“It’s interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place,” said co-organizer, author and IGF Nuovo Award finalist Bogost (A Slow Year) in his opening remark … “Is the art of games found in the visual arts?” [John] Sharp asked, adding, “Another place we can look is that the art of games is in their worlds. This lends itself to thinking of games as sculptural.” The speakers pointed out that, of course, games can also be enjoyed from a technical point of view … “[Or] is the art of games in the game design?” Sharp asked … Sharp laid out one final way that one could claim games are art. He pointed out that the act of play itself has creative aspects. “Is the art of games found in the player’s performance?” he mused. “This suggests that the real power lies with the player rather than the designer” … Sharp pointed out that “you don’t usually see games in a museum. A lot of our historical understanding of games comes from representations in art. There’s a sort of paradox there” … “If we look at a definition of art we can see that games meet most criteria,” Sharp said. “Games have the potential to deliver deep meaning, just not in the places we’re used to looking” … [Game designer Frank] Lantz argued that perhaps the trick is not to change games to make them more like our conceptions of art, but to change the way we think about art in light of games … if aesthetics cannot take games into account then we should re-engineer our ideas about aesthetics: “The way we think about aesthetics needs to change.”

With the spring conference season here once more, many of us will soon find ourselves rummaging in the closet with an open suitcase on the floor, asking ourselves what an art historian should look like now … Academic Chic offers a fascinating glimpse at the unique challenges professors and college instructors face. In the site’s own words: “Three feminist PhD candidates at a Midwest university, on a crusade against the ill-fitting polyester suit of academic yore.” They continue:

We are three Ph.D. candidates in the humanities, who believe that academia and fashion are not at odds. When beginning graduate school we each had an existential wardrobe crisis. What does one wear in grad school anyway? We recognized that our undergraduate hoodies and jeans were no longer appropriate but were unwilling to accept the shoulder-padded khaki polyester suit that was ubiquitous among our female professors. As feminist scholars, we were also forced to reconcile the perceived-superficiality of our interest in style with our academic commitment to questioning gender and class essentialisms.

Today, in the face of all our eye-rolling colleagues, we defiantly wear dresses, fitted jackets, and pointy toe shoes. To teach in. And sometimes just to the library!

Ouch.

CAA notes that “indicators from the US Department of Education and the American Association of University Professors show an increase in contingent faculty (e.g., part-time or adjunct positions). CAA, however, is not able to keep statistics on contingent faculty since most hires are made locally and not posted nationally on the Online Career Center.”

In ARTnews, William D. Cohan reports at length on “the authenticity of 74 ‘recently discovered’ plaster casts of Degas sculptures”:

Those who remain unconvinced that a previously unknown plaster of the Little Dancer was made during Degas’s lifetime have started mobilizing in opposition. A meeting was held at an undisclosed location in New York on January 19 [including Gary Tinterow, Richard Kendall, Theodore Reff, Patricia Failing, Shelley Sturman, Daphne Barbour, and Arthur Beale]. For now, the curators and art historians who met in New York are remaining silent, fearful of the lawsuits that might result from any public challenge to the validity of the so–called lifetime plasters … [B]ecause of the increasing threat of litigation against them, art historians have opted to remain silent lately in a number of cases … [Dealer Gregory] Hedberg has a long list of “sculpture experts and art historians who have carefully studied the actual plasters themselves and who basically concur that these plasters must be lifetime casts” … The dispute erupted late last year, when the little–known Herakleidon Museum published a glossy catalogue in three languages to accompany a show of 74 bronzes cast from the “recently discovered” plasters … [curator Walter] Maibaum said he would welcome a symposium where the evidence could be presented and opposing views aired. “A great art discovery such as this one is truly hard to accept unless it’s associated with a major institution,” he said. “This is not associated with an institution, so it’s troubling to some.”

