Flag-Waving at the Whitney Flag-Waving at the Whitney
The Triumph of the New York School, a deeply ironic painting by the American artist Mark Tansey, looks at first sight like a rotogravure depiction of a military surrender that to...
Nov 11, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto
Just a Cannes Job? Just a Cannes Job?
Ever since Rosetta won the top prize at this year's Cannes festival, American journalists have puzzled over the jury's decision, or written it off as mere insolence.
Nov 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
A Dialectical Humanism A Dialectical Humanism
To my distress and perhaps to my delight, I order things in accordance with my passions.... I put in my pictures everything I like.
Nov 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Andy Merrifield
A Son’s Own Story A Son’s Own Story
If you are looking for a piece of new evidence that will finally vindicate or convict Alger Hiss with certainty, you won't find it in Tony Hiss's poignant father-son memoir, A Vi...
Nov 4, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Jack Gelber
Mr. Debs, My Darling Mr. Debs, My Darling
In offhand, birdsong passing, Marguerite Young observes: "As for the nineteenth century, it may be said that it was probably the leakiest century there ever was and so would rema...
Oct 28, 1999 / Books & the Arts / John Leonard
Slouching to the Ouija Board Slouching to the Ouija Board
"Does the imagination dwell the most/Upon a woman won or woman lost?" Yeats asked. For most of his readers and biographers, the answer has been clear: a woman lost.
Oct 28, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel
Night of the Living Dead Night of the Living Dead
Sooner or later, there would have to be fireworks in Bringing Out the Dead.
Oct 28, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Our Monumental Mistakes Our Monumental Mistakes
To the surprise of historians themselves, history--or at least its public presentation--has become big business.
Oct 21, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Eric Foner
Rough and Tumble Rough and Tumble
Begin with a cluster of molecules in the void. The camera zooms away from them, sucking you back through some dim anatomical corridor.
Oct 21, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
‘Sensation’ in Brooklyn ‘Sensation’ in Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, as if persuaded by its own ill-advised publicity that the art in its "Sensation" show might endanger the welfare of its viewers, at first thought it p...
Oct 14, 1999 / Books & the Arts / Arthur C. Danto