Page2RRS

• 09 Aug ' 02:54

  Myth and ‘Mediocritas’

  | 3 August 2011 | Medieval

  Three new books on medieval and Renaissance Venice and Florence caught my attention recently. Most significantly: Blake de Maria’s Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice. The famous social stability of the multicultural Republic of Venice he calls partly a myth and credits partly to its “ethos of mediocritas, a state dictum favoring the visual promotion of society and state over individual accomplishment. Realizing that visual imagery could be (ab)used for personal gain, the Venetian government advocated aesthetic restraint in the private realm.” The ethos was, of course, open to interpretation:

  Architecture’s status as the most inherently public of all art forms placed the patron of a private residence in a potentially precarious moral realm. [A] residence misconstrued as an overt visual manifestation of individual accomplishment provided a tangible contradiction to Venice’s ethos of mediocritas … Classical literature provided some guidance for patrons, most notably Aristotle’s views of magnificence … The philosopher deemed the expenditure of wealth on material goods, including residential architecture, as both the right and responsibility of the prince … [S]ince the architecture of magnificence benefited the entire community, its patronage was both justifiable and laudable. This concept quickly expanded beyond the princely realm to include all individuals.

  Tackling an earlier chapter in Venice’s history of art- and myth-making is the recent essay collection San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice edited by Henry Maguire and Robert S. Nelson, which focuses on the complex early history of the church of San Marco, whose elements accreted over time, experienced numerous changes in meaning, and incorporated diverse influences from all over. As essayist Fabio Barry notes, “From the moment, in 828, that Venice abducted the remains of the apostle Mark from Alexandria, the construction and adornment of San Marco became an exercise in authentication by appropriation.”

  A third volume, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence, by Nicholas Terpstra, doesn’t directly concern visual art, but provides fascinating insights into daily life in the Renaissance, particularly into the fates of the impoverished girls and women who rarely make an appearance in official histories. The book revolves around a gripping mystery (still unsolved): in 1555, a shelter for orphaned and abandoned teenage girls saw over half its charges die in that one year, of unknown causes. It incorporates all manner of fascinating and horrifying period documents, including one detailing the 1584 conscription of a Florentine virgin to be deflowered by Vincenzo Gonzaga, a test intended to prove his manhood and thus his suitability as a fiancé to Eleonora Medici. The act was certified by nobleman Belisario Vinto who went so far as to “put his hand between her private parts and that of the Prince.” Sometimes, apparently, seeing isn’t believing.

  Stein and Picasso

  Jeremy Miller | 26 July 2011 | PhotographyTeaching

  The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde

  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art May 21-September 6

  Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories

  Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco May 12-September 6

  Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

  De Young Museum, San Francisco June 11 – October 9

   

  What is an art exhibition for? Two opposing answers to this question are presented concurrently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the De Young Museum. At both exhibitions viewers will find many impressive and historically important works by canonical artists. At SFMoMA, viewers will find these works organized into a narrative structure that adds layers of meaning to the works and help viewers see them as more than isolated objects.

  Having attended the curator panel discussion accompanying the opening of The Steins Collect, I was well prepared to appreciate the exhibition’s curatorial mission. Works purchased by primarily Gertrude and Leo Stein are organized according to the addresses where the collectors lived at the time. Not only does this form an essentially chronological view of the development of Picasso and Matisse’s paintings between the first decade of the 20^th century and World War II, it also helps the viewer see the pictures in roughly the same groupings in which they were displayed at the Stein residences. Large reproductions of period photographs are impressive not only for the amount of information that they contain, but also for the additional context that they provide. Some of the actual furniture pieces displayed in the photographs have been lent for the exhibition, helping to bridge the contemporary world of the modern art museum and the past represented in the photographs. If any part of the exhibition seems out of place, it is the room dedicated to the home built by Le Corbusier for Michael and Sarah Stein in 1926, Villa Stein-De Monzie. Films, photographs, and original drawings for the project are on display. The drawings by Le Corbusier display a delicate balance of meticulous draftsmanship and artful design, making them worthy of viewing for their own sake. That the viewer is presented with representations of the commissioned work strikes a contrast with the many canvases on display, notwithstanding the awkward notion of the commissioned house as part of the art collection. Nonetheless, by the end of The Steins Collect, viewers will not only have seen dozens of major works by icons of Modern Art, but will also have gained substantial insights into the lives and motivations of this highly influential family of collectors.

  More of these insights are available one block away at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories is on display. Less about her art collection and more about her relationships, the photographs are the stars of this show. The title of the exhibition is apt, as much of the viewer’s experience involves looking at images of Gertrude and her companions. These images are informative and entertaining, and create a strong sense of the attitudes, beliefs, and interactions of Stein and her circle. As is typically the case at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the exhibition layout, wall texts, and overall exhibition design each help to achieve the goals of the exhibition. Though Seeing Gertrude Stein may lack the artistic firepower of The Steins Collect, the exhibition is nonetheless a rewarding experience for viewers with an interest in Stein herself or the period in general.

  While the exhibitions at SFMoMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum are decidedly educational experiences, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the De Young Museum feels like a gallery show by comparison. Over one hundred chronologically arranged works by Picasso are on loan from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, which favors the second half of the artist’s long career. After an initial wall panel introducing the artist and describing the genesis of the museum from which the works come, the only supporting texts are short quotes from the artist placed high on the walls that do little to explain the artist’s motivations, inspirations, goals, or methods. Though I did not utilize the audio guide for this exhibition, other viewers have described the commentary as adding little to their understanding of the artworks. Despite the exhibition’s lack of educational or curatorial mission, it provides Bay Area viewers with the opportunity to see works by Picasso that normally require a trip to Paris. Furthermore, though it may seem hastily constructed compared to the show at SFMoMA, any viewer with an interest in Picasso will find reasons to appreciate the De Young show. Some viewers may even appreciate the lack of a strong curatorial mission, which they may see as heavy-handed or intrusive. This viewer, however, believes that art exhibitions are at their best when they present and support a compelling thesis that serves not only to entertain the viewing audience, but to educate us as well.

   

  Art Bulletin’s the Best?

  | 30 June 2011 |

  CAA now refers to The Art Bulletin as “the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship,” and has done so for about a year it seems. This proposition seems worthy of debate. The leading publication? (Is that word “international” hedging the claim? Is “scholarship”? Or “art-historical”?) Elsewhere CAA has referred to The Art Bulletin as “the preeminent journal for art historians, curators, independent scholars, and educators” and “the leading quarterly journal in the English language of scholarship in all areas of art history and visual studies.”

  Various outside bodies have tried to rank journals, using citation indexes or expert assessments or both. In 2008 The European Science Foundation gave 112 art-related journals its highest rating, including The Art Bulletin. Norway has its own list, which strikes me as idiosyncratic. The Art BulletinArt HistoryThe Burlington Magazine, Leonardo and Oxford Art Journal all belong in the second rank, below 118 other journals?

  Perhaps the most interesting rankings are those produced by Australia in 2010. It gave its highest ranking to seven “art theory and criticism” publications: The Art Bulletin, Art History: journal of the Association of Art Historians, (also published by CAA), The Burlington Magazine, Ligeia: dossiers sur l’art, October, and Renaissance Quarterly. I must confess I haven’t read Ligeia in years (none of the major universities near me even carry it). Renaissance Quarterly is too general a publication to compare with The Art Bulletin. The other four seem worthy competitors to The Art Bulletin‘s claim for pre-eminence.

  Why not call yourself “a leading journal”? It’s healthy for journals to compete and to take pride in their accomplishments. But to claim top status — without evidence or even argumentation — seems immodest and pointless. No matter how superlative any one art journal gets, it’s unlikely to become a true authority, nor should it.

  4 Comments

  1. Gregory Galligan, Ph. D.30 Jun 2011 at 9:19 pm

     I’m not sure “authority” is the issue, but, rather, the impeccable and rarely matched quality of scholarly research that lay behind the articles found in the Art Bulletin that lends considerable justification to the claim. Beyond that, it’s all marketeting lingo, i.e. hardly worthy of much intellectual fuss.

