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This week on nybooks.com: Norman Rockwell, turbulence in Turkey, sex in ancient Rome, and Renzo Piano’s long-awaited addition to the Kimbell Art Museum. Plus the “common-sense” revolution in Ukraine, a magnificent guide to Chinese history, a look at the dark side of Viennese modernism, how Greeks and Romans mapped the world, and the impact of Hurricane Sandy in photographs.
An American Romantic Christopher Benfey At the time of his death, Norman Rockwell was one of the most popular artists in America and one of the most maligned. Despite the championing, late in his career, of, among others, John Updike and Andy Warhol, the suspicion has lingered that perhaps he shouldn’t have been considered an artist at all, as opposed to an illustrator or, worse, a hack purveyor of kitsch.
Turkey: ‘Surreal, Menacing…Pompous’ Christopher de Bellaigue Another nightmare may be emerging in Turkey, the Middle East’s most prominent proponent of what might be called Islamic democracy. The stability and prosperity that Turkey has enjoyed over the past ten years had associated the country with a type of political arrangement known flatteringly as the “Turkish model.” This summer, the model came unstuck.
Rome: Sex & Freedom Peter Brown One of the most lasting delights and challenges of the study of the ancient world, and of the Roman Empire in particular, is the tension between familiarity and strangeness that characterizes our many approaches to it. Antiquity is always stranger than we think. Until recently, studies of sex in Rome and of Christianity in the Roman world were wrapped in a cocoon of false familiarity.
Also in our December 19 issue: Marina Warner on sea monsters, Lorrie Moore on Blue Is the Warmest Color, Mark Danner on Donald Rumsfeld, Joyce Carol Oates on Mike Tyson, and more.
No Harm to the Kimbell Martin Filler The good news is that Renzo Piano’s long-awaited addition to Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is far from the disaster feared. There is no bad news, only mild regret that the new $135 million building is not very distinguished.
					Trapped in Vienna Andrew Butterfield Vienna was not only a birthplace of modernism; it was also a “laboratory of world destruction.” A new exhibition at the National Gallery, London helps the viewer to see in the clearest terms the suffocating anxiety and oppressive solitude of the artists, writers, and patrons who were responsible for much of Viennese modernism.
A Way Out for Ukraine? Timothy Snyder Would anyone anywhere in the world be willing to take a truncheon in the head for the sake of a trade agreement with the United States? This is the question we Americans might be asking ourselves, as we watch young Ukrainians being beaten in Kiev for protesting their own government’s decision not to enter an association agreement with the European Union.					China: Five Pounds of Facts Jonathan Mirsky Before readers can thread a path through Endymion Wilkinson’s unparalleled collection of Chinese facts and analysis, they must find a way to handle a book weighing well over five pounds. In the lap? On a table? On a stand? Its 1.5 million words are enough for nine 400-page books.
How the Greeks Got There Christopher Carroll A striking collection of illustrated Renaissance manuscripts—reconstructions of the work of classical geographers like Ptolemy—manages to suggest not just what ancient maps may have looked like, but how ancient geography influenced modern notions of topography and geography.				The Stunned Days of Sandy Michael Greenberg The Museum of the City of New York sent out an invitation, to both amateurs and professionals, to submit images of Hurricane Sandy—photographs snapped on cell phones, film, digital cameras or whatever else happened to be at hand. The resulting exhibition confirms that still photographs and written language, both imbibed in silence, convey the spirit of the catastrophe more truthfully than moving images.