Art is neither created nor viewed in a vacuum. It is this notion perhaps that helped to inspire Vincent Bouvet and Gérard Durozoi in the organization of their recent book Paris Between the Wars 1919-1939: Art, Life and Culture. Bouvet and Durozoi’s effectively chosen subtitle prepares the reader to view the arts of the period in a set of wider contexts. With chapters discussing daily life in Paris, the history and experiences of this city, and the influential position held by the decorative arts, the authors subtly and effectively reframe their view of artistic life in this often-studied time and place. Tellingly, painting and sculpture are addressed together in the fifth chapter of the book, preceded by the chapters described above as well as “The World of Fashion.” With following chapters that discuss photography, film, advertising, literature, and music, readers are left with a strong understating of the cross-pollination endemic of artistic production in 1920s and 1930s Paris.

Nonetheless there are moments when the purpose of this inclusiveness is not entirely clear. Bouvet’s chapter “The City of Light” provides an overview of major infrastructure and civic development projects undertaken in Paris in the years after World War I. Each of these projects is treated briefly, as one might expect given the scope this book. Unfortunately what they meant for the development of the arts in Paris remains unclear. For example, Bouvet’s analysis of public transport in Paris discusses new motorways, the availability of air travel, and the development of Paris’ tram system. How did this mobility affect the production, display, or sale of art? Did it serve as a subject for art, or alter the consciousness of artists, or their sense of modernity? Certainly this new public mobility had effects on the lives of artists. Here, as in other areas, Bouvet and Durozoi have suggested areas of potential influence on the arts that may be further explored in more focused studies.

The second guiding principle of the book is to include an abundance of relevant, high quality images. Far from making the study into a picture-book, the images reproduced throughout the text serve to frame, inform, and illustrate the text quite effectively. For example, two color photographs of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriel Modernes are displayed on pages 106 and 107. The photograph on page 106 shows the Porte d’Orsay entrance to the Exposition on what appears to be a quiet day. A few blurry figures stand near the entrance, while the sharply angled lighting and scattered leaves suggest early autumn. The entrance gate is overshadowed by a large decorative panel that is about 60 feet tall and decorated in a Cubist style. The image in this panel is composed of six figures arranged vertically, each representing one of the modes of art on display in the Exposition. The impressive scale of this entrance helps to underscore the powerful role that the 1925 Exposition has played in the development of both decorative and fine arts. Printed on page 107 is a color photograph showing two of the department store pavilions from the Exposition.  The distinctively Art Deco architecture and signage is familiarized by the green of the grass, blue tones in the sky, and sharp red fence demarcating space in the left background. That color photographs of high descriptive value survive at all from the 1925 Expo is remarkable. In the context of Bouvet’s chapter on the decorative arts, they help to bring the artistic experience described by the author closer to reality.

One of the great joys of studying history is the thrill of imagining living and operating in a different time and place. Though not often discussed by historians, this imaginary process is a great reward of deep archival and scholarly research. In the hands of Bouvet and Durozoi the reader’s imaginary experience is quite strong, supported by the numerous and descriptive images, and the ambiance of the everyday. Rich in quality images, thoughtfully organized, and lucidly written, Bouvet and Durozoi’s addition to the vast literature on Les Années folles is directed primarily at readers who are fairly new to its subject. Nonetheless I suspect that those who have studied the arts of the period will benefit from this text, and find its carefully selected images and broad overview of the experience of artistic Paris in the 1920s and 1930s rewarding.

Rooted in the discovery of thousands of snapshots in Edouard Vuillard’s family archive, the exhibition shows Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Henri Rivière Félix Vallotton as well as Dutch painter George Hendrik Breitner and Belgian Henri Evenepoel to have been swept up in the craze for handheld cameras that seized the United States and Europe after the invention of the Kodak by George Eastman in 1888. By pairing over 200 of these photographs with 70 paintings, prints and drawings, “Snapshot” forces us to see the work of these artists through their respective engagements with photography.

Though visually exhausting, the sheer number of photos in the show conveys the explosion of images brought by the Kodak, and makes palpable the atmosphere of technological novelty. Aimed at cultivating a mass amateur market, Kodak cameras became a phenomenon in the 1890s by making everyday life a subject for photography. Marketed with the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest”, the Kodak freed consumers of the need for technical or aesthetic aptitude. Within reach of the middle-class consumer, the box cameras came loaded with a 100-exposure roll, and could be sent to a processing facility where the negatives were developed, the camera reloaded and mailed back to the owner. Indeed these devices seemed designed to prevent deliberate composition: held at the waist, the operator could only approximate the frame and focus through a distant viewfinder. As Clément Chéroux argues in the catalogue, the Nabis were not among the amateurs of the fin de siècle who formed photo-clubs and considered photography a hobby. Rather, these were photo-dilettantes who engaged in visual notetaking of daily life and social gatherings, comparable to today’s Facebook mobile uploads.

