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By TOM L. FREUDENHEIM

Columbus, Ohio

An enormously satisfying exhibition of early Mark Rothko works now at the Columbus Museum of Art gives viewers an opportunity to hone their powers of observation. Following the artist through a decade of activity, we get to see that his apparently radical shift from suggestively figurative to purely abstract art may not be so extreme after all.

Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/ARS/National Gallery of Art

‘No. 10′ (1948).

In one of several perceptive catalog essays, Ruth Fine, consulting curator for Rothko works on paper at the National Gallery of Art, writes that the “general lack of awareness of the works on paper . . . was instigated in part by the artist himself.” No pre-1945 works were included in the 1961 Museum of Modern Art retrospective exhibition, curated jointly by Peter Selz and Rothko, thus making “the public statement that his mature work originated in 1945.” Though subsequent Rothko retrospectives included pre-1945 work, this phase of the artist’s career remains so underknown as to make this show a kind of rediscovery of the early Rothko.

“Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade, 1940-1950″ includes 27 of his paintings, many of them on paper, that are usually exhibited as mere prefaces to his signature glowing and complexly layered canvases. In addition to these Rothkos—selected from the 295 works donated in 1985-86 to the National Gallery of Art by the Mark Rothko Foundation (formed by his children)—the exhibition also includes 10 early works by other artists (among them Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock) that set up a rich context for the early Rothko paintings. These works share many visual characteristics, exploring the fertile territory of the unconscious that Freud and others had opened for 20th-century artists: a rich array of surreal forms that move between the representational and the symbolic. It’s also a terse lesson in the concept of “signature” styles, toward which these artists were obviously striving and by which we know them best.

Rothko (1903-70) was an artist with broad intellectual scope that included his immersion in the mythologies and traditions of the classical, Judaic and Christian worlds. Eventually his philosophical and literary interests were distilled into the richly colored strata of his familiar later works. This exhibition explores the process by which he arrived at those answers, while re-experiencing his questions as well. Here Rothko’s soft, muted palette and his determination to define spatial relationships—initially with figurative forms—are reminders that trying to identify radical breakthroughs is far less interesting than observing creative development. That’s what Karen Brosius, executive director of the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, where the exhibition originated, and Todd Herman, executive director of the Arkansas Art Center, who conceived of this exhibition with Ms. Brosius, want us to feel—and we do.

There’s nothing tentative about this early work. A couple of 1941 paintings allude to the Antigone myth, with disconnected, sexually evocative body parts that assert, but do not describe, tragedy. Elsewhere, as in an untitled canvas of 1941-42, the deconstructed and reorganized Crucifixion imagery suggests the terrifying power of familiar iconographic bits and pieces. Other works have marine references that shimmer with lightly layered, translucent streaks of paint.

While thematically diverse, most of the works in this exhibition share certain organizing principles. Shapes—identifiable or not—are never arbitrarily arranged. They float in carefully defined spaces and are often firmly anchored with some sort of horizontal ground that can be as insistent as the horizon in a 17th-century Dutch seascape. Paring things down to essentials seems to have been the task the artist set for himself. In “No. 9″ (1948) we watch Rothko grappling with the near-obliteration of traditional notions of pictorial space. He seems to be experimenting with the novel “push/pull” theory articulated by the influential expatriate German modernist Hans Hofmann, which held that spatial relations could be created by juxtapositions of color and form rather than by the use of perspective.

It’s astonishing that despite the clear figural references in Rothko’s “No. 10″ of the same year, there’s a sense that the painter is moving toward the glowing rectangular shapes with which he—and ultimately we—have become so comfortable. But to view this as a natural progression would be to miss the sense of struggle evident in individual works that continues to make Rothko such a challenging painter.

