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 [...]
12 May 2010 | Books, Modern, Renaissance, Theory
I am fascinated by the systems through which art is deemed legitimate, and I taught a course on fakes and frauds this past January. The premise was that we can learn about how art is produced, controlled, and valued by focusing on taboo objects. Sometimes such scrutiny will result in a reattribution, such as the one [...]
6 May 2010 | Architecture, Theory
Robert Hewison’s Ruskin on Venice has been reviewed by Steve Donoghue, Jonathan Glancey, Jonathan Wright, and Kevin Jackson. The productive tension between Ruskin’s Protestant moral sense, and his sensual affection for the visual arts, resulted in a distinctive prose variously termed “idiosyncratic,” “incomparable,” “magnificent,” and “gorgeous, insanely overwrought.”
30 April 2010 | Conferences, Theory
From Idearte: The third annual Glasgow Colloquium on Art Historiography will be held in the Institute for Art History of the University of Glasgow 25th – 27th November 2010. Papers lasting 20 minutes are invited on formative moments, movements, institutions and individuals in accordance with the mission statement of the Journal of Art Historiography.
16 April 2010 | Career, Conferences, Museums, Theory
Symposium: November 12–14, 2010 Banff International Curatorial Institute The Banff Centre Deadline: April 23, 2010 For information: http://bit.ly/c8d3b2
9 April 2010 | Asia, Books, Islamic, Theory
From the introduction of Finbarr Barry Flood’s recently published book Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ Encounter (Princeton, 2009): … I am aware of the paradox inherent in adopting linguistic models for a book that champions the value of material culture. I am also aware that, in doing so, I am to some [...]
5 April 2010 | Theory
In the Brooklyn Rail, Sasha Suda interviewed Willibald Sauerländer: … the time will come when you study the art of the other civilizations with equal right as European art. With the global art world there’s one difficulty I spoke with [Hans] Belting about: In a deep structural sense art history was a European project because [...]
In caa.reviews, Kjell Wangensteen considers Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting, a new book by David Summers: In contrast to the vast scope (and scale) of his 2003 book Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (New York: Phaidon), David Summers has dramatically focused his investigation in his newest volume, [...]
We recently discovered the scholarly book review Metapsychology which covers a fair number of art-related books. Recently reviewed: Art/Porn, A History of Seeing and Touching, by Kelly Dennis. “This is an unusual book, far removed from the writings of conventional art historians whom the author dubs ‘patriarchal’. She is anxious to make clear that hers [...]
23 February 2010 | Conferences, Theory
From Artforum.com: IN HINDSIGHT, I suppose it was inevitable that this year’s SITAC would be controversial. Titled “Blind Spots,” the eighth edition of the annual art-theory conference in Mexico City was organized by Americas Society’s visual-arts director Gabriela Rangel and dedicated to “an analysis of radical discourses and practices such as feminism, cinema, and performance [...]
7 January 2010 | Journals, Theory
We welcome the launch of a new publication, the Journal of Art Historiography, whose first issue is devoted to Viennese and German art historiography. From its mission statement: There is a double danger that contemporary scholarship will forget its earlier legacy and that it will neglect the urgency and rigour with which those early debates [...]
4 January 2010 | Books, Theory
Francis Halsall, Julia Jansen, and Tony O’Connor have recently published a new edited volume Rediscovering Aesthetics that brings together prominent international voices from art history, philosophy, and artistic practice to discuss the current role of aesthetics within and across their disciplines. Following a period in which theories and histories of art, art criticism, and artistic [...]
15 October 2009 | Theory
We belatedly take note of a new online journal, Republics of Letters, a “peer-reviewed, open-access publication [that] is dedicated to the study of knowledge, politics, and the arts, from Antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the early modern period … sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL) of Stanford University.” [...]
15 May 2009 | Conferences, Theory
Patrick Harrison reports on the recent conference, “On the Idea of Communism,” in n+1: … Nearly the entire emerging canon of (mostly male) contemporary Continental philosophers—including Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Rancière, [Terry] Eagleton, and Antonio Negri, [Michael] Hardt’s mentor and collaborator … joined Hardt at the conference … [Hardt's] intellectual performance came straight out [...]
A second edition has just been published of Donald Preziosi’s The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, which first appeared in 1998. The new edition compensates for its slightly slimmer profile with more densely packed type. The price has risen from $18.95 (in 1998) to $27.95. The sections on “Modernity and its Discontents” and [...]
In the March 2009 issue of the Burlington Magazine, Elisa de Halleux reviews Georges Didi-Huberman’s new essay collection L’image ouverte. Motifs de l’incarnation dans les arts visuels: Didi-Huberman takes representations of the body and the flesh as a means to dwell on the spectator’s intimate relationship with the image, and to describe the nature of [...]
2 April 2009 | Theory
In the Jan/Feb ‘09 Architectural Design, guest editor Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi writes on and interviews Yves Michaud: In 2003, Yves Michaud wrote a book that met with considerable success in France. In L’art à l’état gazeux. Essai sur le triomphe de l’esthétique he claims that it is now almost impossible to identify a demaracation line [...]
17 February 2009 | Books, Theory
It’s the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and numerous authors are publishing books that review and extend his work, including philosopher Denis Dutton, who has written The Art Instinct. In Bookforum historian Rochelle Gurstein writes: Denis Dutton is a man with a mission: Against cultural anthropologists, art historians, critics, and aestheticians who have advanced the [...]
16 February 2009 | Theory
Partha Mitter, author of The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947 and Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922, kicks off the latest Art Bulletin “intervention,” “Decentering Modernism,” in the December 2008 issue, with another critique of the four-year-old Foster/Krauss/Bois/Buchloh survey, Art Since 1900: … the last two decades have witnessed serious [...]
10 February 2009 | Theory
In caa.reviews, Charles G. Salas reviews Victor I. Stoichita’s The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock: Stoichita shows that simulacra are not quite the alien threat some think they are. It turns out that we have been living with them all along, albeit without attending to them much … The framework of this book would [...]
