Continuing a tradition that we began in
December 2001, we have
devoted a large part of this expanded issue of The New
Criterion to the visual arts. Michael J. Lewis opens the
issue with “Architecture After Modernism,”
his brilliant contribution to “Lengthened Shadows,” our year-long
series on American institutions in the twenty-first century.
In addition to a bumper crop of exhibition reviews, this
issue also includes “In the Kitchen of Art,” a splendid essay on art
conservation by the distinguished conservator and art dealer
Marco Grassi, and a conversation between the figurative
painter William Bailey and the poet Mark Strand. In
different ways, these pieces take us deep into the workshop
of art: Mr. Grassi’s into some of its technical aspects,
Messrs. Bailey and Strand’s into some aesthetic and
historical issues. Mr. Bailey reflects partly on the
evolution of his own work, partly on the contemporary art
scene. As he notes, there are many fine figurative painters
working today, but it remains “very hard” to see their work

“because of the gallery system and the lock-step of museum
curators and because it doesn’t fit in well with the
established conventions of vanguard art. In other words, if
you can’t put one on a wall with typical vanguard work …
then it might as well be ignored.” It is one of the tasks of
The New Criterion to move beyond “typical vanguard work”
to the real thing. Mr. Bailey’s own work is one example. We
discuss several other contenders in the pages that follow.