  2. sk1 Jul 2011 at 11:24 am

     If you investigate the fine print on the Norwegian ranking, you’ll find that their “2″ publications are in fact ranked higher than the “1″ publications (“There are two levels: Ordinary publication channels (level 1) and highly prestigious publication channels (level 2),” from http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/kanaler/hjelp.do).

     Furthermore, Gregory is right, it’s all marketing lingo. And the typically American tendency to appoint oneself “the leading,” “the best,” or “world champions.” Do Japanese baseball teams have a chance to qualify for the World Series? Of course not.

  3. Katrina3 Jul 2011 at 9:05 am

     The Australian rankings were debated quite a bit in Australian universities. Not least because the way journals were ranked reflected how universities would assess the publication output of academics. A lot of the choices were considered odd, though one couldn’t really argue with most of the journals that were ranked in the top tier. The low rankings were also a bit off, specialist journals often ranked low as did those in languages other than English. The list is apparently being revised at the moment.

  4. Craig said on 8 Jul 2011 at 11:47 pm

     Thanks, Jon, for an interesting posting. I imagine the claim is largely marketing lingo (with a bit of serious aspirational thinking thrown in — saying it enough might make it true). But while I expect this sort of bluster from phone companies and potato chip makers, it is a bit disheartening to hear it from a journal that’s genuinely important.

  New ‘Word & Image’ Editors

  | 27 June 2011 |

  For twenty-five years Word & Image has flourished under its founding editor John Dixon Hunt. Now, the reins have been passed to Michèle Hannoosh and Catriona MacLeod, professors of French and German at Michigan and Penn respectively. They write in their first issue (27:1):

  While maintaining our acknowledged strength in medieval and modern subjects, we encourage submissions in other periods such as antiquity, early modern, romanticism and the nineteenth-century, and contemporary; in Western and non-Western subjects; in philosophical and theoretical approaches to word and image; in book arts, photography, new media and virtuality; in translation and adaptation. On-line technologies now make it possible to include supplemental material and video images on our website, thus expanding the possibilities for illustration beyond the printed page. We envisage a series of critical assessments of key words in the history of word and image studies. We welcome ideas from our readers for other initiatives in which the journal could take the lead.

  A future special issue honoring Hunt will focus on ekphrasis. Submissions due Dec. 1, 2011.

  Art Bibliography Still Imperiled?

  | 23 June 2011 | Uncategorized

  The quest to save the Bibliography of the History of Art seemed to achieve success last year, but in the latest issue of Art Libraries Journal (36:2) Svein Engelstad writes:

  Users should be concerned about several problems with this solution. First of all, the old BHA content will not be available from the new provider because of copyright problems, apart from the last couple of years it was published. Secondly, the editing of the database has changed: IBA will not continue with the previous system of national editors, and the number of journals indexed has been reduced dramatically.

  Engelstad notes that there are several alternatives to BHA, but is forced to conclude that “the survival of traditional art bibliographies seems quite uncertain.”

  The Genre Called Genre

  Jeremy Miller | 11 June 2011 | Renaissance, Teaching, Uncategorized

  As a regular teacher of survey courses in Western Art, I find it very satisfying when new scholarship addresses its problems and offers solutions. In the June 2011 Art Bulletin, Margaret A. Sullivan writes:

  “For artists, whose calling required careful observation of the world around them, this heightened appreciation of the spectator elevated their own status and offered new opportunities. Bruegel the Elder’s Ice Skating before the Gate of St. George of 1558 is the first clear example of a scene from daily life serving as the sole subject of a work of art…

  …Bruegel’s Ice Skating before the Gate of St. George and Seven Virtues mark a critical point in the development called “genre” subjects. They established an important precedent by demonstrating that art could be created from the minutiae of daily life and still display the artist’s skill and imagination. It could be based on observations of of the world around the artist and still satisfy the expectations of a demanding viewer. An art of the ordinary could amuse and entertain and, at the same time, it could be used to address more serious questions…”

  Sullivan’s article explains the origins of this new mode of spectatorship in classical thought, explores its connections to life in mid-16th century Antwerp, and offers a model for resituating the origins of what is known as the Northern Renaissance. As the term itself suggests, the Northern Renaissance has traditionally been constructed for the non-specialist audience as the introduction of 15-16th century Italian motifs and figure types, and Classical architecture, into artworks produced in Northern Europe. Critical observers immediately question this construct as overly simplistic, as many of my students have when they encountered it in their texts. As an art historian whose specialty lies elsewhere, I admit that I have struggled to offer those students a satisfactory response. Sullivan’s article should serve as an reference point for addressing this gap in the survey, and be of great interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike.

  Quanto Michelangelo

  Jeremy Miller | 7 June 2011 | , , Renaissance

  When I learned of John T. Spike’s Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine after it was published last year, I immediately thought of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s 2008 book Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, and Ross King’s Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling of 2003. While I admit that much of the publishing world remains obscure to me, it is surprising to me that three books would be published over a relatively short time span which cover essentially the same period of the same artist, without great differences of methodology, content, or conclusions.

  It is true that the books do emphasize different aspects of the story (each of them treats Michelangelo’s career in the years leading up to his painting of the Sistine chapel ceiling as a narrative). King’s book describes a troubled three-way relationship involving Michelangelo, Pope Julius II, and the ceiling itself, with various supporting cast members. It’s narrative arc is strong, and it is a quick, engaging read. The first half of Graham-Dixon’s book is essentially a condensed version of the first third of King’s, while the second half contains a concise and thoughtful analysis of the subjects, form, and content of the ceiling itself, which somehow remains in the background of King’s book. Spike’s work focuses closely on the artist’s life and works before the Sistine, providing a fuller account, but one which is inevitably somewhat repetitive to readers of King and Graham-Dixon.

  Is the market for Michelangelo big enough to support such frequent publication? Are the three studies fundamentally different, mutually supportive, and hence each worthy of publication, economics aside? Or does the repetition of subject matter actually support each of the books, both in terms of esteem and sales?

  1. John Hooton said on 7 Jun 2011 at 11:18 pm

     I read Ross King’s book a year or two ago, and I recalled a Vatican museum “tour guide” I engaged for my art history class in ’05. As far as I can remember, His information is well-corroborated in King. In April, I made a quick and somewhat shallow perusal of a book of Michelangelo’s writings/letters/poetry, and decided that I know enough for now. Rona Goffen’s 2002 “Renaissance Rivals” (Yale) pretty much puts M. as the man to beat in those days. I haven’t finished it, but it’s a fun read.

  ‘Art and Homosexuality’

  | 25 May 2011 | , Theory

  A quick preface: I managed somehow to post regularly for five years straight, but over the last few months I truly got in over my head — between finishing my PhD (I am done, and after just 14 years!), writing two long articles and taking a delicious sabbatical at the MacDowell Colony to work on a novel, I became too strapped to keep up. Well, here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again.

  Various interesting books have piled up on my desk meanwhile. Given the recent controversy over “Hide/Seek,” the publication this month of Christopher Reed’s “Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas” seems particularly timely and in need of an immediate perusal. The book covers much terrain from the “Sambia” of New Guinea and the ancient Greeks and Romans to Polynesia, Tokugawa Japan, and European art from medieval times through the present. Reed begins his book by asking why his topic hasn’t received more attention yet:

  Conventional art scholarship shies away from divisive social issues, habitually treating art as something that is–or should be–purely aesthetic or an act of individual expression with (paradoxically) universal appeal. An identity as controversial and collective as homosexuality fits awkwardly with these conventions. For many historians of sexuality, it is sexual identity that suffers from being linked to the aestheticizing and universalizing conventions of art history and criticism. Homosexual identity, they say, is an invention of modern Western science, so it is there–not in art, and not outside the West or in deeper history–that we must look to understand it.

  Also, “the history of art, which is usually based on assumptions of continuity, is not easily integrated with the history of homosexuality, which is conventionally premised on alienation.” However, Reed asserts, to be daunted by such challenges is to “reveal a failure of historical imagination.” There are many ways in which the terms of art and homosexuality can be examined together productively. For example:

  The institutionalization of gay and lesbian identity into organizations seeking the political and social normalization of homosexuality … was often marked by disavowals of flamboyantly visual manifestations of minority sexual identity. At the same time, an examination of the history of modern art from the position of the history of homosexuality explodes myths of the avant-garde as either an arena of freewheeling inventiveness or a safe haven for misfits. On the contrary (again), the avant-garde often exploited homophobia to attract attention while energetically suppressing affirmative expressions of sexual deviance and policing the behaviors and beliefs of artists who aspired to its rewards. Groundbreaking visualization of the physical and emotion bonds between people of the same sex, therefore, often originated outside the avant-garde in realms of popular culture before being appropriated as avant-garde spectacle.

  Reed’s arguments strike me as admirably lucid and ambitious and they are well-illustrated by a variety of plates, many in color. Unfortunately his book isn’t footnoted (it’s “intended to invite a diverse readership”) but an extensive bibliography answers most questions.

  4 Comments

  1. Karen Leader said on 26 May 2011 at 5:42 am

     Congratulations Dr. Lackman!

  2. Craig Hanson said on 27 May 2011 at 6:42 am

     Hip, hip, hooray! Congratulations, Jon, on finishing the Ph.D. — and a fine posting, too.

  3. Ben Lima said on 28 May 2011 at 3:35 am:

     Yes, I add to the chorus – congratulations!

  4. Jeremy Miller said on 7 Jun 2011 at 5:04 am:

     Congrats John. Celebrate.

   

   

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• 10 May ' 11:48

  1. Maureen Mullarkey said on 10 May 2011 at 11:23 pm:

     Heather MacDonald’s article, referenced above, is the single effort to question the assumptions on which “Art in the Streets” is built. Thanks to Samuel S. and Ben, above, for responding from outside the choir loft.

  3 Comments

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• 02 May ' 02:19

  1. John Hooton said on 2 May 2011 at 11:46 am:

     All these photographers are surely on assignment, and felt they shouldn’t miss this “opportunity” and transmit the picture to their editors ASAP–rather than try to explain why every other news agency published the picture (as early as the same day it was made). My interest is in the photograph of the pathetic group of photographers, and not in the actual “news item”. Remember the picture from the late 80′s/early 90′s that showed a starving (probably african) child sitting on the ground with a waiting vulture in the near background? And was it only a rumor that the photographer who made that image later committed suicide? Dirty business, all that.

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• 29 Apr ' 11:36

  1. David Byron said on 29 Apr 2011 at 9:40 pm:

     That’s a lovely remembrance, Emily.

     I’ve written some recollections of Creighton Gilbert over at http://www.baroquepotion.com/2011/04/creighton-gilbert-1924-2011/ and I’m aiming to provide a complete bibliography of his works.

  5 Comments

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• 28 Apr ' 22:45

  An embarassment of photojournalists?

  | 29 April 2011 | Photography

  A writer for the French blog Niouzesetweberies writes:

  Fabienne Cherisma is a fifteen-year-old Haitian adolescent. She escaped the tragic earthquake. But Fabienne happened to be among the ruins when she received three bullets to the head from Haitian police trying to disperse looters. This photo by Paul Hansen won best photo of the year in Sweden. One can easily see why. The photo offers a gripping image of the death of an innocent child, and of the desperation and human tragedy at the heart of natural catastrophe. But this other photo has provoked controversy. It goes behind the camera [to show seven photojournalists crowded around her] and the perspective it suggests may be even more depressing.

  Art in the Streets

  | 26 April 2011 | ContemporaryOutsider

  Following the Né dans la rue show in 2009at the Fondation Cartier, MOCA is presenting the first major US museum survey of street art, Art in the Streets. You might be familiar with the show via the controversy surrounding Blu’s mural but, scandal aside, it is an extensive, wide-ranging exhibition and should significantly contribute to the history of street art. Unlike the Cartier, MOCA has not limited its presentation to graffiti. The show considers art in the streets in the broadest sense – skateboarding, presented in the context of a film compilation by Spike Jonze, reveals itself as a surprising graceful en plein air dance, a site-specific exercise, and a spontaneous performance that continues nearby with a skate ramp and live demonstrations. The Chosen Few Motorcycle Club is also included, represented by a gridded display of painted plaques for each member, with the club’s insignia, creators and bearers of a collective identity made for the streets. Erik Brunetti creates an unexpectedly poignant moment, gathering hundreds of lost pet signs, demonstrating the ways the street becomes a space of anonymous outreach and hope, and how that gesture is itself a kind of art. A drum set and guitar call out for anyone – trained or not – to play, giving an echo of countless unknown street performers.

  There are, of course, the more obvious inclusions: Banksy drew the most attention on my last visit. Dozens of camera phones were capturing his installation, including a wry, gilt-framed sign declaring “this is not a photo op” (Photos here). Space Invader’s contribution maintained his street persona – rather than a dedicated area, “invasions” popped up throughout the show. Outside the museum, there are rumors that a recently arrested vandal is in fact Space Invader, in town for the exhibition. It’s not only Space Invader, however, who is making his mark on the city. The LATimes reports an increase in tagging in the Little Tokyo area, prompting police concern and increased security near MOCA. These inside-outside questions are at the core of any show that attempts to institutionalize the deliberately unruly practice of street art, but one hopes the discussion generated can begin to carve out some possibilities and direction for future study of the genre.

  Overall, the show treads a nice balance between new commissions, recreations, and historical documentation. A visual timeline gives a limited, bare-bones sketch of the history of street art, but it does provide some useful archival documents, including the “black books” of taggers that were crucial to fostering nascent graffiti culture and cans of early spray paint, whose development in the 1960′s effectively gave birth to the practice. While coverage of the phenomenon began in the 1970s, with attention from art critics, sociologists, even novelists, street art still sits uncomfortably within art history. A few options for further reading:

  Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art Edited by Patrick Nguyen and Stuart Mackenzie, the volume includes interviews with key figures.

  Trespass. A History of Uncomissioned Urban Art Curated by the founders of Wooster Collective, a crucial blog in the international dissemination of street art.

  The Faith of Graffiti and The Birth of Graffiti Jon Naar first published his photojournalistic documentation of early graffiti in 1974 with The Faith of Graffiti. The book, which includes an essay by Norman Mailer, has been referred to as “the bible of graffiti.” His 2007 Birth of Graffiti looks back at forgotten images from that same period.

  Graffiti Kings Based on artist and historian Jack Stewart’s doctoral thesis (in art at NYU), he gives a firsthand account of the movement.

  2 Comments

  1. Samuel S.26 Apr 2011 at 8:16 am

     The particular artists in this exhibition have, from very early on, been widely accepted by legitimizing art institutions. Questions need to be directed at the curatorial premise of this exhibition. If this were a historical exhibition about “art in the streets” it would include contemporary muralist practices (Judith Baca comes to mind), sculptural works in the city-scape (any artist from Sculpture Projects Münster ’07 comes to mind), or actionist groups (the collective Asco comes to mind). This is instead an exhibition of a select few artists that Jeffrey Deitch (MOCA’s director) thinks are really cool, and who Dietch has had an interest in as a collector and dealer.

     The exhibition is a missed opportunity to unpack what “art in the streets” could be. Does graffiti qualify “art in the streets”? How are these term being historicized, theorized?

     Finally, this exhibition contradicts precisely what Deitch promised not to do when becoming a museum director, by staging an exhibition that promotes his private collecting interests.

  2. Ben27 Apr 2011 at 9:16 pm

     review by Heather Mac Donald:

     http://city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.html

  What makes contemporary American art American?

  | 18 April 2011 | Contemporary

  In her new book “Since ’45: America and the Making of Contemporary Art,” Katy Siegel examines artists’ “preoccupations with issues of race, mass culture, the individual, suburbia, apocalypse, and nuclear destruction” — noting that “while a leading textbook like Art Since 1900, for instance, assumes that the most important art is American or European, those national identities are treated as relatively incidental to the import of the art.”

  Siegel is particularly interested in American art’s peculiar obsession with endings:

  Mark Bradford’s 2008 project for the Carnegie International spelled the words “HELP US” on the museum’s roof, recalling the citizens of New Orleans … “I have always liked potentiality better than actuality. We all wait for the storm.” The storm that Bradford seeks seems to be on its way. Not only, literally, in extreme climate change, but also, finally, maybe really, in the end of America that so many see prefigured in the current economic and political situation. The short American century, which began with the economic ascension of the country in the 1920s, reached its highpoint with the end of World War II; at the same time, many claimed that moment of domination was also the end of America as historically constituted, as it marked the full entanglement of the nation in global affairs. One end after another has followed: recessions, military defeats in Vietnam and the Middle East, the attack on American ground of September 11, 2001, the economic crash of 2008. From even the slight distance of a few years, they seem of a piece, part of the same end, as well as a ritualistic repetition of America’s historical pattern of crisis, always already a ruin. Is this latest crisis just a repetition, or part of a long good-bye?

  Another recently published book, Robert Genter’s “Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America,” which has a narrower time-frame (the 1950s, mostly) and a broader subject (writers and artists), is particularly interested in American society’s “fear over the threat of totalitarianism,” its attempts to resist that threat with a fierce brand of individualism, and American artists’ participation in — or resistance to — that project. In a long chapter on Jasper Johns, Genter writes:

  Johns had little respect for the overtly masculine displays of his fellow artists who believed that the potency of their brushwork, either dripped, splashed or poured across the canvas, testified in some way to their heroic natures … Johns refused to believe in simplistic notions of autonomy … Johns offered an image of the human subject as inescapably embodied … [subject to] social and psychic pressures … Johns deflated the excesses of romantic modernism, not merely through ironic detachment as many have claimed, but through an intense reconsideration of the expressive act itself … Johns turned American modernism away from its metaphysical themes and back to the real cultural debris littering the American landscape … [Johns argued that the Abstract Expressionists] in their compulsive quest to reclaim their own masculinities, had forsaken any contact with their own culture, trying to remain aloof from a world on the brink of catastrophe.

  Ai Weiwei

  Sarah K. Kozlowski | 15 April 2011 | Contemporary

  As the Chinese government’s detention of artist Ai Weiwei approaches the two-week mark, ArtInfo.com brings together the latest developments

  Ai was arrested in Beijing on April 3, an event his studio assistants recorded on Twitter (translation here).  Evan Osnos reported on the day’s events in a New Yorker dispatch.  Police claim that Ai is being investigated for “economic crimes.”

  Artists and arts professionals around the world are circulating a petition for his release.

  Read more about Ai Weiwei’s work in Evan Osnos’s excellent New Yorker profile.  And watch a short documentary about Ai that Frontline/World aired on PBS.

  Creighton Gilbert, 1924-2011

  Sarah K. Kozlowski | 14 April 2011 | Renaissance

  The Renaissance art historian Creighton Gilbert died on April 6, 2011.  On his life and career see the entry in the Dictionary of Art Historians.  We will post an obituary when it appears in the press.

  4 Comments

  1. Hilarie Faberman18 Apr 2011 at 3:32 pm

     I hope one of his colleagues in Ren. art will write a fitting obituary. I had the good fortune to take his grad. classes and serve as his teaching assistant at Queens College in the early 1970s, and then later to see him often at Yale. He was a supportive teacher with a dry wit and a ready smile, unique to be sure and in many ways an inspiration. I will miss him.

  2. nbm25 Apr 2011 at 10:09 pm

     Gilbert’s undergraduate class on early Renaissance art affected me deeply, decades ago, and I recall it with pleasure. I am sorry to hear of his death.

  3. Emily Jayne Duckworth26 Apr 2011 at 10:46 pm

     I just read that my dissertation adviser, Mr. Gilbert, died on April 6. I haven’t seen any obituary for him in the New York Times and I hadn’t heard from Yale so I don’t know any of the particulars, but I feel sad; he was a great adviser, always sticking little references into my box at the department, references written on the back of paper used for other things (so he was one of the first recyclers). He had such thorough knowledge of art history and such subtle insights, people would come from Europe just to ask his opinion of something; I remember being in his office one day standing on a chair to look through some books he was giving away to grad students when some Spaniards from Barcelona rushed in, anxious to hear his thoughts about a bas-relief they owned. He gave his opinion only if there were no fee involved as he never wanted the appearance of impropriety. His translations of Michelangelo’s sonnets are lovely, and he was one of the first to gather documents in Italian about Renaissance artists and translate them: letters, contracts, patron’s lists, and inventories of artists’ studios. He was always careful about attributions and had deliberate questions that others rushed to pass over in their desire to get a solution. From this description you might think he wanted his dissertation students to slow down their writing, but he encouraged us to write no matter what, then we would go back over and improve the logical progression of the case to be made and the evidence to support it. Given his serious scholarship, you might think he would squash more inventive projects, but he was ever supportive of my research on Italian dance treatises in the fifteenth century and their influence on visual images of the period because he understood that the evidence would emerge from proper documents in Italian, even though he probably never danced in his life. He was all consumed with thoughts about past history, to the extent that he would ignore his own appearance on occasion, and graduate students would mistake him for a homeless man in the street, as his mind was elsewhere, figuring out how Fra Angelico had envisioned his images of dancers in heaven. He was also a generous professor, writing recommendations for my Fulbright to Italy and for a year to fill in for him when he was on sabbatical at Yale one year. He was a dedicated scholar and eminent mind. I hope he is dancing with the angels now.

  4. Allison MacDuffee said on 27 Apr 2011 at 5:30 pm:

     I didn’t know him, but his article, “Bartolommeo Veneto and His Portrait of a Lady” was the first scholarly art history article I ever read. He sounds like an admirable person.

  Leo Steinberg, 1920-2011

  Sarah K. Kozlowski | 14 April 2011 | Renaissance

  The great art historian and critic Leo Steinberg died in New York City on March 13, 2011.

  Steinberg, more than any other historian of Renaissance art, believed in the power of pictorial structure to generate meaning.

  On Steinberg’s life and work see the New York Times obituary and the entry in the online Dictionary of Art Historians.

  See also the brilliant and poignant address Steinberg delivered at CAA in 2002, in which he reflects on his life, work, and his recent book on Leonardo.

  Verano español en San Francisco

  | 7 April 2011 | ConferencesModern

  It’s going to be a summer of Spanish expatriates in the bay area; Balenciaga and Spain is currently on view at the De Young, followed shortly by Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso Paris, while SFMoMA has organized The Steins Collect: Matisee, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Gardebeginning next month. Together this looks to be a formidable group, and I hope to provide insights to potential viewers on all three.

  Balenciaga and Spain: Exhibition and Symposium

  De Young Museum, San Francisco, 26 March 2011

  On 26 March 2011, the De Young Museum in San Francisco hosted a symposium to celebrate and inform its new exhibition Balenciaga and Spain. The exhibition, curated by Hamish Bowles, explores connections between Balenciaga’s work and six aspects of Spanish culture: Spanish art, dance, religious life, the Spanish royal courts, regional dress, and bullfighting. I will begin by reviewing the exhibition, which despite its problems is a compelling overview of the oeuvre of a master designer and craftsman, and follow with the symposium.

  Exhibition

  Despite its awkward layout, Balenciaga and Spain manages to present a compelling case for couture-as-art.  Garments are displayed thematically rather than chronologically, and this is apparent in the initial hallway where pieces date from the 1930s through the 1960s. What ties these first pieces together (with one exception) is the color: black. Balenciaga preferred to work in black for much of his career because it allowed him to emphasize form over surface (so explained curator Hamish Bowles during his symposium lecture).

