Art Review: ‘Frans Hals: The Male Portrait’

I’m in London now, back for the first time since the Chinese coronavirus turned the world upside down. I’d written about the National Portrait Gallery’s Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things exhibition, a piece NR published on March 14, 2020. It was a celebrity gaga show about Beaton, a serious artist who deserved better. It was fun all the same.

What, in retrospect, a taunting thing to have done. Days later, a confederacy of dullards, charlatans, and quacks seized our lives, crashed the economy, and tossed hundreds of millions of children from school and workers from their jobs, all to tilt at a disease that targets the very old and the very sick. Dumb, middle-aged, and, in the U.S., geezer-aged things raised their heads and tossed their curls.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I’m in London now, back for the first time since the Chinese coronavirus turned the world upside down. I’d written about the National Portrait Gallery’s Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things exhibition, a piece NR published on March 14, 2020. It was a celebrity gaga show about Beaton, a serious artist who deserved better. It was fun all the same.

What, in retrospect, a taunting thing to have done. Days later, a confederacy of dullards, charlatans, and quacks seized our lives, crashed the economy, and tossed hundreds of millions of children from school and workers from their jobs, all to tilt at a disease that targets the very old and the very sick. Dumb, middle-aged, and, in the U.S., geezer-aged things raised their heads and tossed their curls.