Submitted by Louis Torres, May 15, 2007 16:48

The New Criterion is not the only "little magazine" celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year. In 1982, frustrated by the seemingly endless proliferation of bogus art in the twentieth century, I founded Aristos—each issue consisting of a mere six pages. Yet Magazines for Libraries called it a "gutsy little periodical" whose feature articles carried "more weight than those found in more substantial periodicals," cultural historian Jacques Barzun told us he derived "much pleasure and instruction" from its pages, and Library Journal observed that it was not just "controversial" and "combative," but "unique."

In 2003, co-editor Michelle Kamhi and I launched Aristos as an exclusively online review. We continue to challenge modernist critics—including (regarding "abstract art") those at the New Criterion and the New York Sun—as well as critics, at the Sun and elsewhere, who champion other non-art forms invented since the turn of the twentieth century. (To the Sun's credit, it has often published letters from me taking its critics to task). On a more positive note, Aristos has, virtually alone, championed academic and classical realist painters and sculptors, as well as traditional art in all its forms.

Our own 25th anniversary celebration has been more modest than the New Criterion's, consisting solely in continuing, albeit irregularly, to expose "rot" masquerading as art or art criticism wherever we detect it.

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