  It is in the following room where the first direct references to Spanish art are made. In front of an oversized reproduction of one of Miró’s sparse abstractions of the 1960s stands a cocktail dress from Winter 1967. After the initial disappointment of not seeing the actual Miró, one becomes aware of similarity of form between the black trapezoidal marks in the painting and the “batwing” structure of the rather novel cocktail dress. The curatorial gesture of appropriating some of the cultural gravitas of the Miró for the work of the couturier seemed effective.

  Just around the corner, a panel of text contains a quote from Cecil Beaton’s 1954 book The Glass of Fashion, in which the author describes Balenciaga as “fashion’s Picasso”. It was tempting to consider how notions of exile and otherness might have informed Balenciaga’s work. Both Picasso and Balenciaga spent large portions of their careers working in Paris where they were both separated from their homeland and able to operate as outsiders in French culture. Questions of how notions of Spanish authenticity influenced both Balenciaga and Picasso’s work and its reception (from Paris) are left untreated.

  Next one enters the main exhibition space, which is a large rectangular room organized according to themes stated above. Several of the themes identified by Bowles are well supported with wall texts, enlarged photographs, and carefully arranged display of garments. The influence of 17^th century Spanish court costume on Balenciaga’s costume work, the roles of Spanish regional dress and dance, and the influence of clerical costume are all readily apparent in the garments selected for comparison. From 1939 on, Balenciaga’s work made frequent references to bullfighting costume, particularly to the traje de luces and bolero jackets. Surprisingly, this theme is introduced with a text that begins by informing the viewer that Balenciaga detested bullfighting, an opinion reinforced at least twice during the symposium. The question of why bullfighting costume consistently appeared in his work over the course of many years is left unanswered.

  What is clear is Balenciaga’s reverence for Velazquez. If front of a large reproduction of Las Meninas stand several garments which draw inspiration from the painting. Balenciaga even went so far as to refer to several pieces as “Infanta” evening dresses, referencing the series of paintings which depict the Infanta Margarita. The similarities in line, form, composition, and color are clear, even though the 1939 evening dress which displays the most direct links to Velazquez’s painting was placed oddly away from this grouping.

  The exhibition audioguide provided little information beyond what was presented in the wall texts and labels. The exhibition itself ends with a small pop-up gift shop. This is notable due to the fact that just beyond the shop lies the entrance to the textile study department of the museum, the doors to which were propped open as if to invite visitors. Though it is difficult to imagine many patrons making their way into the stacks, the relevance of the museum as a research institution is highlighted. Similarly, the significance of Balenciaga’s life and work is made abundantly clear by the exhibition, and it is likely that many viewer’s will not be bothered by its unanswered questions.

  Symposium

  The panel of speakers included an international roster of experts in art and fashion history, including noted Balenciaga scholars. In addition to exploring the central thesis of the exhibition, the speakers presented new and exciting research into the life and career of Balenciaga, providing substantial historical context and correcting a few myths about the couturier.

  Though he avoided the thornier questions of Spanish identity, Hamish Bowles made a strong case for its fundamental role in Balenciaga’s life and work, thereby expanding on the central thesis of the exhibition. Miren Arzalluz presented a detailed study of Balenciaga’s early career in San Sebastian, relying on well-researched documents and dispelling the myth that Balenciaga arrived in Paris in 1937 with little to no experience or skill. Lourdes Font provided an informative review of Spanish court costume, detailing its role as an inspirational source for Balenciaga’s work. Lastly, Pamela Golbin painted a detailed and entertaining portrait of the daily operations of the Balenciaga workshop, drawing on her extensive interviews and access to primary source documents.

  Overall the speakers were informative, entertaining, and professional, and provided great insight into the Balenciaga’s life and work. Regrettably, there was no time for questions at the end. While filled with information, this listener was left with questions about some unresolved issues: Balenciaga’s relationship to bullfighting, his connections to the avant-garde art and literary circles in Paris in the late 1930s and early 1940s, his relationship with Franco (apparently Balenciaga made Franco’s daughter’s wedding dress), and his sense of national identity (Balenciaga hails from Guetaria, in the Basque region). Nonetheless, the exhibition and symposium were highly informative and well staged, while leaving avenues of further research open to those so inclined.

   

   

  1. D. Tepfer said on 11 Apr 2011 at 10:42 pm:

     “Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories Exhibition on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum is yet another super exhibition on view May 12, 2011 – September 6, 2011.” “Drawing upon a wealth of rarely seen artistic and archival materials, Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories illuminates Stein’s life and pivotal role in art during the 20th century. Focusing on Stein’s life from the end of World War I through World War II, the exhibition explores her evolving public personae, lifestyle, relationships, landmark 1934-35 tour of the United States, and life in France during WWII.

     Through a portrayal of Stein’s contributions in her writings, patronage, and lifestyle, the exhibition provides an intimate look at Stein’s complex relationship to her identity, culture, and history. Seeing Gertrude Stein also explores the ways in which Stein’s life and writings have impressed themselves upon the American artistic imagination and inspired generations of writers, artists, musicians, and performers.”

  CAA’s Greatest Hits

  | 31 March 2011 | Journals

  The College Art Association is also marking its centennialassembling lists of greatest hits from Art BulletinArt Journalcaa.reviews. Canon definition is a perennially controversial exercise — witness the brouhaha over one recent attempt to name the 64 “greatest” artworks “made since World War II,” which prompted one commenter to ask, “Will there be a woman’s bracket too?” Indeed the list is mostly populated by white male Americans — and the authors’ justifications have failed to win much respect.

  The College Art Association doesn’t pretend to present the “greatest” works of art history. Its lists are inherently limited — judges could choose only from writings published by the journals in question. Nonetheless, their choices deserve scrutiny. To begin with the criteria that aroused so much controversy above — Of the 38 essays and reviews chosen by The Art Bulletin‘s editorial board, 17 were written by female authors (another was co-written by a woman and a man). Not much to apologize for there. There are other problems however, which the board addresses frankly:

  [Some] gaps are simply revealing of the state of the field: there are very few pieces by women for the early years because few women were publishing in The Art Bulletin at the time. There are also few works by scholars of color and Jewish scholars because there were few in the field at the time; academe and museums were seldom hospitable, and Meyer Schapiro remains an exception for the 1920s and 30s. However, the fact that African American scholars remain few despite their presence on and at the head of the journal’s editorial board is still significant in what it says about the state of American and European cultural institutions. The gaps are filled in interesting ways that also speak to the state of the field, as when, from the early 1970s, feminist work appears and, from the early 1980s work on race appears alongside articles about the arts of Africa and of African Americans.

  On another level, it’s interesting to note how few of their selections won the association’s Porter Prize when they appeared — just four of the twenty-seven eligible (the prize was founded in 1958). How surprising! Is it that hard for art historians to recognize great scholarship when it appears? Either that’s the case, or the field is so highly fractured that every board ends up with highly idiosyncratic choices — which seems even less plausible.

  There is another way to measure the importance of individual articles — with a citation tracker such as ISI’s Web of Knowledge (which includes the Arts and Humanities Citation Index). This method has its own disadvantages, but is arguably more “objective.” According to ISI, these are the ten most cited articles from Art Bulletin, only two of which appear in CAA’s centennial list:

  1. “Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, ‘Petrarchismo’, And The Vernacular Style” by E. Cropper (1976). Times Cited: 57

  2. “Semiotics And Art-History” by M. Bal and N. Bryson (1991). Times Cited: 52

  3. “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500,” by J. Schulz (1978). Times Cited: 38

  4. “Contrapposto – Style And Meaning In Renaissance Art” by D. Summers (1977). Times Cited: 36

  5. “Augustinian Interpretation Of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling” by E.G. Dotson (1979). Times Cited: 23

  6. “The Feminist Critique Of Art-History” by Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews (1987). Times Cited: 20

  7. “Artists And Rederijkers In The Age Of Bruegel” by W.S. Gibson (1981). Times Cited: 19

  8. “Jerome Nadal And Early Jesuit Art In Rome” by T. Buser (1976). Times Cited: 19

  9. “The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii,” by B. Bergmann (1994). Times Cited: 18

  10. “The Sleeping Nymph – Origins Of A Humanist Fountain Type” by E.B. MacDougall (1975). Times Cited: 18

  Art Journal chose 13 items from its archives. Of the 10 selections created by a single individual, 4 are by women, including the oldest selection, Ruth L. Benjamin’s 1935 article, “Japanese Painters in America.” In an accompanying note, Karen Higa writes that this piece “underscores that even in their earliest incarnations, CAA’s publications registered the global in the formation of American art.”

