My contractor and friend gave me a telling gift for Christmas – a Veronese bronze of the Greek Titan Atlas.
He brings a mature, Herculean masculinity to a collection that includes several younger Apollos, Davids and St. Michaels, along with, of course, many Alexanders. But beyond that Atlas’ burden is both illustrative of and instructive for our time.
After the Titans lost their battle with the Olympians, sky/chief god Zeus condemned Atlas to hold up the sky at the western edge of the Earth, so sky and Earth could not resume their amorous relationship. In ancient times, Atlas was depicted shouldering the celestial spheres, a tradition upheld in Lee Lawrie’s colossal bronze at Rockefeller Center. ...
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Read MoreThere is a moment in “Casablanca” in which Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) – having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp – confronts a group of German officers in Rick’s Café Américain through music. The Germans are loudly, arrogantly singing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” an anthem that has its roots in French-German antagonism, when Victor orders the house band to strike up “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, to which club owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) acquiesces. One by one the club patrons rise and join in, all but Victor’s wife – and Rick’s former lover – Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). As the others sing lustily, she sits thinking and marveling at all that has been lost and yet still remains.
It is one of the most moving moments in the history of cinema, one I couldn’t help but flashing on as the City of Light was plunged into the heart of darkness. The fans leaving the Stade de France – where one in a series of coordinated ISIS attacks took place on Friday the 13th – burst into “La Marseillaise.” The exchange students in Manhattan’s Union Square held hands as they sang it that night. And Placido Domingo led The Metropolitan Opera Chorus in it at Lincoln Center Saturday afternoon. It, too, is a symbol of all that has been lost and yet still remains. ...
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