To One of the 20th Century’s Greatest Jewish Art Critics, Religion Was Never Far Off

Oct. 24 2022

At the beginning of his long and fruitful career, the critic and essayist Hilton Kramer (1928–2012) was very close with the largely Jewish circle of writers known as the New York intellectuals. A great defender of modern art—he admired especially Picasso, Matisse, and Kandinksy—Kramer was also a fierce critic of what he saw as the excesses of such later figures as Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. He was also a dedicated anti-Communist and, later in life, an opponent of the sorts of political correctness that would now be labeled “woke.” In a careful consideration of Kramer’s work, Brian Allen analyzes the role played by religion and ethics:

The best art, Kramer believed, has what he called a moral purpose. I’d quibble with the word “moral.” Morals are personal and vary based on an individual’s upbringing and experience. Kramer, rather, saw the best art as rooted in ethics, those broadly held standards of best conduct—going beyond family, tribes, or taste—that make us a human community. Rigor, honesty, expressiveness, vision, yearning, and conviction are at the center of the art he liked best.

Kramer didn’t write about religious belief often. He was Jewish—not observant, but religious feeling wasn’t far. He wasn’t dogmatic about faith but was keen on soulfulness. He considered the early Modernists like Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, the most extreme abstractionists, as not dogmatically religious artists but certainly searchers after God. They were willing to abandon direct, discernible references to recognizable objects to get beyond materialism and the desperation, unbelief, and lack of purpose that it foments. Kramer thought that the best art broached topics like immortality and the meaning of life.

Kramer was sharp-eyed when it came to spotting the perils to artists and art historians of making their work political. Until the 1960s, Modernist artists were far removed from politics. It simply wasn’t their sphere. They were focused, as was Kramer, on the imperatives of aesthetics, which are nonpolitical. The politicization of art and art history reminded Kramer of culture behind the Iron Curtain. Culture has no purpose for totalitarians except to serve the state. Art in the Soviet Union, but also in its doppelgänger Nazi Germany, was thoroughly debased as a consequence.

By the 1990s, he feared that the same thing was happening again. The arts issue that concerned Kramer was the role of political correctness in demolishing art criticism, since, fundamentally, it was an assault on quality.

Read more at City Journal

More about: Art, New York Intellectuals, Political correctness

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy