In 1935 the Whitney Museum mounted the first comprehensive exhibit of Shaker artifacts, celebrating the simplicity and harmony of the Shaker artistic vision. This past summer, the Whitney opened a much more ambitious show of “Shaker Design,” later shown at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, from October through January. United Technologies Corporation,...
Post
January 1, 1987April 21, 2022Vital Signs
Marvelous Mestizaje: Religious Art From Latin America
“Gloria in Excelsis, The Virgin and Angels in Viceregal Painting of Peru and Bolivia” richly deserved its title. This glorious exhibition at the Center for Inter-American Relations in New York City exemplified the fascinating new styles of iconography that can result from cultural hybridization. In this case, the hybridization (mestizaje) was caused by European intrusion...
Post
October 1, 1986April 21, 2022Reviews
Remembering Roswitha
Do you remember Hrotsvit (Roswitha) of Gandersheim, mentioned in the survey of world literature that you took as an undergraduate? “The first female German poet, the first dramatist of Germany, the first person in Germany to employ the Faust theme, etc.”—but who cared? Because Hrotsvit, the canoness of the Imperial Abbey of Gandersheim, wrote her...
Post
August 1, 1986April 21, 2022Vital Signs
Without a Barrel
Thundering through the Falls of Niagara is the overflow of all the Great Lakes except Lake Ontario. The combined waterpower of Horseshoe Falls and American Falls has been estimated at some four million horsepower. Both Falls drop more than 150 feet; their combined width is nearly four-fifths of a mile. Even Oscar Wilde, like Sarah...
Post
May 1, 1986April 21, 2022Vital Signs
Treasures From Spain
In an extraordinary gesture of international goodwill, the Spanish Ministry of Culture this past fall selected the rarest books and manuscripts from Spanish libraries for an exhibition at the New York Public Library. Items on display ranged from a 13th-century manuscript on the game of chess to exuberant prints by Joan Miro. Libraries from all...
Post
March 1, 1986July 26, 2022Reviews
The Thousand and One Knights
Originally published in Catalan in 1490 and now newly translated by David H, Rosenthal, Tirant Lo Blanc is a prose masterpiece written by the Valencian nobleman Joanot Martorell and completed by Marti Joan de Galba after Martorell’s death. Written when the Catalan influence in Sicily, Rhodes, and other parts of the Mediterranean was still significant,...
Post
February 1, 1986April 21, 2022Vital Signs
Class Acts
There is a kind of unity in Sam Shepard’s career—as dramatist and actor—that seems the result more of art than of chance. A new staging of his 1977 play Curse of the Starving Class gives us a rare opportunity to look back. Bradley Whitford, who plays the son Wesley, even looks like a younger Sam...
Post
December 1, 1985April 21, 2022Vital Signs
On the Waterfront
Singin’ in the Rain, now playing in New York, is wonderful fun and a witty commentary on the world of Hollywood musicals. Unfortunately, the main focus of the plot—Don Lockwood’s romantic interest in sweetnatured Kathy Selden—is weak. Lina Lamont, the blond bombshell who most definitely “ain’t dumb,” steals the show completely. I kept hoping for...
Post
September 1, 1985April 21, 2022Vital Signs
To Market, to Market
With the rising interest in art education in this country, these two books have appeared at an opportune time. John Hardy translates several essays by the brilliant art historian Max Dvorák that originally were published in Kunstgeschichteals Geistesgeschichte in 1924. Rémy G. Saisselin refers to Dvorák’s explorations of “Geistes geschichte,” which he defines as “the history of...