James writes:
Over at The New Criterion, I've been engaging for several months with the "back to basics" art movement known as classical realism. (You can read my latest post here).
The first article I wrote on the subject appeared in the September 2006 issue. Called "The New Old School," this was a profile of one of the movement's young stars, a painter and teacher named Jacob Collins (Hirschl & Adler galleries recently featured an exhibition of his nudes, with a catalogue essay by Roger Kimball).
Towards the end of my piece, I wrote a line about another young classical realist artist named Graydon Parrish. This caught the attention of a producer at NPR. (I said that Parrish's grand allegory of the World Trade Center attacks, pictured above, "appears to be yet another tragedy of 9/11.")
Karen Michel, the NPR host, questioned me about this statement for an hour or so about a month ago. (That was a strange, isolation-chamber experience. I showed up at the New York studios, and Michel questioned me through the headphones from studios in North Carolina).
Long story short, the segment with my commentary appeared on All things Considered last night. You can click here to listen to the broadcast.