The New Criterion
It operates as a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism
- The Wall Street Journal
ArtDecember 2007 Exhibition note On "Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now" at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. "Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now" “Seduced” will appeal to those who enjoy art, to those who enjoy sex, and to those who enjoy both. The censorious will delight in the first exhibit, an enormous fig leaf presented to Queen Victoria by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1857 to cover up her life-sized plaster copy of Michelangelo’s David. The fig leaf does seem rather larger than it needs to be. Tuscans do exaggerate so. After the fig leaf comes the full-figged ancient world, whose Greek and Etruscan ceramics are a forceful reminder of how rarely the sexual act is depicted in the art of Christian Europe though common enough in South and East Asia. Such sexual scenes as are to be found in the art of Christian Europe refer to such Bible stories as Lot and his daughters getting ready for incest, Potiphar’s w ... 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 26 December 2007, on page 47 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Exhibition-note-3713
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
On “Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Work 5000 B.C.–A.D. 2010” at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London & “The Flamboyant Mr. Chinnery: An English Artist in India and China” at Asia House, London. On "Building the Revolution: Soviet Art & Architecture 1915–35" at the Royal Academy, London. On "Postmodernism, Style & Subversion" at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. by Karen Wilkin On “Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists” at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA. On "New Formations: Czech Avant-Garde Art & Modern Glass from the Roy and Mary Cullen Collection” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On "Johann Zoffany RA: Society Observed” at the Yale Center for British Art.
Webcasts
Anthony Daniels on the Euro Crisis
Andrew C. McCarthy: The Muslim Threat
Roger Kimball: The Grim Future of Statism Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must have an account to post a comment. {register now}