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:
17 September 2010 | Books, Theory
In the September 2010 Art Bulletin, Karen Beckman reviews a new book by Kaja Silverman, Flesh of My Flesh: … For Silverman, Lacan shows us how, in response to humanism’s “impossible-to-satisfy demand” that each of us be an “individual,” we turn other beings into “rivals and enemies”: it is this transformation that blocks analogical thinking. [...]
15 September 2010 | Ancient
On NPR, ecologist/journalist Craig Childs calls for an end to archaeology or, at least, an end to archaeological digs: I’ve come to believe that artifacts need to stay in their place. And that’s after having gone through museum collections and seeing just the vast amounts of material that we’ve gathered already and going through private [...]
14 September 2010 | Career
In The Guardian, art historian Marianne M Gilchrist writes: In December 1993, I got my PhD. I was 28 and passionate about art and history. I found it impossible to gain a toehold in academia: no one wanted my specialism and my first degree was in a different subject. Interviews for lectureships dried up after [...]
8 September 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Museums
In the Yale Alumni Magazine curator John Marciari “tells how it feels to discover a masterpiece”: I cannot say that I knew what it was at first glance, but I knew that it was worth puzzling out. In the parlance of curators and art dealers, the work was by someone; it was attributable. Not only [...]
7 September 2010 | Museums
According to The Indian Express, The National Museum of India, the nation’s largest and most prestigious — and described on its web site as ‘The Pride of India’ — has been without a leader for the past three years. No one wants the job, it seems — and even a relaxation of eligibility criteria has [...]
2 September 2010 | Modern, Museums
One hundred years ago today painter Henri Rousseau died. This past spring the Fondation Beyeler marked the occasion with an exhibition of 40 of his works. In Le Monde, Thierry Savatier called it a “très belle exposition” and its 120-page catalogue “très beau”: He’s presented often as the greatest of naive painters, but this qualification [...]
1 September 2010 | Awards
From The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art: The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art has announced the appointments of members for 2010–2011. They include Joseph J. Rishel, Philadelphia Museum of Art, as Samuel H. Kress Professor; [...]
30 August 2010 | Uncategorized
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education painter Laurie Fendrich asks why it is “that whenever I blog on art, the reaction is deafening silence”: A lot of people can’t understand how art of any kind conveys meaning … At the same time, many are terribly intimidated by art—especially modern and contemporary art … The [...]
23 August 2010 | Books, Conferences
As someone whose dissertation is a mixture of fiction and essay, I’ve been keenly interested lately in Paul Barolsky’s new book A Brief History of the Artist from God to Picasso. He writes in the preface: I attempt to demonstrate the powerful influence of fiction in the history of art and the history of the [...]
20 August 2010 | Books, Museums
In Artnet sculptor James Croak hypothesizes that Thomas McEvilley’s review of the 1982 MoMA exhibition ‘Primitivism’ in Twentieth-Century Art “generally broadened the entire museological approach to both contemporary art and global culture,” making possible such shows as the recent MoMA blockbuster retrospective devoted to Marina Abramovic: His irreverent review, published in Artforum and titled “Doctor, [...]
19 August 2010 | Africa, Contemporary
The newspaper Nigerian Compass interviews Okwui Enwezor, who is visiting Nigeria for the first time in 8 years. It appears to ask about Sylvester Ogbechie’s recent indictment of his curatorial practice: But how would you say your work has contributed to the the global discourse in art and in changing the general feeling about African [...]
17 August 2010 | Books, Contemporary, Journals
Caa.reviews has started reviewing artists’ books recently. (If this started earlier, I must have missed it.) Clifton Meador (who in February reviewed a book about artists’ books) writes on The Square by Emily McVarish: Emily McVarish is one of a handful of artists whose primary artistic output takes the form of books, books that she [...]
16 August 2010 | Books
In a recent column titled “Don’t do Art History,” Mary Beard explains why she spends untold hours hunting down images and permissions for her books: The money is one thing, but when you start to calculate just how long it takes to find a picture that you are allowed (for fee or not) to reprint, [...]
13 August 2010 | Architecture, Books, Renaissance
In caa.reviews, Roy Eriksen considers Christoph Luitpold Frommel’s 2007 book The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance: The publisher of The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance describes it as “a landmark survey and analysis of Italian Renaissance architecture by an internationally renowned expert in the field.” The claims are true … He channels into the volume [...]
12 August 2010 | Books, Theory
Christopher Kul-Want has just assembled a new anthology Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists that includes: Martin Heidegger on Van Gogh’s shoes and the meaning of the Greek temple; Georges Bataille on Salvador Dalí’s The Lugubrious Game; Theodor W. Adorno on capitalism and collage; Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes on the uncanny nature [...]
11 August 2010 | Americas, Books
The hefty new book The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History by Aldona Jonaitis and Aaron Glass appears to be the definite take on this fascinating subject. Exploring the pole’s origins along the Pacific Northwest coast as well as its afterlives in aboriginal and popular culture, this book “is situated comfortably within the transdisciplinary field of [...]
9 August 2010 | Books, Renaissance
Diane Wolfthal, author of the widely reviewed books The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting, 1400-1530 (1989) and Images of Rape: The “Heroic Tradition” and its Alternatives (1999), now has a new book out – In and Out of the Marital Bed: Seeing Sex in Renaissance Europe. “This book explores images whose sexual content has all [...]
5 August 2010 | Contemporary, Museums
Last February, a conference convened to discuss the “Art History of Games.” This February, a CAA session will address “Cel-Culture: The Hybrid Intersections of Art, Video Games, and Manga.” And now on view in Paris is “MuseoGames: Une Histoire à Rejouer” (“MuseoGames: A Story to be Replayed”), as ARTINFO reports: This multimedia exhibition chronicles three [...]
4 August 2010 | Uncategorized
The Los Angeles Times has written an interesting profile of Getty Research Institute director Thomas Gaehtgens. It seems unfortunate to me that they decided to bill this article as a demonstration that Gaehtgens has “quietly gained acclaim” and “gained the admiration of his staff,” when the only proof of this in the piece is two [...]
3 August 2010 | Books, Contemporary
Rosalyn Deutsche’s new book Hiroshima after Iraq (based on her Wellek Library Lectures) examines three contemporary video works whose subject is the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Its press release announces that Deutsche “reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied.” In her introduction, she [...]