  According to ISI, these are the 5 most-cited Art Journal pieces, none of which appear in CAA’s centennial list:

  1. “Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View,” by R. Krauss (1982). Times Cited: 23

  2. “‘Galileo, Florentine “Disegno” and the “Strange Spottednesse” of the Moon” by S.Y. Edgerton (1984). Times Cited: 20

  3. “The Traffic in Photographs,” by A. Sekula (1981). Times Cited: 15

  4. “Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II: The Kunstkammer as a Form of Representatio” by T.D. Kaufmann (1978). Times Cited: 12

  5. “On Paradigms and Revolutions in Science and Art: The Challenge of Interpretation” by R.S. Root-Bernstein” (1984). Times Cited: 10

  3 Comments

  1. Hercule Poirot said on 1 Apr 2011 at 7:31 am:

     I always wonder why concerns about diversity begin and end where they do. For example, the quoted text gives no attention to the representation of transgendered, Sikh, or differently abled Americans among the authors. Is this not a cause of worthy concern? Or do only female-Americans and African-Americans “count”? Some kinds of diversity are more diverse than others.

     On another note, the period through vol. 27 of the Art Bulletin accounts for 5 of the essays listed, or less than one every five years. (Not a single essay from 1946 to 1963 made the cut.) Taking the first 45 volumes together, that averages out to about one essay every nine years.

     If we consider vols. 46 through 90, these account for all 27 remaining essays (fourteen of which appeared in the twelve years from 1987 to 1998). This averages out to one essay about every 1.7 years.

     What could account for the disparity? Perhaps the baby boomers are just much better scholars than the Silent and Greatest generations.

  2. said on 1 Apr 2011 at 9:38 pm:

     BTW three years ago I did a post about most-often cited art history articles

  3. jr said on 21 Apr 2011 at 5:30 am:

     Interesting, but there are a couple of false premises at work here. One is that the CAA was assembling “greatest hits.” I don’t know about AB, but at AJ the brief was far broader, and less about canonizing than about examining the archives for pith, with the sum of the last century in view. The other question, as the writer notes, is the citation index. The number of citations will be higher not just if a piece is “great”; other factors–a hot topic, severe “badness,” even the practice on the part of some scholars of repeated self-citation–can skew these numbers.

  Can portraits represent?

  | 29 March 2011 | Medieval

  I apologize for having posted little lately, but I return with a book to strongly recommend: “The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France,” by Stephen Perkinson. I come to this book a bit late — it was published in 2009, but my review copy went to the wrong address, and so I only just managed to read it. (Of course, by academic book-reviewing standards, this is hardly late at all.) The book could have been better edited and illustrated, as Kathryn Gerry notes in caa.reviews, but his argument is lucid and relevant to anyone interested in portraiture, which should be everyone:

  For Leon Battista Alberti, a portrait served as, in effect, the starting point for the history of art; he invoked the Ovidian tale of Narcissus to locate the moment of origins of the human practice of painting … In the twentieth century, several art historians proposed that another image played a similar originating role in the history of art … Louis Gillet proclaimed that “[i]t is very noteworthy that French painting begins with a portrait [the mid-fourteenth century Jehan roy de France" ... [The work's caption at the Louvre] informs the viewer that the work constitutes “the first surviving example since Antiquity of an independent painted portrait” … [This assumes] that it is a physiognomic likeness of its subject; that physiognomic likeness is necessary for the representation of individual identity; that, as a physiognomic likeness devoid of overt religious references, the panel constitutes an example of portraiture in the modern sense; that its medium marks it as modern, rather than a medieval, work of art; and that, as a portrait, it marks a decisive break with medieval artistic traditions … But there are problems with each of these assumptions … As we will see, artists introduced physiognomic likeness … into images at the end of the fourteenth century … to endow images with what contemporary sources on gift-giving describe as “estrangeté”–striking visual qualities … At the same time, they did not eschew traditional methods of establishing resemblance between image and subject; indeed, written sources betray a fear that physiognomic likeness alone was insufficient to allow an image to represent an individual. And perhaps it is here, in these gnawing anxieties over the sufficiency of the representation of the self, that present-day readers may find the most compelling parallels to their own lived experience.

  Gerry writes:

  Perkinson’s argument is based on evidence drawn from such a wide array of sources, including visual arts produced in a variety of media, and literary, scientific, historical, theological, and political texts, that there is little room to wonder if any (surviving) voices have gone unheard. His examination of textual sources is strengthened by careful attention to how language is being used by the authors, and he relates shifts in the use of certain words to changes in the understanding of art and artistic practice. Perkinson’s careful and detailed analyses of works of art is to be commended, as is his thoughtful assessment of what evidence these works can and cannot provide.

  Scholarly Publishing without the Scholarly Press?

  by | 13 March 2011 | CareerJournals

  The rise of peer-reviewed, online journals dealing with art history and visual culture, and not associated with an academic publisher, is an interesting development. Traditionally an academic press, complete with editorial board and a peer-review process, has lent a certain cache and reliability to the items it publishes, though this varies of course. These editorial functions have maintained the divide between the academic press and self-published, unreviewed formats, such as blogs. I do not point this out to devalue blogs or other self-publishing formats, just to highlight what seems to be understood as the critical difference between these two ends of the academic publishing spectrum.

  Now the center of this spectrum has come into focus. There are several instances of free online scholarly publications which maintain an editorial review board of credentialed scholars and practice peer review. Here is a cross section:

  http://www.riha-journal.org/

  http://nonsite.org/

  http://www.shockwrite.org/

  http://stretcher.org/

  http://www.wornthrough.com/

  Clearly the people involved in these projects have recognized the relative ease and freedom of online publishing vs traditional. Furthermore, they have found outlets for the their work, which might not otherwise have been published, and have claimed a degree of authority by utilizing the methods of the traditional academic press.

  How will these new types of publications compete with more traditional publications as authors become more frustrated with the difficulty of having a piece accepted for publication and look toward alternatives (the growing surplus of art historians in the West is no secret)? Will any of them be able to achieve the same level of gravitas as, say, The Art Bulletin, or October? If October were started in 2011, would it have been an online publication? Will traditional publishers appropriate for themselves some of the space being carved out by this new species?

  1. jason said on 14 Mar 2011 at 9:21 pm:

     eastofborneo.org is a standout online journal attending to contemporary art, although its review process is a bit opaque.

  2. Kat said on 15 Mar 2011 at 4:39 am:

     I edit an online journal that exists only online and has for five years. The editors originally started it to publish the work of emerging scholars but as one of the very few journa;s dedicated to art history published in Australia we have found a lot of senior academics want to publish in it as well. Although it was not our initial aim, we seem to have carved out a niche publishing new research on Australian art movements. We have also benefited from the extremely slow turn around of the print art history journals in Australia and the fact that our only restriction on length is our ability to get the article edited.

     As to the refereeing issue, we do it because otherwise many academics would not publish with us otherwise. At AUstralian universities (and I would guess at other institutions) articles/book chapters must be published in a refereed journal/book for them to count toward the academic’s research output.

     I am also very interested in what online journals might be able to do that print ones can’t. I know the Journal of Architectural historians has launched an online version, which has a multimedia component. At the moment it is only available to members though.

