The New Criterion
It operates as a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism
- The Wall Street Journal
ArtJanuary 2000 Exhibition notes by Mario Naves Regarding Beauty: A View of the Late Twentieth Century at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Prior to entering the exhibition “Regarding Beauty: A View of the Late Twentieth Century,” visitors to the Hirshhorn Museum come upon a wall covered with quotations that alternately define, question, repudiate and buttress the subject at hand. These epigrams, which also pepper the text of the catalogue, are fun to read and encompass a variety of figures: from Immanuel Kant, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud to Sophia Loren, Barnett Newman, and Camille Paglia. Yet, taken together, what do these often contradictory comments suggest? That beauty is a multifaceted ideal for which artists should strive? Or that it is a tool of oppression whose time has come? Certainly, the only thing the recent vogue for beauty has done is rendered the term meaningless by linking it with the “transgressive.” The best comment on this curiously brittle phenomenon comes from, of all people, Peter Schjeldahl. “There is something crazy, ... 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 18 January 2000, on page 48 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/regardingbeauty-naves-2743
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
by Mario Naves On "Maurizio Cattelan: All" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Musuem, New York. 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 “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.
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}