Jon Lackman is a PhD student at NYU. His dissertation (in progress) is “Invective in Mid-1800s French Art Criticism.” He has written for Slate, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. He sometimes tweets.
Lackman's Posts:
6 December 2007 | Modern, Theory
The recently published book L’Œil-cerveau, written by Éric Alliez with the help of Jean-Clet Martin, seeks to understand modern painting in terms of “hallucination,” “a central notion for the nineteenth century that links artistic creation to ‘psychophysiological’ research”. “[Through close examination] of those works and statements constituting modern painting and the idea of modern art [...]
5 December 2007 | Books, Theory
Jacques Ranciere’s essay collection Le destin des images has been translated into English, as The Future of the Image. In the title essay, he writes: … Does not the term ‘image’ contain several functions whose problematic alignment precisely constitutes the labour of art? … What is being spoken about, and what precisely are we being [...]
4 December 2007 | Uncategorized
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, art historian Martina Baleva aroused controversy in Bulgaria after researching a painting of an event central to Bulgarian national identity: Early this year, Martina Baleva and Ulf Brunnbauer, academics at the Institute for Eastern European Studies of the Free University Berlin, planned an exhibition and a conference on a picture [...]
3 December 2007 | Books, Theory
Published recently, Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers, edited by Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery, “assesses the work of those thinkers (including artists) who have had a major impact on making, criticizing and interpreting art since the 1960s.” David Carrier writes on Arthur Danto, Stephen Melville on Michael Fried, Mignon Nixon on Melanie Klein, Alex Potts on [...]
30 November 2007 | Books, Theory
In CAA Reviews, Peg Brand considers Alexander Nehamas’ new book Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art: This is a grand work by a distinguished scholar in the field of aesthetics, and as such, deserves the attention of art historians, theorists, and artists in addition to the book’s [...]
29 November 2007 | Museums
We read in The Independent: The city of Brussels is to host the largest showcase of European art that the continent has seen, an exhibition that aims to prove how “joined up” its artistic heritage really is. The Grand Atelier: Pathways of Art in Europe from the 5th to the 18th Centuries brings together 350 [...]
28 November 2007 | Books
Alexandra Mangel recently reviewed for Deutschlandradio art historian Alessandro Nova‘s “Das Buch des Windes” (“The Book of Winds”), an historical survey of the visual depiction of wind: … a convincing combination of excitingly told history and basic course in method. This results essentially from his clever choice of subject: Because the wind itself is invisible, [...]
27 November 2007 | Uncategorized
In the November issue of CAA News, we read that caa.reviews has five new field editors: 18th Century European Art: Laura Auricchio (Parsons) Pre-Columbian / Colonial Latin American Art: Charlene Villaseñor Black (UCLA) American Art: Cécile Whiting (UC-Irvine) Modern/Contemporary Art Exhibitions in New England: Patricia Hills (BU) Modern/Contemporary Art Exhibitions in New York / Abroad: [...]
26 November 2007 | Photography, Theory
The summer 2007 issue of new formations is devoted to Siegfried Kracauer. Edtior Jan Campbell writes that his “contribution to twentieth century thought is undeniable. Yet he is difficult to define in relation to any particular tradition or discipline of knowledge.” Some of Kracauer’s writings concern photography: In his famous Photography essay Kracauer reveals how [...]
21 November 2007 | Uncategorized
The Art History Newsletter will next publish on Monday, November 26.
21 November 2007 | Architecture, Journals, Theory
In the latest issue of New German Critique (99), editor Andreas Huyssen writes: Since the waning of the debate about “postmodernism” and the rise of “globalization” as master signifier of our time, the discourses of modernity and modernism have staged a remarkable comeback. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s provocative quip that any work of art has to be [...]
20 November 2007 | Ancient, Books
In the most recent issue of Mouseion (VI:2), Kelly Olson reviews John R. Clarke’s Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. – A.D. 315: When I first received this book for review, I admit I was quite skeptical. Could we really identify “ordinary” Romans? Could one [...]
19 November 2007 | Books, Modern, Theory
In the most recent issue (40:5) of the provocative art-science journal Leonardo (Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology), Jan Baetens reviews Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture, edited by Patricia Johnson: This collection of essays is great reading … [it] opens new ground for the [...]
16 November 2007 | Architecture
In the July 2007 issue of Material Religion, Jeanne Halgren Kilde writes In recent years, the critical study of sacred space has stake a new and prominent claim on the landscape of religious studies … Critical approaches to the study of religious space vary widely: hermeneutical analyses informed by the neo-Eliadean perspective of Lindsay Jones; [...]
15 November 2007 | Photography
German art historian Siegfried Wichmann has found evidence that “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria died not of suicide but of murder. From the Independent: He was gay, wildly eccentric and built fairytale castles that today rate as Germany’s leading tourist attractions – but more than a century ago “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria [...]
15 November 2007 | Renaissance
From the Times of London: They are among the most prized treasures held by the Royal Collection, the British Museum and the Ashmolean in Oxford. But drawings that are said to give an unparalleled insight into the creative process of Michelangelo should no longer be attributed to him, according to new research. Three academics from [...]
13 November 2007 | Conferences
The 2008 College Art Association conference, to be held February 20-23 in Dallas, now has a full website, including a list of all papers to be presented. A session entitled “Cute” will feature the following papers: The Apotheosis of Cute: The Sacred and Profane in the Work of Mark Ryden How Cute: eBay’s “Black Americana” [...]
9 November 2007 | Books, Modern
Lea Vergine’s 1997 exhibition catalogue Trash, Quando i rifiuti diventano arte has been translated into English, as When Trash Becomes Art: TRASH rubbish mongo. It considers the use of trash by a wide variety of artists from Picasso, Tatlin and Marinetti to Mimmo Rotella, Louise Nevelson and Christian Boltanski. Vergine writes: … why did the [...]
8 November 2007 | Uncategorized
The August 2007 issue of the Journal of Visual Culture is devoted to “Detritus and the Moving Image.” Caetlin Benson-Allott writes on VCRs, specifically … a Panasonic 4-Head, Hi-Fi Stereo VHS VCRplus+. Its name appears in gold letters across the VCR’s faceplate, which is otherwise visually dominated by an oblong flap in the middle of [...]
7 November 2007 | Americas, Modern
In the July 2007 Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Andrea Pappas argues that, although abstract expressionism was marketed as an art of “timeless, ‘universal’ themes and subjects,” at least one of its artists had other things on his mind: The standard view of Rothko presents him as an artist who eschewed the particular, the local [...]
