Focus: How Does Art Mean? — August-September 1994

How Does Art Mean?

Volume 16 Number 3
August-September 1994

The Net

Picketing The Zeitgeist

IT TOO SHALL PASS
Richard Kostelanetz reviews Redrawing the Boundaries, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn

THEATER

LET’S HEAR IT FOR “THE REAL THING”
Nina daVinci Nichols

FILM

CERTAINLY HIP
Peter Baker reviews Shades of Noir, edited by Joan Copjec

DANCE

PASTEBOARD SUPERHERO?
Rhonda Garelick reviews Life into Art: Isadora Duncan and Her World, edited by Dorée Duncan, Carol Pratl, and Cynthia Splatt

FOCUS: HOW DOES ART MEAN?

TWEAKING THE PUBLIC’S NOSE
Henry Sayre reviews Art in the Public Interest, edited by Arlene Raven, and Art and the Public Sphere, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell

CANONIZING INSANE ART
Mel Freilicher reviews Madness and Art: The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli by Walter Morgenthaler, M.D., translated by Aaron H. Esman, M.D.

STEPCHILD OF WARHOL
David Antin reviews The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty by Dave Hickey and Making Theory/Constructing Art: On the Authority of the Avant-Garde by Daniel Herwitz

CRITICAL EFFORT DISGUISED
Henry Korn reviews Art Speak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords and Art Spoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords, 1848-1944 by Robert Atkins

MODERNISM AS WHOLLY TOXIC
Libby Lumpkin reviews Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity by Thomas McEvilley

SUPREME CONSCIOUSNESS
Corinne Robins reviews The Optical Unconscious by Rosalind E. Krauss

MISLEADING SURFACE RESEMBLANCE
George J. Leonard reviews Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life by Allan Kaprow, edited by Jeff Kelley

UNCANNY SEANCE
Sanda Agalidi reviews Cabaret Performance, Volume II: Europe 1920–1940 Sketches, Songs, Monologues, Memoirs, selected and translated, with commentary, by Laurence Senelick, and Symbolist Theater: The Formation of an Avant-Garde by Frantisek Deak

THE BEST KEPT SECRET
Ellen Zweig reviews Acting Out: Feminist Performances, edited by Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan, and Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance by Philip Auslander

PAST DESIRE, PRESENT LONGING
Theresa Allen reviews Polyphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited: An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture by Alberto Pérez-Gomez

FEATURE: FOUR TRANSLATIONS

LEGACY OF FRENCH THOUGHT
Dawn Michelle Baude reviews A Lesson in Music by Jean Daive, translated by Julie Kalendek

REDISCOVERED PREDECESSOR
Naomi Lindstrom reviews Piano Stories by Felisberto Hernández, translated by Luis Harss

MUCH MORE IN ANIMALS
John S. Brushwood reviews An Ark for the Next Millennium by José Emilio Pacheco, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

COMMINGLING OF EAST AND WEST
Tomomi Hirade reviews Forbidden Games & Video Poems: The Poetry of Yang Mu and Lo Ch’ing, translated by Joseph R. Allen

FEATURE: GAY IDEAS

COUCHLESS, IT SHIVERS
Jacques Servin reviews Gay Ideas: Outing and Other Controversies by Richard D. Mohr

BOOK REVIEWS

FEEL-GOOD IMAGES
Michael Perkins reviews What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics and Your Native Land, Your Life by Adrienne Rich

DAZZLING REINVENTORS
Eurudice reviews The Autobiography of Cassandra by Ursule Molinaro and Sister Carrie by Lauren Fairbanks

THE FREAKS WIN OUT
Barry Wallenstein reviews Nude Men by Amanda Filipacchi

MORE SEDUCTIVE TO A WRITER
Michael Dorsey reviews Ava by Carole Maso

ROOM FOR A SEQUEL
Steven Boyd Saum reviews Kalifornia by Marc Laidlaw

OCCUPYING THE BORDERS
Lance Dean reviews Death Tractates by Brenda Hillman and Ribbons: The Gulf War by William Heyen

BEYOND THESE CAREFUL INVENTIONS
Curt Rode reviews What We Don’t Know about Each Other by Lawrence Raab and Good Hope Road by Stuart Dischell

NO EXIT OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY
Tim W. Brown reviews The Mind Crime of August Saint by Alain Arias-Misson

THROUGH A COLD AND DISORIENTING FOG
Harry Polkinhorn reviews Three Blondes and Death by Yuriy Tarnawsky

NUANCES OF MUSIC
Denise Duhamel reviews The God of Indeterminacy by Sandra McPherson, The Red Hour by Robin Behn, and Between the Sea and Home by Almitra David

MORALITY OF SEEING
Kenneth Warren reviews Before Our Eyes by Lawrence Joseph

HOUSE WTTH NO WALLS
Warren Woessner reviews No Nature: New and Selected Poems by Gary Snyder