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- Harry Mount, the London Telegraph
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 © 2010 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/byzantium-wilkin-3335
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by Karen Wilkin On “Cézanne, Picasso, Mondriaan” at the Geementsmuseum, The Hague, The Netherlands. by Karen Wilkin On “Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius” at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. by Karen Wilkin On “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On "The Conversation Piece: Scenes of Fashionable Life" at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London. by James Panero On the Bushwick art scene, the "Inaugural Exhibition" at Storefront, “The Wells Street Gallery Revisited: Then and Now” at Lesley Heller Workspace, “Works on Paper” at Danese & “Jack Tworkov: True and False” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
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