Melchior d' Hoendecoeter, Symphony of Birds ,1683; Rijksmuseum, Netherlands
In addition to my curating work, I am a writer, publisher and the founder and editor of a print and online quarterly journal on the European Old Masters art market and the 'old money' philosophy of investment in art and hard assets, Christoff's Old Masters. In my philosophy, the relationship between literature and painting and classical music and fine art is one integrated whole; the beauty and richness of one informing the depth of the other.I bring a scholarship to my curating work, which in turn informs my aesthetic vision.
I began as a contributing reporter, free-lance, for The Wall Street Journal Europe while based in southeastern Europe, and thereafter wrote for such publications as The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs. I was the United Nations Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. I wrote a series of columns on free market enterprise, the gold standard, central banking and the philosophy of money vs. economic theory for The Wall Street Journal Europe and the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute. I have been a public speaker at Harvard University and at The New York Yacht Club. You may see my essays here
My mentors were the dashing and brilliant William F Buckley Jr, for whom I worked while a student in New York, and HSH Prince Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein, whom I had occasion to meet, interview at length and work for during my twelve years in Vienna, Austria, queen city of Europe.
I am author of a novel, The Last Will and Testament of Western Man, for which a softcover version is now in the works; a forthcoming book of essays on the aesthetic view of life entitled A Short History of the Human Soul. My first book, Shadows on the Mountain, published by John Wiley & Sonsin 2010, is a history of the ideological battles of the two World Wars in southeastern Europe, the fruit of my many adventurous years criss-crossing the Balkans in search of "History". I have a publishing imprint both for my work in art and for some of my literary works, "William Caxton & Sons Publishers, LLC", named after the first printer of Shakespeare. : www.william-caxton.com
I began as a contributing reporter, free-lance, for The Wall Street Journal Europe while based in southeastern Europe, and thereafter wrote for such publications as The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs. I was the United Nations Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. I wrote a series of columns on free market enterprise, the gold standard, central banking and the philosophy of money vs. economic theory for The Wall Street Journal Europe and the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute. I have been a public speaker at Harvard University and at The New York Yacht Club. You may see my essays here
My mentors were the dashing and brilliant William F Buckley Jr, for whom I worked while a student in New York, and HSH Prince Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein, whom I had occasion to meet, interview at length and work for during my twelve years in Vienna, Austria, queen city of Europe.
I am author of a novel, The Last Will and Testament of Western Man, for which a softcover version is now in the works; a forthcoming book of essays on the aesthetic view of life entitled A Short History of the Human Soul. My first book, Shadows on the Mountain, published by John Wiley & Sonsin 2010, is a history of the ideological battles of the two World Wars in southeastern Europe, the fruit of my many adventurous years criss-crossing the Balkans in search of "History". I have a publishing imprint both for my work in art and for some of my literary works, "William Caxton & Sons Publishers, LLC", named after the first printer of Shakespeare. : www.william-caxton.com
"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities"--Sophocles
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The Last Will and Testament of Western Man is a critical book for critical times, its theme summarized within the title itself. It is a novel-of-ideas; profound and humorous, philosophical and plain-spoken, the story of four wise, lost-cause romantics who are the kind of unforgettable characters that make a literary work timeless, often a cult classic. There is nothing on the market like this work today. Last Will is flamboyant in scope, obsessive in detail, and inspired by the traditions of Robert Musil, Julio Cortázar and Vladimir Nabokov in its love of language and its manic introspection, with satire and wit to lighten the load and carry the story. The narrative follows the lives of four brilliant eccentrics, friends from university days now in their late forties who are in dogged, hopeless pursuit of the Answer to the Question that has both directed and disastrously misguided their lives: Am I who I am ‘Because-of’ or ‘In-spite-of’ the circumstances of my life? It is a story about the classic philosophical dilemma of Becoming versus Being, one that has plagued the history of Western philosophy from pre-Socratics to neo-Platonists; from medieval Catholic-Scholastics to 20th century atheist-Existentialists.
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