{"id":147284,"date":"2024-02-05T17:15:12","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T22:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2024\/02\/the-critics-notebook-13858\/"},"modified":"2024-04-09T17:27:38","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T21:27:38","slug":"the-critics-notebook-13858","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2024\/02\/the-critics-notebook-13858\/","title":{"rendered":"The Critic\u2019s Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dana Gordon, <\/em>Advanced Theoretical Physics,<\/em> 2023, Oil on canvas. On view in \u201cDana Gordon: Signs of Life, Paintings from 2023\u201d at Westbeth Gallery, New York.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>Nonfiction:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, by Allen C. Guelzo (Alfred A. Knopf):<\/span><\/a><\/i> \u201cDemocracy is a government for humanity, not angels\u201d writes Allen C. Guelzo<\/a> in Our Ancient Faith<\/i>. This is good news for the American people, lacking as we currently do cherubic wings or heavenly halos. Yet the efficacy of democracy itself has of late come into question: \u201cdemocracies,\u201d as Guelzo hears critics murmuring, \u201chave no use for beauty,\u201d and they \u201cdie at the hands of the governments they elect.\u201d But he finds in the model of Abraham Lincoln a response to all such complaints. More than that, Guelzo sees Lincoln\u2019s natural law\u2013informed thought as a counter to the \u201cRawlsian moral relativism\u201d that has come to define\u2014and desecrate\u2014prevailing notions of democracy in recent decades. Here is a penetrating look at both the seeds of American democracy and their greatest cultivator. \u2014LL<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Nonfiction:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu (W. W. Norton):<\/span><\/a> <\/i>It is a widely held conviction that great works of literature\u2014Homer\u2019s Iliad<\/i>, say, or Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/i>\u2014are the common property of mankind. Leo Tolstoy, whose novels are as good a candidate as any\u2019s for such a list, certainly thought so: shortly before his death, he tried to will his literary estate not to his wife or daughter, but to \u201chumanity\u201d writ large. Alas, his lawyers informed him that, in Russian law, such a bequest was nonsensical: for \u201chumanity\u201d is not a legal entity, and how could a private right like ownership be publicly held? Yet from another point of view, the bequest to humanity had already been made\u2014when each of his books was published. At issue here is an ambiguity at the heart of copyright tracing back to Daniel Defoe, John Locke\u2019s labor theory of property, and the 1710 Statute of Anne, as the perspicacious David Bellos and Alexandre Montague demonstrate in their new Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs<\/i>. If you don\u2019t understand the doctrine of \u201cfair use\u201d after reading it, you\u2019ll at least know why you\u2019re not alone. \u2014RE<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a>Art:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dana Gordon, <\/em>Navigator,<\/em> 2023, Oil on canvas. On view in \u201cDana Gordon: Signs of Life, Paintings from 2023\u201d at Westbeth Gallery, New York.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cDana Gordon: Signs of Life, Paintings from 2023,\u201d at Westbeth Gallery, New York (through February 24):<\/a> \u201cIf you approach this work like music, you won\u2019t be far wrong.\u201d That is how Sally Eckhoff, in her introductory essay, describes Dana Gordon\u2019s exhibition of recent paintings at Westbeth Gallery. With thick geometric lines that seem to reverberate and play off one another, these abstractions convey a syncopated rhythm. A whopping twenty-eight paintings from 2023 are here on display. When taken together, the variations in density and color suggest their own musical progression. Despite their quick and improvisational nature, however, \u201cnothing gets out of hand,\u201d Eckhoff concludes. \u201cThe artist\u2019s control\u2014and there is a lot of it\u2014shows itself purely in the edges and the bewitching, shifting surface of the white underneath.\u201d \u2014JP<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a>Music:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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Johann Nepomulk della Croce, detail from<\/em>\u00a0Mozart Family, <\/em>ca. 1780, Oil on canvas, Cornell Music Library, Ithaca, New York<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Mozart & Brahms performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke\u2019s, Carnegie Hall, New York (February 8):<\/a> Mozart\u2019s Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788), the second of his two minor-key symphonies, has inspired wildly divergent impressions. One Romantic-era critic called it \u201ca symphony of pain and lamentation,\u201d while another considered it \u201cnothing but joy and animation.\u201d Schumann thought it \u201cGrecian lightness and grace.\u201d Today, we are so primed to hear its chromaticism and minor key for their tragic symbolism that we probably cannot escape the darker interpretation. But rather than intimate Mozart\u2019s imminent death, it can point us to a new beginning: consider how Beethoven copied out twenty-nine bars while writing his Symphony No. 5, which features a restless, motivic structure that owes much to Mozart\u2019s masterwork. Hear it at Carnegie Hall this Thursday performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke\u2019s under the Finnish conductor Osmo V\u00e4nsk\u00e4. Also featured will be Brahms\u2019s Violin Concerto\u00a0with Isabelle Faust as the soloist. \u2014IS<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a>Architecture:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Edwin Rickards, by Timothy Brittain-Catlin (Historic England):<\/span><\/a><\/i> The architect and historian Timothy Brittain-Catlin has a knack for looking at architectural history slantwise. His Bleak Houses: Disappointment and Failure in Architecture<\/i> (2014) told of how architectural history is riddled with \u201closers,\u201d those who, often through no fault of their own, find themselves stylistically out of favor (he provocatively suggests that one of the issues facing the newest classical revivalists is that architectural critics, so steeped in modernism, lack the vocabulary to discuss cogently new classical buildings). The Edwardians and Their Houses <\/a><\/i>(2020) placed Edwardian architects firmly in the context of Britain\u2019s regnant Liberal Party, bringing the era to life in a new way. Now Brittain-Catlin has turned his attention to a somewhat-obscure figure of the early twentieth century, Edwin Rickards (1872\u20131920). Arnold Bennett<\/a>, the writer, maintained that he had \u201cnever met an artist in any art of more catholic taste\u201d than his friend Rickards, whose wide-ranging travels through Europe imbued him with an affinity for the Baroque that found expression in exuberant designs not typical of reticent England. See: the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, on Curzon Street in Mayfair, with its colonnaded niche of an entrance and blocky, almost Hawksmoorian rustication. This new book is a fascinating introduction to an architect who should be better known. \u2014BR<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