We’re accustomed to understanding Rothko as part of the evolving style that came to be called Abstract Expressionism. But Rothko’s aquatic colors are reflected in the painterly washes of a lovely 1917 John Marin seascape, unrelated to the Rothko exhibition, just outside the entrance to the show. This signals us to be wary of easy pigeonholes in our categorization of artists. While they are hung separately in the exhibition, the catalog wonderfully juxtaposes Rothko’s figurative “Untitled (Man and Two Women in a Pastoral Setting)” (c. 1940) and Milton Avery’s “Girl With Cello” (1958) to reveal yet other affinities that Rothko shared with his fellow artists.

It is especially gratifying to note that the National Gallery of Art is sharing its vast Rothko holdings with a range of American museums (the exhibition continues on to Little Rock, Ark., and Denver), while also promoting new scholarship. After all, art historians and museums have a continuing responsibility to rethink and rewrite art history—especially the potentially misleading history that artists sometimes create for themselves. This exhibition addresses that task superbly.

Mr. Freudenheim, a former art-museum director, served as the assistant secretary for museums at the Smithsonian.

A version of this article appeared April 18, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Becoming Mark Rothko.

By JACKIE COOPERMAN

IT’S HARD TO FIND an elite travel company that doesn’t offer packages with spectacular suites and access to private islands. But today’s top-grade services go further, customizing over-the-top trips for you and yours.

Last month, Frank Rejwan launched Abercrombie & Kent Lifestyle Club (
aklifestyleclub.com
), part of the 51-year-old luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent. He says laughingly that he’s sprouted “quite a few gray hairs” since, leading the upscale equivalent of a military operation. The Lifestyle Club’s 35 employees have already satisfied requests such as a New Year’s Eve helicopter excursion to behold the Northern Lights in Iceland, and a tented dinner party for 100 in Giza, Egypt. The fete overlooked the pyramids, which Mr. Rejwan arranged to stay lighted until 2 a.m., three hours later than normal.

Meanwhile, other travel firms that started as purveyors of insider information have tweaked their approaches, upgrading their services (and fees) and offering continuous coddling to demanding clients.

Last year Indagare (
indagare.com

), a members-only travel club, launched a collection of 12 intimate, luxurious group tours, including a family voluntourism trip to Nicaragua and a New Zealand golfing excursion that involved flying around on a private jet. The company can customize the journeys for clients. In fact, this year Indagare’s bespoke business is double what it was in 2012, says founder Melissa Biggs Bradley.

“He arranged for the pyramids in Giza to stay lighted until 2 a.m., three hours later than normal.”

“People want immediate answers, but they become overwhelmed by everything online,” she says, “and they want us to sort it out for them.”

Indagare’s basic membership costs $325 a year and includes bookings for an unlimited number of one-stop trips. Ms. Bradley and her staff of 12 experts offer extensive destination information and preferential relationships with hotels, securing rooms during crowded events like the Venice Biennale and Art Basel Miami.

Clients can upgrade to a $500 Elite membership, which includes planning for one customized multi-stop trip a year, or the $1,350 Connoisseur level, for three multi-stop trips. Indagare’s consultants jump through hoops for those tiers, finding pet sitters in Italy or enrolling kids in soccer leagues in Hong Kong.

London-based Nota Bene Global (
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) began as a publisher of candy-colored magazines for very discerning travelers, with an annual subscription costing $1,500. It shifted to planning travel for the most exacting of clients about five years ago.

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Basic memberships cost around $4,000 a year and include unlimited hotel bookings. But the real attention costs $22,500 and up (and up). For that fee, Mr. Lassman and his team will make complex trip arrangements—including last-minute changes and access to, say, the first lady of Syria (true story). Nota Bene has approximately 70 bespoke clients, and will only accept 30 more.

Abercrombie & Kent’s Lifestyle Club, which is capping its membership at 600, provides each client with a dedicated consultant who can help with everything from medical emergencies to procuring tickets to sold-out shows. A one-year family membership costs $10,500, on top of the $3,750 joining fee, but there are no limits on the number of requests members can make, and callers are guaranteed an answer by the third ring—a modern-day miracle on par with your own illuminated pyramids.

A version of this article appeared April 6, 2013, on page D12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Indulge in Wishful Thinking.

Aposiopesis is one of those literary tropes you learn while studying “The Aeneid” in high school Latin, and it stuck in my head better than many others over the intervening years. Little did I know that it would one day provide an organizing principle, and even the title, to my second novel, “In the Land of the Living.”

Aposiopesis refers to a breaking-off of speech, and in Book I of “The Aeneid” the god Neptune does just that while chastising the East and West winds for making a storm without his permission. Neptune is clearly about to unleash his fury against them with the words “venti…quos ego—!“, meaning “you winds, whom I—!” The completed thought would have gone something like, “You winds, whom I trusted with such power, now dare to conspire with my sister Juno!”

But instead, Neptune thinks better of his rant in order to get down to the business of saving the epic’s hero, Aeneas. He continues: “But better it is to calm the troubled waves….”

We used to laugh over aposiopesis in Latin class because it seemed disarmingly colloquial for a sea god to talk like that. It was like the mighty Neptune came up out of the waves and said, “What the—?” To see Neptune interrupting himself is to see him engaged in the homely order of mortal living. It’s akin to seeing a Roman god brushing his teeth.

But aposiopesis is important in literature because of its colloquial humanness. Virgil was writing as people really speak, advancing the cause of literary realism, but also writing as they really think, advancing the cause of human psychology. The self-interrupt bespeaks psychological inner conflict: I want to say this but, at the same time, I don’t.

I had aposiopesis on my mind as I wrote “Land of the Living,” about a man who dies young, his two sons and a road trip the brothers take that changes their lives. I was writing about characters’ capacity to self-interrupt—in speech, but also in a broader spectrum of Hamlet-like, anti-self behaviors that culminate in suicide, unless reason and self-sympathy can prevail over them.

The brothers’ self-destructive ways in turn reflect the premature “interrupt” that marred their early lives—their father’s tragically early death. The dead man seems to call out to them to die too, to join him in premature burial, as in that Bill Fox song “Let’s Be Buried Together.”

When I was searching for a title for my book on those who die young and those who survive, and on the temptations of self-destruction for those who do, I came across another beautiful example of aposiopesis, one even older than Virgil. It was a verse from the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 27:13.

The speaker of Psalm 27 seems transfixed with the terror of potential annihilation. His answer is faith in the Lord, which he clearly associates with the will to live on in the face of threats and fears: “Hide not thy face far from me.” Yet at the end of the psalm, there’s a moment of doubt, expressed in some translations by an aposiopesis: “Unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living—”

An uncanny force binds the speaker to the living, but the reality and attraction of the other world, death, strikes him so powerfully that it interrupts his speech on behalf of faith and life. My characters don’t call their faith by the name “the Lord,” but they do call upon a faith in the goodness of life by whatever name. That is the task before them: to countenance the land of the dead like Orpheus, and to carry on in the land of the living.

—Mr. Ratner’s second novel, “In the Land of the Living,” was published in March.

A version of this article appeared April 20, 2013, on page C12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Character, Interrupted (Usefully).

By DAN ARIELY

Dear Dan,

I don’t care about cars, never have. But I’m a sales executive, and people tell me I should own a nice car (BMW, Mercedes, etc.) to enhance my credibility to both my customers and sales team. I can afford either but would rather save the cash and buy a Honda. Does it matter?

—Cody

The topic here is signaling. The large and colorful tail of the male peacock tells the female peacock about his strength and virility (if I can run around carrying this large and difficult tail, just imagine how strong I am). In the same way, we humans are concerned with the signals we send the people around us about who we are. Signaling is part of the reason we buy large homes, dress up in designer clothes and buy particular cars. So the answer to your question is yes. The car that you drive communicates something about you to the world. Does it matter? Yes again, because we are experts at reading these signals and making inferences about the senders.

But some questions remain. What kind of signal do you want to send? The BMW signal or the Prius signal? Maybe the signal that you buy American-made? Maybe you want to get a really old car and show people that you take really good care of it (a more subtle signal, but an interesting one). Another question is whether the cost of the signal (the cost of the car) is worth its signaling value. This depends on the nature of the people you deal with, how well they know you, how often you make first impressions, etc.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I drive a minivan—but now that I am thinking about it, maybe I should go and stick a Porsche logo on it.

