New Criterion articles from January 1999

New Criterion archives from January 1999

Notes & Comments: January 1999.
January 1, 1999... Good and bad news at CUNY At a time when most of the news coming out of academia is depressing or worse, we were heartened to learn that the City University of New York has won a small victory in its efforts to restore standards at its...

Liberalism and the law.(applications of natural law)
January 1, 1999... Before there was a law under the American Constitution, there was an argument about the law. It was an argument, that is, about the ends of the law, and the framework of a lawful government. This was, of course, the argument over the...

Jackson Pollock & the New York School.(American abstract painter of the 1950s)
January 1, 1999... The American artist with any pretensions to total seriousness suffers still from his dependency upon what the School of Paris, Klee, Kandinsky, and Mondrian accumulated before 1935.... All excellence seems to flow still from that vivacious,...

Josef Pieper: leisure and its discontents.(German philosopher)
January 1, 1999... The first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end; and therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to do when at leisure? --Aristotle, Politics The poore, the...

Edward Said's "Orientalism" revisited.(literary critic)
January 1, 1999... Early in 1998, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney staged an exhibition entitled "Orientalism: From Delacroix to Klee." It contained 124 paintings and 50 photographs, most of which were produced by European artists in the nineteenth...

Lais Dedicates to Aphrodite the Tools of Her Trade.(poem)
January 1, 1999... After Plato Words cannot say what she was in her prime, This La/s, now a specimen of Time. She used to laugh to see so many men, Not one of whom she'll ever see again. Goddess, to you I yield my useless mirror--...

Snowbound.(poem)
January 1, 1999... for Jordi and Nuria Now we have locked the doors against the snow And feel it falling at each curtained window, The house walls seem to thicken and resist That movement into flocculence and mist, Shapes that take...

Light: Clarence H. White's Photographs.(poem)
January 1, 1999... But his real subject is light, I realize, as I turn the pages of this old book of Clarence White's photographs I've come across by chance, here, looking around this large rambling house, packed with art and books, on a...

Duchamp & Cornell.(20th-century artists Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell)
January 1, 1999... The most striking thing about the exhibition "Joseph Cornell/Marcel Duchamp... in resonance" is its catalogue.(1) Expertly designed and lavishly illustrated, it contains photographic reproductions that are almost as good as being there. The...

Exhibition note.(African American artist Bob Thompson)
January 1, 1999... "Bob Thompson" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. September 25, 1998-January 3, 1999 For some years, promises of a full-scale Bob Thompson exhibit tantalized those of us interested in the work of this talented,...

Le nozze di Susanna.(Review)
January 1, 1999... The greatness in great art lies in its flexibility. Many things can entertain or even stimulate within the narrow confines of a particular context, but great works of art--be they paintings or plays, sculptures or symphonies--transcend...

Two at City Opera.(Review)
January 1, 1999... The New York City Opera continues its year-long season with a varied combination of revivals of past productions and eight new stagings under the artistic direction of Paul Kellogg, now in his second year as General and Artistic Director. One...

Concert note.(Juana Zayas at Seton Hall University, New Jersey)(Review)
January 1, 1999... Juana Zayas, at Seton Hall University, New Jersey The Cuban-born pianist Juana Zayas was eleven years old when she graduated from the Peyrellade Conservatory in Havana. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire where she took first prize in...

An era without honor.(Pres Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky)
January 1, 1999... On the eve of President Clinton's lawyers' presentation of his defense before the House Judiciary Committee, the indefatigable White House media operation circulated to other media outlets a discovery by The Los Angeles Times that the...

The Unknown Matisse A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908.(French painter)
January 1, 1999... With the second volume of John Richardson's great Picasso biography already out, it was only a matter of time before Matisse (1869-1954.) received equal treatment. Hilary Spurling--a London-based theater critic, literary editor, book reviewer,...

A Man in Full.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Tom Wolfe A Man in Full. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 742 pages, $28.95 There is probably nothing to be done anymore about what is to me the regrettable fact that American culture is obsessed by race. One may weary of the apparently...

Mary Baker Eddy.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy. Perseus Books, 752 pages, $35 What is it about Mary Baker Eddy? Beginning with the 1909 muckraking biography by Georgine Milmine, writers have been unable to resist the temptation to dish the dirt on the...

The Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Richard Stone, editor The Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader. University of Illinois Press, 211 pages, $17.95 On rare occasions, the crust of mediocrity covering our literary tradition cracks and allows a glimpse of its...

Personals.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Thomas Beller, editor Personals. Houghton Mifflin, 284 pages, $13 The proliferation of memoirs in recent years may say something about our culture's shifting attitudes toward the personal, but, if so, the message is a contradictory one. In...

Le Philosophe et la memoire du siecle. Tolerance, liberte et philosophie.(Review)
January 1, 1999... Raymond Klibansky Le Philosophe et la memoire du siele. Tolerance, liberte et philosophie. Les belles lettres, 307 pages, 135 FF. We all know people who have led charmed lives, either by grace of high birth or, perhaps compensating for...