From the Archives:<\/p>\n

\u201cAn old gypsy nature,\u201d by Ben Downing (June 1998).<\/a> A review of <\/i>Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by Ernest Mehew.<\/i><\/p>\n

Dispatch:<\/p>\n

\u201cExcellence all around,\u201d by Jay Nordlinger.<\/a> On a concert of the New York Philharmonic.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cErsatz warzones,\u201d by Jessica Almereyda.<\/a> On \u201cAn-My L\u00ea: Between Two Rivers\u201d at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Lincoln, copyright law, Dana Gordon, Mozart & Brahms, Edwin Rickards & more from the world of culture. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2188,"featured_media":147489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[472],"tags":[654,647,745,637,695,825],"dispatch-city":[3291],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fb0bff29d65","label":"Participants","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"object","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"featured_image_credits":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_651c536113a8e","label":"Featured Image Credits","name":"featured_image_credits","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":0,"_name":"featured_image_credits","_valid":1}},"enable_paywall":{"simple_value_formatted":"No","value_formatted":false,"value":"0","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_66009169342f2","label":"Enable Paywall","name":"enable_paywall","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"true_false","value":null,"menu_order":2,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_651c53615a3f7","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"message":"","default_value":0,"ui":0,"ui_on_text":"","ui_off_text":"","_name":"enable_paywall","_valid":1}}},"author_meta":{"display_name":"The Editors","author_link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/author\/the-editors\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/CNHeaderImage_cropped-300x99.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/CNHeaderImage_cropped.png","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Dispatch<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Dispatch<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["Architecture<\/a>","Art<\/a>","Books<\/a>","Music<\/a>","New York<\/a>","Translation<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Architecture<\/span>","Art<\/span>","Books<\/span>","Music<\/span>","New York<\/span>","Translation<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 3 months ago","modified":"Updated 4 weeks ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on February 5, 2024","modified":"Updated on April 9, 2024"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on February 5, 2024 5:15 pm","modified":"Updated on April 9, 2024 5:27 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["author_meta","featured_img","jetpack_sharing_enabled","jetpack_featured_media_url","coauthors","tax_additional","comment_count","relative_dates","absolute_dates","absolute_dates_time","featured_img_caption","series_order","jetpack-related-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147285,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147284\/revisions\/147285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147284"},{"taxonomy":"dispatch-city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dispatch-city?post=147284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}