Colm Tóibín

Shadow Selves

‘The Man in the Red Coat’ by Julian Barnes

Nasty, Brutish, and Long

Pat Steir's 'Waterfall' Paintings

While it should be possible for someone looking at Pat Steir’s “Waterfall” paintings at the Barnes Foundation to feel that they depict or suggest the flowing of water downward over rock or stone, that is to miss the point of works that are concerned much more with the potential of paint than the need to represent something in nature.

Tintoretto’s Wildness

‘Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice’ at the National Gallery of Art, through July 7, 2019

Our Concentration Camps

This generation will be remembered for having allowed for concentration camps for children to be built on “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” This is happening here and now, but not in our names.

The Aristocracy’s Swann Song

Desolation Row

Lorca was interested in simple freedoms in a period in Spain when nothing was simple

The Heart of Conrad

Joseph Conrad’s heroes were often alone, and close to hostility and danger.

The Class Renegade

Édouard Louis’s ‘The End of Eddy’

Shadows & Ghosts

The Talented, Trapped Spenders

She Played Hard with Happiness

‘The Complete Stories’ by Clarice Lispector

Late Francis Bacon: Spirit & Substance

The Hard-Won Truth of the North

Gawking at Quixote

A brilliantly coherent show at the Frick explores the French artist Charles Coypel’s remarkable illustrations of Don Quixote.

Goya: Order and Disorder

A selection of prints and paintings from “Goya: Order and Disorder” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with commentary by Colm Tóibín.

The Dark & Light of Francisco Goya

An artist whose imagination was ripe for horror

Lust and Loss in Madrid

The novels of Javier Marías and Antonio Muñoz Molina

Those Dickens Kids

The Sweet Troubles of Proust

A specter haunts the exhibition of Proust’s notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence currently running at the Morgan Library. It is the specter of Proust’s mother.