This artlessness would seem to place the snapshot at an almost inconceivable distance from the virtuosic manipulation of pigment and surface texture that, giving rise to indeterminate spatial and psychological scenarios, creates an almost synaesthetic effect in the paintings of Bonnard and Vuillard. However by highlighting the snapshot’s contingencies of space, cropping, shadow and depth of field, as well as the intimate subject matter brought into view, we are given the sense that around century’s end photography had permeated these painters’ visual awareness in subtle and elusive ways. For instance Nude in an Interior (c. 1935) is a shimmering image of Marthe at her bath that displays Bonnard’s anguishing ability to emanate light from within his paintings. It bears a resemblance to the photograph of Marthe in a similar pose and setting hanging next to it, and we think that we have arrived at the source. However the snapshot, Marthe in the Bathtub, Vernouillet, was taken in 1910, and predates the painting by twenty-five years. In the case of Bonnard, who lost interest in photography in 1916, the snapshot seems to have been a brief preoccupation with questionable authority over the chromatic and spatial investigations that he sustained into the middle of the last century.

Relationships between painted and photographic images are conjured and troubled throughout the exhibition. Vuillard’s Child Playing: Annette in Front of a Wooden Chair (1900) is emblematic of his signature conflation of the subject’s absorptive experience with a patterned interior. Its relation to the strikingly similar snapshot hanging next to it of a boy sitting in a room draped with correspondingly decorative arabesques seems clear, but the photograph was taken by Evenopoel – the Belgian who was included in the exhibition because of his thematic and stylistic convergence with the Nabis.

The final room presents the highlight of the exhibition: a suite of paintings by Vuillard paired with snapshots from the cache discovered in his family archive. Even here, the relationship between his camerawork and painted interiors is mostly a matter of conjecture. In a series of lively snapshots Misia Natanson – wife of Revue blanche editor Thalée Natanson– mugs for and returns Vuillard’s plainly infatuated gaze. However, in the corresponding painting, In Front of the Tapestry: Misia and Thalée Natanson, Rue St. Florentin (1899), her face is obscured and turned away from view. Thalée’s hand likewise covers his face, and the two figures merge into a muted decorative scheme that belies the emotionally fraught scenario. The famous Interior with Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893) creates a spatial and psychological claustrophobia that is echoed in the surrounding snapshots of Vuillard’s family apartment, yet the painting predates Vuillard’s engagement with photography by two years. Can it be argued that photography affected Vuillard’s painting before he owned a camera?

The Nabis are often associated with a hermetic retreat from the disruptions of modern life into an aesthetics of bourgeois interiority. Recently, T.J. Clark has held up this aestheticism as an alternative to the 20th century’s legacy of avant-garde negation. By conjuring “a sense of what the aesthetic existence keeps at bay”, Clark writes “Bonnard’s art, in its privacy and privation, internalizes the disaster of the twentieth century in a way that all forms of ‘modern’ fellow-travelling – even the noblest and most well-meaning – to my mind fail to do. Retreat and dream, in other words, are a necessary moment of the art of the last hundred years.” However the comparison that “Snapshot” solicits with the circulation of images in present-day forms of social media suggests that, beginning with the Kodak, this aestheticist retreat was becoming less and less possible, and that one could not return to a form of painting that was unaware of photography. The snapshot, as Douglas Nickel writes, changed “the way people regarded their own histories…the way lives were lived became entangled in the way lives were represented. A modern society of the spectacle was taking shape.”

Could these artists have been aware of the historical implications of this vast expansion of image production at the end of the 19th century? The tension in “Snapshot” between handmade and mechanical images gives a sense that the stakes for art were becoming clear. Though they thrilled to the snapshot in life, the ambivalence of the Nabis’ painted response anticipates Walter Benjamin’s judgment of 1931: “the amateur who returns home with great piles of artistic shots is in fact no more appealing a figure than the hunter who comes back with quantities of game that is useless to anyone but the merchant. And the day does indeed seem to be at hand when there will be more illustrated magazines than game merchants. So much for the snapshot.”

