Reviewing an ongoing exhibit of the paintings of Max Oppenheimer at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Liam Hoare writes:

The nature of [Oppenheimer’s] life, which took him to Berlin, Prague, Geneva, and Zurich in search of work and forced him into exile in New York after the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938, led to his collection being scattered across continents. Because he was a Jewish artist and a modernist, his work was also branded “degenerate” by Nazi authorities, confiscated, and destroyed.

Born July 1, 1885 into an assimilated, middle-class Jewish family, the son of a journalist and music critic, Oppenheimer enrolled at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1900 before continuing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he came under the influence of the liberal experimentalist Franz Thiele.

Oppenheimer’s early work from around 1910 was dedicated to portraiture. His representations of his subjects, most prominently the German writer Heinrich Mann, are like apparitions. They are lit with a kind of ethereal glow that seems to emanate from the subjects themselves. The lines of their suit jackets wiggle and wave, while their facial expressions and posture radiate ennui, a mood accentuated by the portraits’ dark backdrops. There is a deep seriousness, in particular artistic seriousness, to Oppenheimer’s portrait work.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.