The art market is finicky and volatile, seeming to reward shrewdness and business acumen more than artistic talent. A new book returns readers to the Italian art market of the seventeenth century, arguing that the same conditions held for Artemisia Gentileschi, the painter and follower of Carravagio. In Artemisia Gentileschi and the Business of Art, Christopher R. Marshall writes that the artist’s astute business sense permitted her commercial success during her lifetime and even laid the groundwork for the recent revival of her reputation. Analyses of works newly attributed to Gentileschi and reconsiderations of her oft-overlooked later works inform this reevaluation of the master artist—and eagle-eyed businesswoman. —SM
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, performed by the Ulysses Quartet, at Green-Wood Cemetery (June 20–22): Two years ago, I boarded the Stygian ferry—well, a wood-paneled trolley bus—and made my way to the catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery to witness The Angel’s Share, a concert series curated by Death of Classical. This week, the death-haunted series returns with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, one of Beethoven’s final quartets and a jewel in the chamber repertoire. In its centerpiece, the “Heiliger Dankgesang” (Holy Song of Thanksgiving), Beethoven ruminates on the approach of the eternal in alternating passages of lyrical classicism and sublime, minimalistic waves of sound in the Lydian mode. Hear the Ulysses Quartet in the Green-Wood catacombs this Thursday through Saturday, with a tasting of spirits (liquor, that is) offered to the bibulous beforehand. —IS
“Opening reception of “Lafayette: A Hero’s Return,” featuring Général de Brigade Vincent de Kytspotter, at the Fraunces Tavern Museum (June 24): “Humanity has won its battle,” wrote Marquis de Lafayette after the Battle of Yorktown; “liberty now has a country.” The Frenchman was right to speak of a battle rather than a war. Liberty, as the founders and Lafayette knew, had not been attained once and for all in 1776, much less in 1781; it had be vigorously defended and, before that, appreciated and understood. In 1824, Americans had a chance to celebrate their history when Lafayette, then the last living general from the Revolutionary War, came back from France for a tour of twenty-four states in thirteen months, receiving a hero’s welcome at every stop. And next Monday, June 24, New Yorkers can do likewise at the opening reception of “Lafayette: A Hero’s Return,” a new exhibition covering the Frenchman’s exploits during the Revolutionary War as well as his return visit. A lecture from Général de Brigade Vincent de Kytspotter, Head of the French Defense Mission to the United Nations, and an optional dinner will round out the festivities. —RE
Dispatch:
“Lear’s tragedy, & ours,” by Glenn Ellmers
On Shakespeare, Plato & politics.
By the Editors:
“The Joe Biden Shuffle defines the G7”
Roger Kimball, The Spectator World
From the Archives:
“Censoring ‘20th-Century Culture’: the case of Noam Chomsky,” by Geoffrey Sampson (October 1984).
On the life & career of Noam Chomsky.