Wednesday, February 22

I took a flight from JFK at the crack of dawn, to arrive in time for “The Challenge of Nazi Art.” This was the only panel, other than my own, that I attended from start to finish. The opening remarks by Christian Fuhrmeister made it clear that the organizers wanted to open a dialogue about something that art historians have found it almost impossible to discuss, something I have also struggled with as a scholar of Weimar-era photography and exhibition culture. I was particularly drawn in by Despina Stratigakos’s visual evidence of how domestic design was pitched to young Nazi couples, and that what we think of “modernism” still seeped into much of that design, eliminating an easy bifurcation. Former CAA president Paul Jaskot, a great, natural speaker, spoke about the concept of “banality” and the need for art historical analysis of the era’s cultural products. More provocative questioners may have been intimidated by the largeness of the (double) room, but all in all it was a highly thought-provoking panel.

Thursday, February 23

Packed day. I spoke first thing in the morning, about “Radical Photo Spaces” at a session called “The Other Histories of Photography: The First 100 Years.” I thought our turnout was impressive, considering the time and that we were unfortunately competing with another session on photography (“Photographic Practices in Latin America”) and a video/film themed session that I was pining for (“Mobile Spectatorship”). I enjoyed going last: I think it’s a law of physics that you get the most questions—when I spoke in Chicago two years ago I went second-to-last and got zero questions! But the crowd was clearly interested in one of the main points of the session as a whole, which was how to bring attention to alternative photo practices that have been left out of the canon, and whether that can directly impact how photography is shown in museums now. Consensus seemed to be: yes, but it still doesn’t happen often enough. It’s always invigorating when the historical feels relevant to the audience.

After lunch I finally got to “curate” a time slot for myself, 2:30-5. I started at the standing-room-only Distinguished Scholar Session honoring Rosalind Krauss. Bois did an affectionate opening, and I stayed for Harry Cooper, which I loved, to hear how a practicing curator was influenced by her scholarship, particularly on sculpture. Then I exited to support a former peer of mine from the CUNY Graduate Center, Cary Levine, who was speaking about Pettibon and hardcore punk in a session called “Towards a Rock and Roll History of Contemporary Art” which sounded almost too cool, but Cary did a great job of integrating Pettibon’s subversive Zine imagery with the music of California punkers Black Flag. It brought back memories of my childhood in San Diego in the 1980s when more sophisticated kids were wearing those T-shirts in seventh grade while I still thought “punk” was a playground slur. Although pretty beat, I finished at the HGCEA session (Historians of German and Central European Art) to show fealty, as a member to an organization co-founded by my dissertation advisor, Rose-Carol Washton Long. And speaking of HGCEA, there was a super-cool dinner for members that same evening on the top floor of a downtown theater space, a space so raw that it looked like someone had just torn down some scenery from the walls. Very hip for HGCEA!

Friday, February 24

The morning session was another case of me bopping around. I went to “Live Forever: Performance Art in the Changing Museum Culture” and watched Pablo Helguera, the first speaker, upend the normal mode of speaking from the podium, which was mesmerizing. He engaged with an historical topic (why a preponderance of creative minds all came from a particular small town in Mexico) but turned all the lights off, put a spotlight on himself, and spoke in the middle of the room— a performance-paper hybrid. Kudos to him for thinking outside the box (throughout the conference he also took part in graduate-seminar style gatherings that were open to the public, another very cool way to push for feedback through new models of learning). I made brief stops at “The Modern Gesamtkunstwerk” and the Radical Art Caucus session, before moving on to my shift at the Book Fair table of the Women’s Art Caucus, to try to sell copies of my now-in-paperback The New Woman International, co-edited with Elizabeth Otto. People were not in heavy-duty buying mode, but many flyers and review copies were distributed, which is always a good thing, and these tables become places to discourse with long-lost friends. Once our shift was over at 1pm, I noticed another publication table giving away free food and drink, and ran into grad school classmates who had scattered across the country. That evening my husband, daughter and I met up with my cousin JD Walsh who is now a television actor and director, so we really had the whole breadth of the LA experience, not least of which was staying at the Biltmore, the most glamorous convention hotel ever.

