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:
4 June 2010 | Ancient
The Dec. 2009 Antiquity cover bears an unusually alluring set of teasers: Royal purple found at Qatna, Syria The Bishops of Whithorn and their diet Cannibalism in Neolithic Germany Clubbing and stabbing in Bronze Age Spain The eventful story of some Chinese trousers Also in this issue, Bisserka Gaydarska analyzes the Theoretical Archaeology Group and [...]
3 June 2010 | Modern
Classiques Garnier Numérique (formerly known as Éditions Champion Électronique) has released a new online database (subscription required), “Writings on Art from the 18th to the 20th Century“: It brings together 61,000 pages, going from 1741 to 1927, gathering 72 authors and containing 169 titles. Esthetics, philosophy, art history, texts by painters and writers, but also [...]
2 June 2010 | Uncategorized
British art historians are concerned that proposed changes to the system by which their universities are classified and evaluated could diminish the reputation of art history there. Incidentally, the 2008 evaluations are available online (scroll to page 97). The quality of these rankings and their methodology are of course up for debate. That said, see [...]
29 May 2010 | Teaching
As I was listening to this interesting “On the Media” segment recently, I became intrigued when I got the impression that everyone but me had read this article (pdf), “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes,” by Kathleen Hayles. (In fact, it’s not all that well known.) This is a topic I’ve [...]
28 May 2010 | Teaching
The March-April 2010 issue of Le Débat prints a talk that Pierre Rosenberg gave at a September 2009 colloquium (pdf): My career has been in museums, at the Louvre mostly, where I’ve spent almost 40 years. I love museums, all museums. Alas I didn’t discover them in school, but rather from my parents … Many [...]
26 May 2010 | Film
At Artnet, David D’Arcy reviews the recent International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal: The fest featured no less than six films on Picasso, including Arne Glimcher’s unlikely Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies [which argues] that Cubism was inspired by early movies … Views on Vermeer – 12 Short Stories … weighs [...]
25 May 2010 | Books
Want to get the finger? I reviewed a new book on its role in art, literature and history by Yale Center for British Art senior curator Angus Trumble.
In a recent issue of History of Photography (34:1), Jonathan P. Eburne reviews several recent books on surrealism and dada. He’s most taken with George Baker’s The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris: Baker’s mannered yet often luminous [book] represents a major contribution to the study of avant-garde art … [...]
24 May 2010 | Books
Pace Gallery president Marc Glimcher has founded Artifex Press, “the first publishing company dedicated to the creation of comprehensive, publicly accessible, online catalogues raisonnés”: Artifex Press has been named publisher of the digital catalogues raisonnés of the estates of Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin along with contemporary artists Chuck Close, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg and [...]
24 May 2010 | Modern
Kline was born May 23, 1910. As far as I know, no exhibition was held or publication released to mark his centennial. Nor does he yet have a catalogue raisonné, apparently.
21 May 2010 | Journals, Modern
The CAA’s Art Journal has a new editor, Katy Siegel. I haven’t had a chance yet to look at her first issue, which is now out and apparently focuses on artists’ projects. Siegel has said, “While preserving its integrity as an academic journal, I want to make sure that every issue of Art Journal also [...]
20 May 2010 | Uncategorized
From Las Vegas Weekly: They were adored, fawned over, hated, respected, energizing and revered. They brought hope, insulted the city and loved the city. They were negative, positive, cherished and polarizing. And now they are leaving. Love or hate them, there is no arguing that Dave Hickey, famous art critic and genius-grant recipient, and Libby [...]
20 May 2010 | Uncategorized
On the lighter side, the Santa Barbara Independent reports that a recent debate at UCSB asked the audience to imagine that a zombie outbreak has taken society to the brink of extinction and UCSB, the only remaining safe house, has room to admit only one more member. Seven professors [from the departments of Education, Philosophy, [...]
The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) has announced its annual awards: Category: Catalogue Based on a Permanent Collection Michael R. Taylor, Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés Category: Exhibition Catalogue “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity” (MoMA) Category: Exhibition in the Eastern Time Zone (Tie) “Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity” (MoMA) “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance [...]
19 May 2010 | Career
Last week I emailed the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education to ask if they had any plans to update their study PhDs in Art History – Over a Decade Later. I got a response today: We are delighted about your interest in our study. We would love to undertake another study, should [...]
18 May 2010 | Uncategorized
A recent issue of Master Drawings (XLVII: 4) notes the passing of Carlos van Hasselt: Carlos van Hasselt died on 19 July 2009 in Paris … [He retired] as director of the Fondation Custodia in 1994 [after] twenty-four years. Carlos was born on 7 April 1929 in Bergen-op-Zoom in Brabant, The Netherlands … [and studied] [...]
17 May 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Journals, Theory
The latest (March-June 2010) Art Bulletin just arrived here. This one comes with another “Intervention”; in this recurring feature, a number of scholars are invited to respond to a provocative essay. The author completes the exercise by responding to the respondents, and the whole thing is published across many pages. I’m curious — do people [...]
14 May 2010 | Conferences, Photography
As a San Francisco Chronicle article noted, the SFMOMA recently hosted a symposium, “Is Photography Over?” Refreshingly, its website published the panelists’ statements and created a forum to extend the conversation and draw in more voices (W.J.T. Mitchell wrote, “I am a little grumpy about the premise of this symposium.”) In the Chronicle, critic Kenneth [...]
13 May 2010 | Books, Conferences
In a recent issue of Art Documentation (28:2), Maureen Whalen warns that Many studies have been conducted about the ill effects of being on the ‘wrong’ side of the digital divide. In the field of art history, it appears that the fetish for the printed book and a reluctance to incorporate digital technologies into the [...]
Also in the April 2010 Art Newspaper, Christopher Riopelle considers Susan Siegfried’s Ingres: Painting Reimagined: The past 15 years or so have been something of a golden age for Ingres studies. The central role that David played a generation ago in studies of the heroic origins of modern art has faded somewhat as scholars now [...]
