Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Susannah and the Elders” (1610), oil on canvas. Collection of Schloss Weissenstein. The biblical theme of an assaulted woman and the men who both prey on and condemn her had special resonance for Gentileschi, herself a rape… — Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Susannah and the Elders” (1610), oil on canvas. Collection of Schloss Weissenstein. The biblical theme of an assaulted woman and the men who both prey on and condemn her had special resonance for Gentileschi, herself a rape victim who was tortured to ensure she was telling the truth.

Tara Reade and the passion of our perceptions

May 20, 2020

Context drives not only perception but the passion with which we hold that perception. Witness Tara Reade, who has accused presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of sexual assault when she was an aide in his Senate office in 1993. In another time, Reade would be one more explosive chapter of the #MeToo movement. But as Eleanor Roosevelt might put it, this is no ordinary time.

James Tissot, “The Healing of Ten Lepers” (1886-94), gouache over graphite on gray wove paper. Brooklyn Museum. Once one of the most fearsome of diseases, leprosy is one today for which the world has achieved 95 percent herd immunity.

Healing thyself

May 11, 2020

My perpetual inspirational calendar for May 10 — which was Mother’s Day — contained this quote from Daniel L. Reardon: “In the long run, the pessimist may be right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.”

Right about now we could use a little more of the optimist than the pessimist. Each day brings bad news with no sign of let up, even as states begin to reopen and the stock market holds its own. Indeed, it’s hard to be the optimist on the trip when the pessimist in us is regularly experiencing “the dark night of the soul” at 3 a.m., tossing, turning and hyperventilating — terrified for our ill loved ones and our own mortality; wondering if our jobs are in danger or if we’ll get another and, in any event, how we’ll pay the bills; despairing that the things, places and people we cherish will never be the same.

Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald J. Trump during Trump’s November 2017 trip to China. Some see America’s ratcheting up of tensions with the Chinese as Trump’s Saddam Hussein moment. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/White House.

Are China's virus labs Trump's WMD?

May 5, 2020

Perhaps the only thing hotter than the subject of the coronavirus at present is the discussion of China’s accountability as the country of its origin. President Donald J. Trump has been pressing the Chinese for greater transparency, arguing that if the country had not been so secretive, the virus might’ve been stopped in its tracks.

Trump himself has a lot of explaining to do about his own early praise of the Chinese response to the virus and his own lax reaction. But we mustn’t allow criticism of Trump’s behavior to obfuscate the Chinese role in the catastrophe, anymore than we can let Chinese culpability obscure the lack of Alexandrian leadership — leadership from the front — on the part of Trump and other world figures like Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, whose macho approach to the virus has decimated the indigenous people of the rainforest. If failure is always an orphan, as the proverb suggests, it certainly has many negligent step-parents.

Shining city on a hill: Leo von Klenze reimagines the Acropolis created under the leadership of the Athenian statesman Pericles in “The Acropolis at Athens” (1846), oil on canvas. Neue Pinakothek.

Is this the end of 'American exceptionalism'?

April 26, 2020

The Athenian statesman, general and orator Pericles is generally regarded as presiding over the Golden Age of Greece, when Athens was the first among equals of the Greek city-states — ruling the seas in a series of wars; bestowing democracy on freemen; encouraging the arts and literature; and building a series of public works projects that are still with us today in the remnants of the buildings of the Acropolis that include the Parthenon, temple of the city’s patroness, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war in a just cause.But after some 30 years it was all over in 629 B.C. when a plague — perhaps typhus — ripped through Athens, killing Pericles and several members of his family. It was the beginning of the end for Athens, too, which became involved in a long struggle with archrival Sparta.

People often ask me about my fascination with history and in particular the Greeks and Alexander the Great, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror who would come along 300 years later and avenge all the Greeks suffered at the hands of the Persians, their foreign rivals, including the burning of that Acropolis. Let’s be frank here, shall we? People find my fascination with history and the Greeks at best quaint and at worst out of touch. They don’t just ask me about it, they ridicule me about it.

Who’s laughing now?…

Carl Heinrich Bloch, “Christ at the Cross” (1870), oil on copper. Museum of Natural History, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Suffering, death and Resurrection

April 6, 2020

It is perhaps fitting that we should approach the apex of the coronavirus in the New York metropolitan area during Holy Week, which once again overlaps with Passover.

This year there was no need for Lenten sacrifices. Instead sacrifice has been forced upon us. The coronavirus has been our Lenten journey and now our Calvary. This, too, is our Passover story — which also has a plague episode — our Exodus.