The journal’s inaugural issue is entitled “Triangulating Our Vision: Madeline Caviness’s Approach to Medieval Art” … Caviness is known for her meticulous, award-winning work on medieval stained glass, and also for her employment of critical theory—particularly feminist and queer theory—to medieval objects. Always erudite, always imaginative, always thought-provoking, and frequently hilarious, Caviness’s theoretical work is widely read; it has, it must be said, garnered some criticism. Her work, like that of the much missed Michael Camille, makes startling juxtapositions that knit together the past and present in unexpected ways. It is playful. It is risky. It is subversive. And it drives some people crazy …

The benefits and practical applicability of Caviness’s model are evident in all of the contributions to this intriguing collection. They engage, question, correct, and destabilize accepted notions about major monuments and concepts in medieval art history today; as such they are ideal reading for undergraduate and graduate courses as well as for discussion among specialists …

Different Visions is most welcome, as it demonstrates the expertise, vitality, and commitment of emerging and established scholars concerned with discovering how the quintessentially human activities of art making and viewing structure human subjectivity and social systems. Introductory material with a certain conversational quality prefaces strong, peer-reviewed, syllabus-worthy chapters. Each section is generously illustrated with color pictures and converts instantly into a handsomely designed PDF file. Schleif, Dressler, and the editorial board at Different Visions are to be congratulated for their innovative initiative of “triangulating” the desirable aspects of scholarly conferences, academic publishing, and electronic media in a way that is both energizing and inspiring.

[Anthes] asserts that, though the study focuses on American Indian painting in the immediate postwar period, his is “not merely a recovery project with the goal of adding a few neglected figures to the canon of American modernism.” Rather, he insists that “bringing Native American modernism to the foreground rewrites the canon and the key terms of American modernism.” Over the course of six chapters and a postscript, Anthes substantiates this claim, demonstrating that the major concerns and characteristic themes of postwar art and culture—the shaping of individual and national identities, the expansion and contraction of geopolitical realms, tensions between representational and abstract forms, between the traditional and the avant-garde, and between urban and rural existence, as well as an ongoing fascination with primitivism, authenticity, and (self-)invention—are inextricably entwined with the very real circumstances of Native American lives and cultures in transition at mid-century.

Before he died in 1991, Motherwell signed a letter guaranteeing Banach “lifetime employment” at the foundation, she claims. She alleges she was wrongfully ousted by foundation president Jack Flam, “a man with overstated expertise in Motherwell’s work”, and “a temper against any who would challenge him”, according to her suit. Flam orchestrated “a malicious campaign” to remove her in retribution for disagreements over authentication of major Motherwell works of art.

Lydia Gasman, a retired art history professor at the University of Virginia, died Jan. 15 in Charlottesville. She was 84. Gasman, who grew up in Romania, was on the U.Va. faculty from 1981 to 2001. She was an expert on symbolism in Pablo Picasso’s artwork. “She contributed as much to Picasso studies as anyone,” said David Summers, a retired art history professor who knew her well.

According to Gasman’s cv (pdf here), numerous art-history texts reference and praise her work, particularly her 1981 dissertation, “Mystery, Magic, and Love in Picasso, 1925-1938: Picasso and the Surrealist Poets.

As president, what areas of the organization are you most interested in working on? I remember when I started my term I was most concerned about the growing contingent-faculty issues in our universities, as well as helping to shape the new strategic plan. What goals do you have for your term?

I am interested in several things. One is making our endowment work harder for us … Number two is the important question of service to not just artists but also our design members … I also hope that we might strengthen our partnerships with our affiliated societies … [Lastly,] expanding our sphere in the international community is definitely something I hope we will achieve in the coming years.

… Right now Bois’ largest task — and he has basically declined all other work until its completion — is a catalogue pacing out the work and influence of American painter Ellsworth Kelly, who lives in upstate New York. Bois hopes to be finished in under two years, although his research comprises seeing every painting Kelly has ever completed.

Along with this, Bois envisions an exhibit on the phenomenon of “look-alike.” This involves the study of pieces of art in entirely different parts of the world and, indeed, from different centuries that are nonetheless almost identical in appearance. Bois wants to use pieces to explain the phenomenon, debunking a few entrenched theories along the way.

… [And] he wants to curate an exhibit — quite possibly in Princeton — on the painting technique of impasto, essentially the practice of piling paint onto a canvas with thick, textured strokes. Most of the art world looks down its nose at this technique, says Bois.