Free Republic

Over the past half century, Pablo Picasso’s reputation has taken quite a beating. Once termed a “genius” by fellow Cubist Georges Braque and later a “prodigy” by his biographer John Richardson, Picasso was called a “walking scrotum” in Robert Hughes’s 1991 history of modern art. In 2019 he was even labeled an “egoist” by artist Françoise Gilot, who ended their tumultuous decade-long relationship and then chronicled it in a 1964 memoir that was recently reprinted. The shift owes something to feminists like Linda Nochlin, who, in a well-known 1971 ARTnews essay, asked if Picasso would have been called a genius...

Gadsby's work is a testament to how eagerly the arbiters of our culture will devour and elevate work that convincingly purports to be progressive. Hannah Gadsby’s mission to rescue comedy from cruelty ends with “Douglas,” an act so immensely cruel it rises nearly to the level of torture. Gadsby, of course, is famous only because her first major special, “Nanette,” rejected the art of stand-up comedy, arguing that “punch lines need trauma” and are inherently “destructive.” Having pleased the liberal arbiters of culture, Gadsby followed her “powerful” and “transformative” rejection of stand-up with a stand-up special. “Nanette,” as it turns...