Saturday, February 25

I only attended morning sessions so that we could take my daughter to Disneyland. I was particularly enthused by Kim Sichel’s paper in Jordana Mendelson’s session, “The 1930s,” where she focused on Brassaï’s book Paris de nuit. All forms of alternative (meaning outside canonical museum presentation) photography circulation fascinate me at the moment, including those in books, and Sichel showed Brassaï’s images as they appeared in the original publication, with full bleeds, even spilling over onto the steel spirals—gorgeous. In keeping with my attempt to see as many diverse photo-based papers as possible, I made a last minute dip-in to “Pop and Politics, Part II” to hear Martin Berger talk about Warhol’s Race Riots. This session proved to me that yes, going to CAA can be important to reinvigorate old talking points in lectures to our students. I use Race Riots routinely in my history of photo lectures but I had never closely contemplated the contemporaneous meaning of the word “Riot” before: that although Warhol seems sympathetic to the protesters in his images, the use of the word “Riot” was actually considered quite incendiary and helpful to the anti-protester position. So the images are, at best, ambivalent. Thank you Martin Berger!

All in all, I would say it was a most stimulating CAA, although I have heard some differ. Maybe I got into it because, as a colleague said to me, it was “a great CAA for Germanists.” But mostly I think it fulfilled what we should expect from these gatherings: new ideas, old friends, and a reminder of why we do what we do.

The sessions I’ve visited thus far have been largely interesting, with some presenters generating more enthusiasm than others. “Deconstructing Costume Histories: Rereading Identities in Fashion Collections and Exhibitions” was highly informative, offering new research from several experts from academia and museums. “Who Do We Teach: Challenges and Strategies in Recognizing Our Students, and Developing and Supporting Curriculum for Multiple Constituencies” offered some interesting perspective on pedagogy, but seemed to not line up well with the expectations produced by the title. Focus was placed not on who students are, but on how certain professors deal with their own expectations of students. Several interesting and relevant questions were produced by audience members regarding how instructors and professors might apply the theories presented to their own practice. The responses seemed highly personal and largely unsatisfying for the audience, suggesting the session successfully identified an area of need, but failed to adequately address that need.

“The Other Histories of Photography: The First One Hundred Years” was comprised of five papers exploring the margins of the field, often with surprising results. In particular Melody D. Davis’ exploration of the positions and operations of stereography in 19^th century culture, and 20^th century historiography, was both enlightening and instructive. Davis’ enthusiasm and expertise effectively brought her subject to life, illustrating it’s history and relevance.  “Technology in the Art History Classroom: A Hands-On Learning Workshop” was an informative workshop offering participant the opportunity to learn briefly about four web-based pedagogical tools, followed by a more in-depth exploration of one particular tool of the participant’s choice. I appreciated the practical applications and solutions offered which helped to concretize and contextualize much of the more theoretical content of the conference.

On that theoretical note, “The Theoretical Turn”, a special session honoring the work of Rosalind Krauss, sought to elucidate Krauss’ influence on other scholars and professionals in art history. Presenters spoke about the effects that Krauss’ work has on them both personally and professionally. Yve-Alain Bois’ introduction neatly summarized the effects of Krauss’ work on his own career, and subsequent speakers elucidated their particular relationships with her work. After hearing these stories, the vast network of Krauss’ influence began to crystallize more clearly, and I appreciated hearing how various scholars have uniquely incorporated her work into their own practice.

On a practical note, the Los Angeles Convention Center could be much more visitor friendly. The lack of food options is surprising, and the existing options are reminiscent of the food one typically finds at a zoo. A few of the temporary walls dividing larger rooms have been found to be insufficient at isolating noise from neighboring sessions. Most of the sessions I visited were not more that half full, implying that smaller rooms would have been more practical and might have fostered greater discussion and debate. Of course, this may be a reflection of my own interests and choices of sessions.

Wendy A. Grossman’s thoroughly researched and lucidly written exhibition catalog Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens effectively reveals the process “by which African objects, formerly considered ethnographic specimens, came to be perceived as Modern art in the West” (XII). Photography and Man Ray are both at the center of this process, and given the wide range of interest which converges in the catalog, it will be of great interest to a variety of readers. At the core of the catalog is the argument that the photographs by Man Ray and other photographers of African art objects from the early twentieth century are anything but neutral. Grossman demonstrates that these photographs, in fact, not only serve to elevate the objects photographed from the status of ethnographic artifact to art object, but also to incorporate elements of those objects into the aesthetic and conceptual discourses of Modernism.