Dear Dan,

My wife and I are in our late 30s, and we are debating whether or not to have kids. Any advice?

—Henry

The decision on whether or not to have kids is very complex. It depends on many factors, including your financial situation, your preferences and your relationship with your significant other. So, sadly, I can’t provide any direct answer to your question. Obviously, though, this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make—and given its magnitude, you should spend a substantial amount of time trying to get to the bottom of it.

The question about having kids, like many other questions, is all about what you might get from this experience and what you might have to give up. The problem is that before you have kids, it is hard to estimate both the benefits and the costs. So what should you do? You need to try to simulate the kid-experience in order to have a better understanding of what it means and how it would fit you.

For example, why don’t you move in for a week with some of your friends who have kids and observe them up close? Next, why don’t you offer to take care of some other friends’ kids for a week? Then try to expand from this exercise and take care of kids of different age groups (don’t skip very young kids and teenagers). After 10 weeks of this experiment, you should be in a much better position to figure out if this is for you or not.

If this exercise seems too daunting for you, you probably fall into one of two categories: 1) You’re not really interested in an empirical answer to this question. Perhaps you’ve already made up your mind, and you’re not yet ready to admit it. 2) You’re too lazy to put the effort into figuring this out. And if that is the case, you probably should not have kids.

Dear Dan,

I hate tax day. Is there any way to make it more pleasant?

—James

When I first starting filling out the 1040EZ form, I loved tax day. It was a day when I got to think about how much money I made, how much I gave the government (another way to think about it is to think about how much the government takes, but I prefer my framing), and what benefits I got in return from the federal and state governments.

Over the years my taxes have become more complex, and my annoyance with the complexity and ambiguity makes it harder for me to focus on taxes as part of my role and duty as a citizen of this amazing country.

So what can we do to make tax day better? The word mitzvah in Hebrew means both a duty and a privilege, and one thing I try to do (not always successfully) is to think about taxes as a mitzvah.

I also think that the tax code has to change if we are to experience this day as a day of citizenship and not just annoyance. The tax code needs to be much simpler, and taxes need to be more equitable. Finally, there are some nice experimental results showing that if you ask people to take an active role and vote on where a small part of their taxes goes (education, infrastructure, military, health, etc.), this improves their attitude toward taxes.

Happy mitzvah day.

A version of this article appeared April 13, 2013, on page C18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hot Wheels to Close Big Deals?.

By DARRA GOLDSTEIN

WITH SPRING IN the air, a young man’s fancy turns to love, or so Tennyson would have us believe. Likewise, as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, thoughts inevitably turn to corned beef and cabbage. Why not try something different this year, a dish that better captures the elemental beauty of Irish cooking? I have in mind the Cork specialty of spiced beef, a home-cured brisket fragrant with black pepper and allspice. Served hot in its own gravy, or sandwiched cold between slices of soft brown Irish soda bread, this aromatic beef with deep, earthy flavors offers welcome respite from corned beef’s salty predictability.

“Ireland stands out for the variety, freshness and flavor of its native ingredients.”

I first visited Ireland 32 years ago, on my honeymoon. I had married into an Irish-Catholic family. Having grown up in a liberal Jewish one, in which my choice of husband was embraced as good for “mixing the blood,” I looked forward to embracing his heritage with equal enthusiasm. That is, until we arrived in Ireland. Where was the fabled Emerald Isle? All I could see was a century of coal grime coating the buildings. At our bed-and-breakfast in Cork, we started each day with the traditional offering: “parched” eggs, grilled tomatoes and sausages, toast so dry even butter couldn’t appease it. The only redemptive touch was the marmalade.