  3. Eileen Manning Michels said on 16 Mar 2011 at 7:24 pm:

     I have just encountered this most interesting site. I would like to note that similar problems pertain to the publishing of scholarly books. There indeed has been stigma attached to self-publishing, but occasionally, if one can afford it, that can be a viable path. In 2004, after sixteen reputable publishers (university presses, Rizzoli, etc.)rejected my manuscript, I published it myself at considerable expence (364 folio-size pages –49 of which are notes — and 305 illustrations). In due time it received an award and was also reviewed in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. information from it also has made its way into the online Britannica, and the Grove dictionaries. In other words, it has become a respected book. (The book is Reconfiguring Harvey Ellis.)

  4. CassandraLanger said on 28 Mar 2011 at 4:04 am:

     How much did this enterprise set you back? I think a lot of us have subjects that have no celebrity spin and publishers are unwilling to risk anything. Illustrations are the crux of the problem for those of us with worthwhile publications. Good for you.

  5. Eileen Manning Michels said on 28 Mar 2011 at 7:05 pm:

     Usage fees, digitizing photographs, editing, graphic design, cover design, printing costs and certain other fees amounted to about $60,000 spread out over about two years. The total cost would have been about $15,000 — $20,000 less had I not had to pay twice for some of the graphic design (a long and still infuriating story). My guess is that by now there might be less costly ways to self-publish.

  2 Comments

  1. Wes said on 19 Mar 2011 at 8:17 am:

     R.I.P. sweet woman & friend.

  2. Kim said on 19 Mar 2011 at 9:53 am:

     R.I.P. you will be fondly remembered..

  1 Comment

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• 06 Mar ' 14:53

  Mot/Image

  | 6 March 2011 | Books, Theory

  I recently received three striking publications that consider the intersection of word and image from a French perspective. My personal favorite is Sarah Wilson’s The Visual World of French Theory: Figurations. Don’t let the cover’s drab reproduction of a Henri Cueco painting fool you — this book crackles visually, lavishly reproducing the fascinating French artists of the 1960s and 70s who conversed extensively with the theorists they lived among (the subject of a 2008 retrospective at the Grand Palais). Much contemporary art has suffered from its sordid relations with these theorists, but this book is evidence that the relationship can be a positive one even (especially?) at its most intimate:

  [This movement] was position on the very cusp of postmodernism: it exemplified the last moment in France of grand history painting and the tradition of revolutionary romanticism. Its works are rich with critical satire, strategies of appropriation and a post-Situationist détournement … In a period in which an attempt to contextualize Marxist theory was seen as urgent, the Narrative Figuration movement sought to ‘mirror’ or reflect the society of its times. Militantly figurative, its broken narratives anticipated anticipated Lyotard’s very definition of postmodernism as based on narrative collapse and a critical analysis of the grands récits and the petits récits of the times.

  Jean-François Lyotard seems to experiencing a revival, one sign of which is the fact that his 1971 doctoral thesis Discourse, Figure is finally being published in English, translated by Antony Hudek and Mary Lydon. Of this book Georges Van Den Abbeele wrote in the recent Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought

  This monumental chef d’oeuvre of poststructuralism, comparable in its ambition, critical scope, and conceptual rigor to Derrida’s Of Grammatology or Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, proposes its own theory and history of difference … Discourse refers to the Saussurian semiotic model, whereby signification is a function of negativity and opposition; whereas figure designates the relational differences implied in spatial distribution and depth but also between sign and referent or between proper and figural meaning. In graphic terms, discourse is the realm of the letter, where signification derives from the fact that no two elements can occupy the same space at the same time (the principle of opposition or negation), whereas figure is the realm of the line, where the simultaneity of different graphisms can lead to visual effects of depth and semiotic effects of reference (the principle of difference).

  John Mowitt contributes an introduction to Discourse, Figure that includes the following amusing anecdote about the book’s co-translator Mary Lydon:

  On 21 April 1998, Jean-François Lyotard succumbed to an aggressive form of leukemia. Shortly after, at the annual meeting of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature hosted by the University of California, Irvine, an impromptu commemorative event … Aware that he was compressing much time and space, Derrida nevertheless permitted himself the observation that toward the end they disagreed most passionately about Marxism: Lyotard sacrificed it to the postmodern, Derrida sustained himself on its weak yet indestructible, hauntological “spirit.” If I begin these remarks by reconstructing this somber scene it is because next to me in the auditorium sat my late friend Mary Lydon who, when Derrida contrasted himself with Lyotard in this way, said under her breath, “oh, la, la,” that oddly translingual statement that when translated specifically from the French might, in this context and with that intonation, simply be rendered as “bullshit.”

  The third book, Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings, edited by Marija Dalbello and Mary Shaw, is a collaboration among French and American academics from several disciplines that grew out of a 2006 conference. “Exploring the concept and history of visual and graphic epistemologies, this multicultural collection provides insights into the many forms of connection between visibility and legibility.” Chapters address ancient Mesoamerican scripts, Mallarmeé, comic books, and the Alhambra, among other topics. Béatrice Fraenkel contributes an essay on the impromptu memorials that appeared all over New York City after 9/11:

  The apparent disorder of the shrines and the repetitive nature of the messages led to changing reading strategies that were sometimes compulsive, often erratic, always intermittent, and coherent with the general situation in the city at the time. As writings from “us,” encompassing both the writer and the reader, the pieces displayed gave to the “being together” they helped to define a corporal existence that was both somatic and semiotic.

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• 06 Mar ' 10:37

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• 04 Mar ' 20:13

  1. African Mango said on 5 Mar 2011 at 7:42 am:

     Woah! I’m really enjoying the template/theme of this blog. It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s challenging to get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness and appearance. I must say that you’ve done a amazing job with this. In addition, the blog loads extremely fast for me on Opera. Outstanding Blog!

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• 04 Mar ' 16:00

  CAA Again, Already

  | 3 March 2011 | Conferences

  This year’s College Art Association conference has just finished and they’ve already launched the CFP for next year (pdf). The one hundredth annual conference will take place February 22-25, 2012 in Los Angeles, and paper proposals are due May 2, 2011.

  They also posted a brief conference summary, which notes there were an astonishing 7,000+ attendees and over two hundred sessions, panels and talks.

  Open Mouths, Bound Arms, Hollow Fingers

  | 2 March 2011 | Journals

  In the latest , Fabio Barry traces the iconography of the famed Bocca della Verità – Rome’s Mouth of Truth. With visitors ranging from Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday to Freud, there is an enduring fascination with what Barry terms the “massive relic of antiquity… a terrible demon who cautioned against perjury on pain of amputation” – liars, upon putting their arm into the mouth of the Bocca, would have it bitten off. This leap between verbal and physical action, from idea to material, echoes the very nature of the Bocca. Barry convincingly argues that the Bocca represents Oceanus, a deity variously understood as “a moat, an endless ‘backflowing’ stream with no point of source except itself”, the “genesis of all the Gods” and “genesis of all” (Homer), and “the source and end of the gloomy world” (Hesiod). He determines the Bocca originally functioned as a drain, and would have been located in the Forum Boarium. It was possibly constructed by Hadrian, based on the association of Oceanus with Hercules, who faced Ocean in his tenth and eleventh labors.  To fortify the identification of the Bocca as Oceanus, Barry eloquently examines the materiality of the Phrygian marble – a substance that in antiquity would have been associated with water. Marbles had watery origins; and poets exploited the closeness of “marmor” (marble) to “mar” (sea). Phrygian marble in particular, a cold white with violet streaks, resembled ice floes. Thus,

  We can appreciate [the Bocca] not so much as a head carved on a slab as a face that wells up in a pool. Indeed, the sculptors responsible – just like the cameo cutters who prospected the veins in agates in search of latent images – chose the Bocca block so that the deity’s head would be contained within its “birthmark.” In so doing, they captured a paradox. Were this marble disk a frozen pool, the face would seal its thinnest part, where the surface showed darkest. And this darkness is where the stone becomes virtually transparent, so that when Oceanus reared his head in public he seemed not so much the tip of the iceberg as the face of the deep.

