The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War

Hilton Kramer was an American art critic and essayist. Kramer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Syracuse University, receiving a Bachelor's degree in English; Columbia University; he studied literature and philosophy at Harvard University, Indiana University, and the New... School for Social Research. Kramer worked as the editor of Arts Magazine, art critic for The Nation, and from 1965 to 1982, as chief art critic for The New York Times. He also published in the Art and Antiques Magazine and The New York Observer. Kramer's "Media Watch" column was published weekly in The New York Post from 1993 to November 1997. Kramer fought against leftwing political bias in art criticism, and what he perceived as the aesthetic nihilism characteristic of many 20th century working artists and art critics. The frustration with the journal's policies led to his resignation from The New York Times in 1982. He co-founded the conservative magazine The New Criterion, for which Kramer was also co-editor and publisher. He took a strongly anti-Communist stance in his 2003 review of Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History.
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