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ArtByzantium! A name that glitters. A synonym for formality, unbending etiquette, luxury, exoticism. A word that stands for unyielding resistance to change, for codified, inflexible forms, for intrigue and bloodthirsty scheming. Say “Byzantium” and you stand before processions of saints and martyrs trapped in shimmering fields of gold and glass tesserae. You conjure up rigid figures who glare fiercely from the confines of icons and manuscripts, their gorgeously colored robes heavy with embroidery and punctuated by overscaled jewels, their gestures ritualized, exaggerated, theatrical. You see Yeats’s “sages standing in God’s holy fire/ as in the gold mosaic of a wall,” their solemn progress and otherworldly setting alike echoed by the thudding reiterations of “gold” and “golden” in the stunning last stanza of “Sailing to Byzantium.” The reality of what that mag ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 15 May 1997, on page 46 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/byzantium-wilkin-3335
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Already a print subscriber? click for online access by Peter Pettus On "Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness and the Art of Painting Softly" at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown. On "From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete 3000–1100 B.C." at the Onassis Cultural Center, New York. by Karen Wilkin On "Take Your TIme: Olafur Eliasson" at the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, "The New York City Waterfalls" along the East River, and other public art in the city. by Karen Wilkin On "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976" at the Jewish Museum, New York. by Karen Wilkin On "Gustave Courbet" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. New from The New Criterion: ‘Free speech in 
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