  The slippage in antiquity between idea and material was brought up in a recent talk by Rachel Kousser at the Getty Villa. In her lecture, “Bound, Mutilated, Confined, Concealed:  ‘Voodoo Dolls’ in Classical and Hellenistic Greece”, Kousser discussed fourteen known examples of small statues employed in ancient Greece in a manner similar to Haitian Voodoo (implying, of course, that many more examples linger, unpublished, in storage). The statues were rudimentary and their forms varied – some verged on representational, while others were nearly indistinct masses of lead or wax. Common to them all were bound arms, and often the figures’ heads and feet were reversed. Part of the understudied practice of magic in antiquity, they served primarily in issues of love and law – a patron commissioning a statue might stab its tongue in order to cause an adversary to flub his legal speech. Kousser presses the distinction between a literal reading of the statues, which could assume the user wanted his adversary to show up with a needle through his tongue, with the metaphorical way in which they were actually used. She then suggests, provocatively and insightfully, that the way the Greek viewer related to these figures should be invoked in our consideration of the relationship to so-called “high art” statuary. The metaphorical possibility of the voodoo dolls, and the ease with which the user would move from the physical to the verbal, urges us to reconsider depictions of offerings to statues and other ritual gestures.

  The metaphoric potential of artifacts has been similarly underestimated, Richard Sharf argues in another Art Bulletin article, in relics of Buddha’s finger bones found in a crypt beneath the Ming dynasty pagoda at Famensi. While the ritual role and context of the reliquaries has been examined, the materiality of the relics themselves has been disregarded – a particularly striking omission when one notes, as Sharf does, the blatant falsity of the bones. The hollow tubes obviously do not resemble finger bones, and certainly not those of the Buddha. Rather than seeing this as a gesture of bad faith or naïveté, Sharf complicates the understanding of the Buddha’s “true body” – the “dharma” or transcendent body. One might argue, as Eugene Wang does, that the true body is no body at all. But Sharf suggests

  The multivalent expression ‘true body’ deftly captures the dialectical or ‘self-emptying’ logic exhibited in the very design of the finger-bone relic. The term ‘true body’, like the relic itself, must be understood as sublimely ironic. In short, the Famensi finger-bone relics might be approached as sophisticated works of art. And this means coming to appreciate the creative, aesthetic, and playful dimensions of the crypt and its treasures.

  Classifying the relationship between viewer and object as one of art “opens up new interpretative and analytic avenues.” This move also has significant consequences for “global art history,” a subject much-discussed at this year’s CAA. Throughout the conference, there were several calls to eliminate fraught terminology, including “art.” Sharf acknowledges the postcolonial implications of wresting ancient artifacts from their lived context and inscribing them within a “modern, ideologically laden” category. Yet,

  Perhaps we have swung too far in the other direction, leaving us with relentlessly functional readings that are denatured and reductive…. In abandoning the rubric and logic of “art,” we become blind to the more playful dimensions of Buddhist material culture. To dismiss the category “art” as parochial, romantic, Orientalist or intellectually bankrupt may lead us into another rut that is equally parochial, romantic, Orientalist, or intellectually bankrupt.

  Obit: Loretta Lorance

  | 28 February 2011 | ArchitectureModern

  Architectural historian Loretta Lorance died Feb. 26, of breast cancer, according to an email sent to the CAA Student Members list-serv. She obtained her PhD from CUNY, taught at various universities, and published the 2009 book Becoming Bucky Fuller with MIT Press. Felicity D. Scott reviewed the book in the September 2010 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

  Becoming Bucky Fuller tells the story of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s (1895–1983) earliest forays into industrial mass housing, from being recruited in 1922 by his father-in-law, James Monroe Hewlett, to work with Stockade Buildings Systems, Inc., to his launching of the Dymaxion House and ongoing promotion of this project in the late 1920s and ’30s. More specifically, and more provocatively, Loretta Lorance re-tells this story, diligently reconstructing the evidence of an alternative to the now-legendary tale of Fuller’s 1927 epiphany while contemplating suicide on the shore of Lake Michigan … The importance of Becoming Bucky Fuller lies in the precision and detail with which Lorance’s “parallel history” debunks this myth through tracing extensive archival documentation of the minutiae of his daily life and work. Indeed, it is a rather curious and pleasurable book to read, not only on account of the intriguing twists it adds to a well-known story, but for its peculiar deployment of archival evidence (which at times reads almost like raw documentary material).

  The book also garnered this review from technology historian Howard P. Segal in the October 2010 issue of Technology and Culture

  Loretta Lorance’s Becoming Bucky Fuller (2009) is a highly original, often fascinating investigation of how Fuller laid the groundwork for his later fame and fortune after a series of early setbacks. More thoroughly than any prior scholar, Lorance uncovers crucial differences between Fuller’s and his admirers’ portraits of his younger days as the alleged victim of both personal and professional setbacks and what actually happened. It is now evident that Fuller’s greatest invention was himself.

  Art Bulletin was “the only scholarly art periodical in America … it would only be fair to restrict the articles … to the work of American scholars” … [They proposed] that articles by foreigners be limited in number to those who were affiliated with United States institutions or were truly exceptional.

  1. Susan ball26 Feb 2011 at 6:28 am

     Thanks for your thoughtful review.
     Susan Ball

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• 24 Feb ' 11:52

  ’100 Years of the College Art Association’

  | 24 February 2011 | Books, Career, Journals

  Those of you still recovering from a marathon four days of conference-going earlier this month may wince at the notion of “100 Years of the College Art Association,” but in the hands of Susan Ball, it’s an appealing subject. She has just published a fine volume she edited on CAA’s history, “The Eye, The Hand, The Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association.”

  This is an official production, edited by a former CAA executive director, and so its overall tone is predictably boosterish. That said, many authors offer good critical commentary along the way, and the book is full of interesting information. To start with a minor example, I didn’t know that CAA board members are required to donate at least $500 to the organization each year. Nor did I know the organization’s true beginnings. As Ball writes:

  On more than one occasion art historians have argued incorrectly that CAA was “founded by art historians with the idea of promoting the history of art” … [Rather, CAA] had its origins in drawing and manual training … [in] the teaching of teachers of art.

  CAA quickly took on a dual role, aiding artists and art historians — a multiple role, really, as it also serves art librarians, curators, and so on. Consequently, the organization often suffers from an “identity crisis.” That crisis has fueled the most lively of CAA’s internecine battles, but I found myself most interested in Craig Houser’s chapter on “The Changing Face of Scholarly Publishing.” He argues among other things that the importance of European refugees to American art history has been overstated:

  [This] argument does not acknowledge that much of the art history of the German-speaking nations was already somewhat familiar to U.S. scholars in the 1930s … In addition, U.S. art historians sometimes challenged the ideas of European scholars … free from the petty scholarly politics and national biases that had been plaguing some of the Europeans’ scholarship.

  Of course, American art historians enjoyed their own kind of national pride and played their own kind of politics:

  On April 7, 1936, a letter was submitted to the CAA board of directors by sixteen members, including Helen M. Franc, Meiss, and Meyer Schapiro, as well as two editorial board members, Cook and Dinsmoor. Among their varied concerns, they stated that given Art Bulletin was “the only scholarly art periodical in America … it would only be fair to restrict the articles … to the work of American scholars … [They proposed] that articles by foreigners be limited in number to those who were affiliated with United States institutions or were truly exceptional.”

  Houser also notes that many early Art Bulletin board members “used their position with the journal as a means to advance their careers” and their favorite subject matter. An interesting table tracks the topics of Art Bulletin articles from 1919 to 1944, during which time a total of zero articles tackled African art, Egyptian art, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Native American Art, Ocean/Australian art, Outsider/Folk Art, Pre-Columbian Art, or Prehistoric art. By contrast, ninety-nine articles treated Early Medieval/Romanesque/Gothic art, and sixty-one Renaissance art. No other topic even came close.

  For those of you looking to advance your own career in Art Bulletin, note that it has been accepting just 20-25% of submissions since 1980, but that now is a comparatively good time to try to break in — the annual volume of submissions in recent years is about 10% lower than it was in the 1990s.

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