Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Las Meninas (detail), by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Arts & Letters

Volume III, Number 2 | spring 2010

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Preamble

Lady in a Veil

By Lewis H. Lapham

Despite being told that art is somehow sacred, it’s better to take a naive delight in the thing itself.

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Beauty Is Shoe

By Wendy Steiner

Is the model a subject, or is the subject a model?

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Map

Telling Tales

The evolutions of four stories.

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1970 | Washington, DC

Elvis Presley Is on Your Side

Richard Nixon takes a meeting with the King.More

c. 550 BC | Athens

By the Scroll

Peter Quince picks the parts.More

1778 | Paris

A Pleasant Surprise

For Mozart, the waiting was the hardest part.More

Charts & Graphs

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

The time it took to create great works of art.

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Depiction of Greek philosopher Plato.

Black and white photograph of former chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler.

Black and white photograph of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Photograph of William Faulkner sitting in a chair.

Black and white photograph of American poet Marianne Moore.

Photograph of American novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler.

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

—Flannery O’Connor, 1964

Portrait of young Arthur Schopenhauer wearing a brown suit and a cravat.

German philosopher and music critic Theodor Adorno.

Arthur Schopenhauer & Theodor Adorno

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