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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 © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/byzantium-wilkin-3335
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by Karen Wilkin On “Watteau, Music, and Theater” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Vermeer & Monet at the Met & MoMA by Karen Wilkin On "Vermeer’s Masterpiece: The Milkmaid" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York & “Monet’s Water Lilies” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. by Marco Grassi On "The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy," Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, Vermont. On "In Pursuit of Knowledge: 600 Years of Leipzig University," The Grolier Club, New York. by Mario Naves On "Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction" at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
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