Ars Est Mendacium

I laughed the first time I saw it. Not out loud, but internally, that reflexive flicker of amusement you feel when something looks like the setup for a joke. Two Napoleonic soldiers, back-to-back in exaggerated postures of surprise, a hat on the ground, a well between them. It felt staged. There was a kind of timing to it. The composition had the rhythm of a punchline, like a military-themed skit paused before the reveal. But then I noticed the blood. And then the monk. Just like that, the comedy curdled. Jean-Claude Bonnefond’s painting doesn’t reward a quick glance. It punishes it. The initial tone, composed, quiet, and almost humorous, turns out to be a setup. But the joke, if there ever was one, is on you. Bonnefond was a technician. He painted with the clarity of someone trying to show you everything, but not all at once. A painter of the Lyonnais school, he prized realism, a tight brush that left no stroke behind. In this piece,  Military Event from Napoleon’s First Spanish C...

The first time I watched The Mission, I didn’t think about treaties or papal politics. I thought about weight. A man lashed to his own past, muscles trembling as he drags a sack of armor up a cliff while the falls thunder beside him. On another day, I might have rolled my eyes at the obviousness of it. Sin, personified. Guilt made metal. But the longer the camera holds, the more the body persuades. We believe in burdens because we know how they feel. When the Guaraní cut the rope and the mass tumbles away, the release arrives first in the lungs, then in the mind. It is melodrama built from effort, not speeches. You forgive him because you’ve wanted that moment for yourself. The story is simple and not simple. Eighteenth-century South America. Jesuit missions were built among and with the Guaraní. Two empires redrawing borders as if land were a chessboard. Jeremy Irons plays Father Gabriel, a quiet priest who offers music before he offers words. Robert De Niro plays Rodrigo Mendoza, a m...

Atlantic City is a place that doesn’t just live with its ghosts; it hires them as performers. Walk along the Boardwalk and you can feel it: the laughter that once poured out of dance halls, the hum of casinos long gone dim, and stranger still, the echo of a horse leaping into water to applause. That image, absurd, cruel, unforgettable, has always stood as shorthand for the city itself. A place willing to gamble with spectacle, for better or worse. So when you step into the Warner Theatre at Caesars and find yourself in the world of  The Hook , the déjà vu is intentional. The theatre itself, born in 1929 and freshly restored, carries the weight of history. The show that now fills it carries the spirit of carnival. From the first moments, it’s clear: this isn’t meant to be tidy or reverent. It’s meant to move fast, to disarm, to excite. For seventy-five minutes, there is no pause, no intermission. Just a rush of bodies twisting in midair, jokes that hit low and hard, and music that r...

In the cold gray hush that sometimes greets a person in middle age, when the world’s edges seem less defined and the wars more internal, there are albums that don’t ask for your attention; they seize it.  Run the Jewels 3  doesn’t arrive politely. It knocks the door off the hinges and walks through with bloodied boots. And still, in its most furious moments, it sounds like a prayer. Not the kind whispered in pews. A street prayer, born of grief and survival, shouted into the wind and punctuated with laughter. You don’t listen to RTJ3 for escape. You listen to it to confront the moment when escapism no longer works. When the truth presses in through every screen, the only real option left is defiance. This album was released on Christmas Eve, 2016. That’s no accident. By the time Killer Mike and El-P handed us this record, the world had already shifted. Trump wasn’t yet inaugurated, but the storm was clearly visible, and in 2025 the albums seem even more essential. RTJ3 is less...

Some stories come to us like whispers. They don’t announce themselves with fireworks or marketing blitzes. They arrive quietly, sometimes from unexpected hands, and they linger. In 1987, Scott Turow, an assistant U.S. attorney who wrote in the hours between cases, published  Presumed Innocent . On paper, it was just a debut thriller. In practice, it changed how we imagine the law in fiction, and how we imagine ourselves within it. The premise is straightforward enough. A prosecutor named Rusty Sabich is assigned to investigate the murder of a colleague who also happens to be his former lover. As the case develops, suspicion pivots toward him. Because the novel is told in Rusty’s own voice, the story becomes claustrophobic. You don’t just watch a man being investigated. You inhabit him. His words feel both like an explanation and a plea, sometimes a confession, sometimes a dodge. He speaks, and you are never entirely sure whether to trust him. That uncertainty is what makes the book...

I first saw the painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. You go into these galleries the way you walk into a quiet church, out of respect, maybe routine. Some paintings catch your eye, and we've discussed some of those finds here. Others just blur into one another. But this one didn’t catch. It stopped me. It was the tree. Not the figures, not the sheep, not even the sunlit hillside unfurling like a memory. The tree, dead, jagged, enormous, stood in the foreground like a thing that refused to fall, and dared you to ask why. It didn’t lean or flourish. It loomed. Its bark had split down the middle, its arms twisted in mid-collapse. It was ugly, almost violent. An arresting and beautiful violence. The painting is called  Shepherds and Their Flock Resting Under a Tree , by Charles Hoguet, a 19th-century German painter trained in the French tradition. Most of his landscapes are soft, meditative, full of light and coastl...