One of the most impressive aspects of the catalog is the way in which it is positioned to appeal to a spectrum of readers. For scholars of Man Ray or Modernist Primitivism it is required reading, offering exciting new research into little-explored aspects of these fields. For students of these topics or those with casual interest, Grossman provides concise contextual histories near the beginnings of most chapters which serve to ground the reader in the topic at hand. Several sidebars serve to illuminate aspects of the project not directly explored in the text proper, such as Charles Sheeler’s photographic album of the John Quinn collection, and Man Ray’s cover image for Henry Crowder’s book Henri Music which featured a photomontage of African objects. A “Concordance of African Objects” follows main text, providing substantial context on the African objects themselves and adding yet another dimension to the catalog.

The catalog is organized thematically and largely chronologically, with the first two chapters discussing the relationships between American modernism and African art, and the context for Man Ray’s interest in “primitivism” in his early career. In the following chapters, specific episodes of Man Ray’s work involving African art are discussed in detail. Underlying much of Grossman’s analysis is the contention that the production of meaning in Man Ray’s photographs is based more on their context than any other factor. Given that Man Ray’s work was visible in such a variety of contexts, and to a variety of audiences, this important point is often absent in analyses of his photographs, as Grossman points out.

In her final chapter, Grossman discusses several of Man Ray’s fashion photographs that contain African objects. Here she makes a compelling case for Man Ray’s work as a vital link between the Modernist Primitivism of the avant-garde and trends in fashion and illustration that make use of African art. Others have noted that this final chapter is perhaps less resolved than the others, and may seem a surprising choice with which to end the catalog[1]. I however tend to agree with some that Grossman’s last chapter effectively opens up the topic to further investigation either by Grossman or another scholar.[2]

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art May 21-September 6

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories

Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco May 12-September 6

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

De Young Museum, San Francisco June 11 – October 9

What is an art exhibition for? Two opposing answers to this question are presented concurrently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the De Young Museum. At both exhibitions viewers will find many impressive and historically important works by canonical artists. At SFMoMA, viewers will find these works organized into a narrative structure that adds layers of meaning to the works and help viewers see them as more than isolated objects.

Having attended the curator panel discussion accompanying the opening of The Steins Collect, I was well prepared to appreciate the exhibition’s curatorial mission. Works purchased by primarily Gertrude and Leo Stein are organized according to the addresses where the collectors lived at the time. Not only does this form an essentially chronological view of the development of Picasso and Matisse’s paintings between the first decade of the 20^th century and World War II, it also helps the viewer see the pictures in roughly the same groupings in which they were displayed at the Stein residences. Large reproductions of period photographs are impressive not only for the amount of information that they contain, but also for the additional context that they provide. Some of the actual furniture pieces displayed in the photographs have been lent for the exhibition, helping to bridge the contemporary world of the modern art museum and the past represented in the photographs. If any part of the exhibition seems out of place, it is the room dedicated to the home built by Le Corbusier for Michael and Sarah Stein in 1926, Villa Stein-De Monzie. Films, photographs, and original drawings for the project are on display. The drawings by Le Corbusier display a delicate balance of meticulous draftsmanship and artful design, making them worthy of viewing for their own sake. That the viewer is presented with representations of the commissioned work strikes a contrast with the many canvases on display, notwithstanding the awkward notion of the commissioned house as part of the art collection. Nonetheless, by the end of The Steins Collect, viewers will not only have seen dozens of major works by icons of Modern Art, but will also have gained substantial insights into the lives and motivations of this highly influential family of collectors.

More of these insights are available one block away at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories is on display. Less about her art collection and more about her relationships, the photographs are the stars of this show. The title of the exhibition is apt, as much of the viewer’s experience involves looking at images of Gertrude and her companions. These images are informative and entertaining, and create a strong sense of the attitudes, beliefs, and interactions of Stein and her circle. As is typically the case at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the exhibition layout, wall texts, and overall exhibition design each help to achieve the goals of the exhibition. Though Seeing Gertrude Stein may lack the artistic firepower of The Steins Collect, the exhibition is nonetheless a rewarding experience for viewers with an interest in Stein herself or the period in general.

While the exhibitions at SFMoMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum are decidedly educational experiences, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the De Young Museum feels like a gallery show by comparison. Over one hundred chronologically arranged works by Picasso are on loan from the Musée National Picasso, Paris, which favors the second half of the artist’s long career. After an initial wall panel introducing the artist and describing the genesis of the museum from which the works come, the only supporting texts are short quotes from the artist placed high on the walls that do little to explain the artist’s motivations, inspirations, goals, or methods. Though I did not utilize the audio guide for this exhibition, other viewers have described the commentary as adding little to their understanding of the artworks. Despite the exhibition’s lack of educational or curatorial mission, it provides Bay Area viewers with the opportunity to see works by Picasso that normally require a trip to Paris. Furthermore, though it may seem hastily constructed compared to the show at SFMoMA, any viewer with an interest in Picasso will find reasons to appreciate the De Young show. Some viewers may even appreciate the lack of a strong curatorial mission, which they may see as heavy-handed or intrusive. This viewer, however, believes that art exhibitions are at their best when they present and support a compelling thesis that serves not only to entertain the viewing audience, but to educate us as well.

