8 May 2007 | Books, Renaissance
Also in the April 2007 Burlington Magazine, Deborah Howard reviews Manfredo Tafuri’s Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects: “First published in Italian as Ricerca del Rinascimento: Principi, città, architetti (Turin, 1992), this was the last book written by Manfredo Tafuri before his untimely death in 1994. Dense and complex in its arguments, it has not [...]
In the April 2007 Burlington Magazine Susan Woodford reviews John Boardman’s The World of Ancient Art, which she calls an “impressive enterprise”: “Boardman’s basic tenet is that there are common human responses to common problems, and these responses to the environment are what shaped civilisations in Antiquity. He acknowledges that this view is already a [...]
30 April 2007 | Books, Journals
We belatedly take note of the special issue of Art History (28: 5) devoted to art historian Stephen Bann, which has been published in book form. Editor Deborah Cherry highlights Bann’s concern “to create a dialogue between ‘present thinking about history’ and the ‘new codes of historical awareness that were established in the nineteenth century’ [...]
27 April 2007 | Books, Contemporary
At least one prominent art historian believes that “our leading sculptor, male or female, in the United States today is by all odds Louise Bourgeois.” We read that “In October 2007 Tate Modern presents the first major survey since 1995 of the work of the French-born artist Louise Bourgeois.” (According to Artnet, the show will [...]
25 April 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
In CAA Reviews, John Beldon Scott considers Evonne Levy’s Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque: “Evonne Levy argues that art historians peremptorily dismiss totalitarian art because we judge it to be mere propaganda and therefore not worthy of consideration. Asserting that there is no such thing as ‘mere propaganda,’ her provocative and insightful book on the [...]
In the March-April 2007 Acta Fabula, Marianna Marino reviews the essay collection Puissances de l’image: “As its title indicates, Puissances de l’image considers the multiple forms that iconic power can take. It prefers puissance to pouvoir, puissance being tied more closely to notions of virtuality and possibility. (It collects studies presented at the 2nd International [...]
12 April 2007 | Books, Museums
Is it possible to publish 300+ pages on a theme such as “Venice and the Islamic World: 828-1797″ without once footnoting Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism? Is it even possible for scholars, post-Said, to speak of “the Islamic world: 828-1797″? (Imagine a show titled “Baghdad and the Christian World.”) Apparently it is. This exhibition catalogue [...]
In the Fall/Winter 2006 Woman’s Art Journal, Ute L. Tellini reviews Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, which was edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard: “The problem, the editors state in the introduction to their latest volume, is that postmodernism, grounded in the masculinist principles of Freud, Lacan, and Saussure, benefited [...]
8 March 2007 | Ancient, Books, Modern, Theory
Numerous engaging book reviews can be found in the November 2006 issue of Art History (reviews editor Liz James). On John Henderson’s The Triumph of Art at Thorvaldsens Museum: ‘Løve’ in Copenhagen, writes: “Which of us, nowadays, would dare to declare our love for a monument as the motive for a scholarly study? John Henderson [...]
7 March 2007 | Books
The Winter 2006 issue of Art Journal contains a special section on “Publishing Paradigms in Art History,” which includes a transcript of a panel discussion that took place recently at the Clark Art Institute. A couple highlights: UC Santa Cruz professor Catherine M. Soussloff: “Art history is in transition and has been for a long [...]
2 March 2007 | Ancient, Books, Contemporary
The December 2006 issue of Antiquity includes a review by Leo S. Klejn of Colin Renfrew’s Figuring It Out, followed by a reply from Renfrew. Klejn: “[Renfrew's book] is a remarkable phenomenon both in art criticism and archaeology. He poses the eternal questions (what are we? where do we come from?) and hopes to figure [...]
1 March 2007 | Architecture, Books
In the most recent Bulletin Monumental (Tome 164-3), Patrick Ponsot reviews two recent books from France on the restoration and adaptation of architectural monuments: “The ‘theoretical essay’ that introduces [Dominique Rouillard's Architectures contemporaines et monuments historiques] sets out to give a clear overview of state practices of the last 25 years. The brilliant and admittedly [...]
28 February 2007 | Books, Journals, Theory
In the Autumn 2006 issue of Critique d’Art, Bruno-Nassim Aboudrar rejoices that “at least three recent books attest to the new awareness on the part of art history of the theoretical challenges of its object or — which comes to more or less the same thing — attest to a reconciliation-in-progress between art history and [...]
27 February 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
In the Feb. 2007 Artforum, Arthur Danto reviews T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, which Clark wrote after spending half a year before two Poussin paintings: “all this is pure association, and it is a pretty meager havest for six months of intense looking … the experiment ought not to have just awakened personal associations, [...]
22 February 2007 | Books, Renaissance
David Landau reviews the first volume of Giovanni Agosti’s Su Mantegna in the Dec. 2006 Print Quarterly: “This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. For a long time we have felt the need for a reassessment of Mantegna … Agosti has done this and more: he has developed our understanding of [...]
6 February 2007 | Books
Following Nicholas Penny’s review of three new volumes in the London Review of Books, he and Thomas Crow have mailed in dueling letters to the editor. Crow: “Nicholas Penny’s assertion that the ‘elite academics’ invited by the Getty Research Institute ‘rarely have any interest in the museum’ (LRB, 4 January) represents the fundamental premise of [...]
2 February 2007 | Ancient, Books
Henri Meschonic recently published Le Nom de notre ignorance, la Dame d’Auxerre, a short book on a Greek statue at the Louvre. Dumitra Baron reviews the book in Acta Fabula: “How can an artwork speak to us, what can it transmit to us, what are the relationships between language and art, in what way can [...]
29 January 2007 | Books, Contemporary
“Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice” assembles essays (some already published elsewhere) by James Elkins, Thomas McEvilley, Jerry Saltz, Katy Siegel, Lane Relyea, Arthur C. Danto, JJ Charlesworth, Nancy Princenthal, Carter Ratcliff, Eleanor Heartney, Michael Duncan, Peter Plagens, and Raphael Rubinstein, the anthology’s editor. In his introduction, he writes: “The mess [...]
24 January 2007 | Books, Contemporary
From the press release: “London’s famous Whitechapel Gallery and the MIT Press announce a new series, Documents of Contemporary Art. Each volume will cover a single theme, practice, or obsession central to contemporary visual culture … selecting writings that range from foundational texts to freshly made arguments … The first two volumes in the series [...]
22 January 2007 | Books, Contemporary
In the December 2006 Art Bulletin, James Meyer celebrates Pamela M. Lee’s Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s: “The narrative style … is dazzlingly associative … [it] enlists all manner of sources and evidence to make its case … that Chronophobia opens up more questions than it is able to answer is [...]
