Cultured Conservatism: Why Aesthetics is at Least as Important as Politics (Art) (A Conversation with Gregory Wolfe) (Interview‪)‬

In the literary journal Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, Gregory Wolfe presents the essays, poems, criticism, paintings, and photographs of a wide variety of religiously informed writers and artists--too wide a variety, for many conservatives. Annie Dillard, Denis Donoghue, Ron Hansen, Mark Helprin, Kathleen Norris, Richard Rodriguez, and Larry Woiwode all sit on the journal's editorial advisory board. Many of his critics, Wolfe admits, would prefer that Image be a "highbrow outpost of the culture wars." But he has determinedly charted an independent course. Before he started Image with his wife, Suzanne, Wolfe was a child of the conservative movement. He attended Hillsdale College, where he studied under Russell Kirk, and later served as one of Kirk's assistants at Piety Hill. He then migrated to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he edited the Intercollegiate Review. He left ISI in 1989 to found Image. But he never turned against the brand of conservatism he imbibed from Kirk; rather, he acted on what he took to be its most important cultural insights.