Fabienne Cherisma is a fifteen-year-old Haitian adolescent. She escaped the tragic earthquake. But Fabienne happened to be among the ruins when she received three bullets to the head from Haitian police trying to disperse looters. This photo by Paul Hansen won best photo of the year in Sweden. One can easily see why. The photo offers a gripping image of the death of an innocent child, and of the desperation and human tragedy at the heart of natural catastrophe. But this other photo has provoked controversy. It goes behind the camera [to show seven photojournalists crowded around her] and the perspective it suggests may be even more depressing.

An Americanist in Paris, François Brunet combines the best of both worlds. It is indeed extremely rare to discover a book that has such a profound knowledge of the Continental as well as the Anglo-Saxon traditions and history … There exist quite a number of excellent publications on literature and photography … yet the approach defended by François Brunet innovates the field dramatically. First of all, he argues [against the idea that] literature defined the stakes of photography … [Here] it is photography that appears as a dominating medium …

A second important innovation [is] put forward … [T]he relationship between two media tends to be reduced to the linear interaction between specific ‘sources’ and ‘targets’ … [Brunet] attempts to evaluate the shifting relationships between media at the level of social meanings attributed to each medium …

A third methodological dimension of Brunet’s approach is an attractive variation on the notion of photography’s expanded field … Brunet’s definition of what a ‘discourse’ is exceeds by all means the set of titles, captions, critical comments and other accompanying texts that may surround or come with the photograph itself. What he discloses is the fact that photography is sometimes less a visual object than the object of a social and critical discussion that takes it as its pretext.

• In the Economist, reviews of Eadweard Muybridge at the Tate, and Bronzino at the Palazzo Strossi.
• In the FT, Jackie Wullschlager on four books on Caravaggio (Strinati, Fried, Graham-Dixon, Schütze).
• At the NYRBlog, a teaser of Willibald Sauerländer’s article on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.
• In the Guardian, Rosemary Hill on the pre-Raphaelites and Italy at the Ashmolean, and Alan Hollinghurst on Gauguin at Tate Modern.
• James Elkins debuts a column at the Huffington Post, with an installment on Mondrian.*
• In the NYT, Janet Maslin reviews R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life (Knopf).
• At BadAtSports, a podcast with Elkins on “Beyond the Aesthetic and Anti-Aesthetic.”
• At SpiegelOnline, a review of Thorsten Klapsch’s book on Berlin’s Palast der Republik.

* This is the single best use of the internet public sphere to communicate disciplinary expertise that I have seen. The HP is a general-interest publication, but the topic of this column isn’t simply criticism, still less auction price/scandal/etc. Rather, it is a (brief) piece of serious, detailed analysis with excellent illustrations. I hope HP readers will be tempted to click away from the slide shows on Bristol Palin, Miley Cyrus and Minka Kelly, and over to Elkins.

• “Art and its mediums,” a set of links from Bookforum
• Alex Danchev reviews Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio (THE)
• Jeffrey Hamburger and Anthony Grafton, “Save the Warburg Library!” (NYRB)
• Rebecca Solnit and Peter Conrad on Eadweard Muybridge at Tate Britain (The Guardian)
• Tom L. Freudenheim on German Master Drawings at the National Gallery (WSJ)
• Bill Brubaker, “In Haiti, the Art of Resilience” (Smithsonian); also, “Art After the Quake,” a slideshow of works by Haitian artists (New Yorker)
• Hilton Als, Angus Cook and Peter Doig, “Discovering the Art of Boscoe Holder, Trinidadian Master,” (NYRB)
• Edmund White reviews Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg at the National Gallery (NYRB), and Richard B. Woodward reviews Dennis Hopper: Double Standard at L.A. MoCA (WSJ)
• Daniel Siedell on Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct (Books & Culture)
• George Johnson reviews Craig Childs, Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (NYT)
• Michael Dirda reviews Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss (WP), on a particularly poignant netsuke collection