Word: americanizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That is fitting, considering the title Hamilton chose for her show, "myein," which she translates roughly from the Greek as an abnormal contraction of the pupil. Each of the exhibition's elements presses the point that we turn away blindly, deafly from the violence in our American house; we refuse to comprehend it. Yet her recondite Braille and phonetic whispers work too well perhaps: she leaves viewers with little to grasp easily. When a visual work rests so heavily on literary means, its impact is inevitably blunted...
Everything in Hamilton's show follows from that statement. Inside the pavilion, the high white walls are covered with Braille that translates tales of American violence from Charles Reznikoff's poetry book Testimony: the United States, 1885-1915: recitative. Down the walls, bright fuchsia powder, with its overtones of toxic waste, falls from tanks hidden in the ceilings. The artist's recorded voice whispers Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, with its moving call for healing during the savagery of the Civil War, but it too is interpreted, spelled out in the phonetic alphabet used by pilots (Alfa for a, Bravo...
...prize judges, it did not. Hamilton didn't win a Golden Lion, the Biennale's version of an Oscar. Another young American, in another part of the exposition, did. Doug Aitken's Electric Earth, a slick, multiscreen video, earned him one of the three awards for best international artists. The video, about living "in the absolute present," as Aitken, 31, says, features the throbbing music and quick cuts more in tune with the MTV generation. But at least one visitor appreciated the languorous charms of Hamilton's show. There, in a mound of pink powder, an admirer had scrawled...
...response to your special issue on Heroes and Icons [TIME 100, June 14], I would like to point out that 100 years of American dominance in the fields of science, technology, entertainment and business do not make America the "owner" of the 20th century. Many Asian nations have come into their own in the past 100 years. This makes it our century, too, a period when we have fought for freedom and gained our independence. This century should stand as the one in which new independent nations were born in Asia. JEWELLYN DIZON Makati City, the Philippines...
...greatly enjoyed General Colin Powell's tribute to the American G.I., but please don't forget the ordinary Russian soldier whose stubbornness and bravery overcame German military might in some of the fiercest battles ever fought. His contribution to the defeat of fascism must be worth noting. MARK FINLAY Hastings, England...