I didn’t set foot in Ireland for another three decades. Of course, I had heard of the culinary renaissance taking place and had tasted beautiful Irish farmhouse cheeses. But it took our daughter to open my eyes. After a summer in Galway, she was hooked on things Irish: the beer, the literature, the shellfish, the beer. She begged me to visit, I succumbed and, simply put, I was blown away. The “Celtic Tiger” had worked its wonders. It seemed half the population was engaged in either banking or artisanal food production. Markets offered a fabulous array of jams, preserves and syrups, along with smoked fish, hearth breads and more of that beautiful cheese.

Last summer I visited Ireland again. I foraged for seaweed by kayak along the Atlantic Coast. At Barron’s Bakery in Cappoquin I tasted “blaas,” plump rolls now on their way to gaining PGI status, a European Union certification that a product is local, authentic and skillfully made. I enjoyed seasonal beers from Dungarvan Brewing Company, a craft brewery that carefully bottle-conditions each batch. In Cork, no less, in the 18th-century English Market, I sampled smoked mussels in vinaigrette, rock lobster from Kinsale, tender soda bread flavored with fennel seed, elderflower cordial, floury Golden Wonder potatoes and Yellowman toffee. Best of all was the Farmgate Café’s salad of spiced beef on mixed greens, the meat’s complex undertones of juniper and allspice providing a perfect counterpoint to the mild lettuce.

A small country, Ireland nevertheless stands out for the variety, freshness and exceptional flavor of its native ingredients: the rich milk that is turned into supple cheeses, the salmon eaten achingly fresh or smoked over beech wood, the brambles and bushes that give rise to delectable jams, the well-marbled beef from Dexter cattle. Add to that the extraordinary talent in the kitchens of Dublin’s Michelin-starred restaurants as well as in hole-in-the-wall cafes in the countryside, and you have nothing less than a culinary rebirth, a phoenix rising from the coal ash, deliciously.

Irish Spiced Beef

Although spiced beef is traditional at Christmastime, the Irish enjoy it year round. Don’t be daunted by the week of advance preparation—once you have seasoned the meat, this dish virtually prepares itself, requiring little labor in the kitchen. You can thicken the broth into a rich gravy and serve the beef hot, thinly sliced, with boiled potatoes on the side. Or try the meat on a cold-cut platter, with pickled beets or coleslaw for garnish. Easiest of all, if you’re going to a St. Patrick’s Day parade, is to enjoy the thinly sliced beef in a sandwich, between slices of soft brown bread, with either a spoonful of fruit chutney to moisten it or some sliced pickles and a little mayonnaise.

Active Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 7 days Serves: 12

Ingredients

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon juniper berries

1 tablespoon whole allspice, or 1½ teaspoons ground

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon cloves

½ cup kosher salt

1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 4-pound beef brisket, tied into a compact form

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 onions, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

½ teaspoon dried thyme

10 cups cold water (approximately)

1 12-ounce bottle stout beer

What To Do

1. In a coffee or spice grinder, grind all spices together. Transfer to a small bowl and stir in salt and brown sugar. Rub mixture into meat, making sure it is well incorporated. Place meat in a glass or stainless-steel dish, cover and refrigerate 1 week, turning once a day. For the first day or so, rub any spice mixture on bottom of dish back into brisket. Once moisture extracted from meat begins to collect in dish, use it to baste meat after turning.

2. When meat has finished curing, remove from refrigerator. Heat oil in a Dutch oven or other pot large enough to hold brisket. Add onions, carrots and thyme and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables just begin to brown, about 8 minutes. Place brisket on top of vegetables and add enough cold water just to cover. Cover pot and bring to a boil, skimming any foam that rises to surface. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, 3 hours. Stir in stout and cook until brisket is tender, 1 hour more.

3. Allow meat to cool in cooking liquid. When meat is at room temperature, wrap tightly in plastic wrap. (Reserve rich broth for another use.) Put wrapped meat in a shallow dish and place a heavy plate or skillet on top. Place a few heavy cans on the plate to compress meat, and refrigerate overnight. To serve, slice meat thinly against the grain.

A version of this article appeared March 9, 2013, on page D9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The New Green Cuisine.