8 January 2007 | Books, Photography
In CAA Reviews, Martha Langford considers Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance: “Rumors of a tight relationship between photography and memory have been circulating since the nineteenth century, despite the many objections raised in both scholarly and fanciful works. A feature of these attacks is the prosecutor’s reluctance to produce evidence … we [...]
7 December 2006 | Books
The Art Newspaper reports: “In a move which could transform art publishing, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) is to drop charges for the reproduction of images in scholarly books and magazines.” It states that “The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images [...]
5 December 2006 | Books, Renaissance
Reviewing James R. Banker’s The Culture of San Sepolcro during the Youth of Piero della Francesca and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin’s Piero della Francesca, Frank Dabell writes: “Both these books are welcome; and for this reviewer, at least, there can never be enough material about Piero della Francesca if it helps draw us nearer to understanding [...]
6 November 2006 | Books
From the St. Petersburg College Library Blog: “Grove Art Online was updated to enlarge the broad coverage of women in Grove Art Online by adding nearly 120 new articles and essays on women artists and designers, and over 120 new images of works by women, to include over 850 women artists. New entries include Kara [...]
19 October 2006 | Books, Modern, Museums
Goya’s Caprichos are currently on view in Milan’s Galleria Bellinzona (through Oct. 28). Three hundred copies of the 80-part series of etchings and aquatints were printed in February 1799. At CAA Reviews, Tara Zanardi recently reviewed Andrew Schulz’s book, Goya’s Caprichos: Aesthetics, Perception, and the Body. She credits Schulz with showing the significance of the [...]
17 October 2006 | Books, Theory
In CAA Reviews, Jill H. Casid reviews The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, edited by Vanessa R. Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski: “Sensitive to charges that visual culture studies is an amorphous and ever-expanding field without either a clearly defined object of study or rigorous research and analytical methods, the first section of the reader on [...]
11 October 2006 | Books
Professor Jean Kempf, director of the Presses Universitaires de Lyon, reviews Roland Recht’s much-talked-about À quoi sert l’histoire de l’art? in ARHV: “This is a real publishing scandal – and I weigh my words carefully – but also an immense disappointment, as big as Recht’s reputation … At a moment when humanities publishing is in [...]
2 October 2006 | Books, Renaissance
Roland H. Wiegenstein reviews Hans Körner’s Botticelli biography (discussed earlier here). The painter’s career is seen in the context of the new demand for and “mass production” of images of Mary owing to the Devotio Moderna (the Virgin being an important mediator between divine and human), and the status of the Medici as against the [...]
2 October 2006 | Ancient, Books
Often perceived today as childish pablum, ancient animal stories were in fact deeply strange and serious, argue two books, one new, the other re-released. Harald Mielsch surveys ancient Greek animal stories represented in mosaics, reliefs, miniature books, carpets and frescoes. Heinz Mode’s classic on fabulous creatures (the centaur, the elephant god Ganesh, etc.) is out [...]
28 September 2006 | Books, Contemporary, Museums
Over 100 artists have incorporated Disney imagery into their work. Why? Holly Crawford considers several possible motivations in her new book, “Attached to the Mouse: Disney and Contemporary Art” (she was kind enough to send us a complimentary copy), which aims to be “the first art history analyzing use of Disney imagery.” Among them: Disney [...]
18 September 2006 | Books
John Ott writes in CAA Reviews: “The American Culture Association’s presentation of its 2006 Cawelti Book Award to Martin Berger’s Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture is an early indication of its deserved recognition and acclaim. This terse volume is doubly ambitious: as a groundbreaking investigation of a category of analysis mostly uncharted by [...]
18 September 2006 | Ancient, Books
Also in CAA Reviews, Genevieve S. Gessert writes: “The title of Peter Stewart’s Statues in Roman Society subtly delineates the major premise of his innovative study: that the modern notion of sculpture hinders our ability to understand the quotidian functions of statues within Roman society. As explained in his introduction, ‘classical art history has generally [...]
14 September 2006 | Books
The League of Palestinian Artists appears to have joined Palestinian artist/author Kamal Boullata in his condemnation of Palestinian Art by Gannit Ankori (currently a visiting professor at Harvard). The main accusation is plagiarism; unfortunately, we couldn’t locate the specific charges — if anyone else does, please email us. Update: we received a letter in response [...]
1 September 2006 | Ancient, Books
So many art-history surveys begin with cave art, that genre for which we have so few facts and so few convincing theories. Zoology professor Dale Guthrie’s new book “The Nature of Paleolithic Art,” which argues that most cave art was made by young men with little but sex and hunting on their minds, seems to [...]
31 August 2006 | Books, Modern
Earlier this month, the Chronicle of Higher Education surveyed a crop of (relatively) recent Dada books: the blockbuster exhibition catalogue, Amelia Jones’ Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada, Tom Sandqvist’s Dada East: The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire, and The DADA Reader: A Critical Anthology, edited by Dawn Ades. “It is ironic that [...]
30 August 2006 | Books
In the September Art in America, Prestel executive editor Christopher Lyon surveys the “mounting crisis in art book publishing”: “[MOMA's new bookstore stocks] barely one-fourth of the more than 10,000 titles offered before MOMA’s temporary relocation to Queens in 2000 … Over the past 15 years the marketplace for art books has bifurcated [into] a [...]
29 August 2006 | Architecture, Books
Theodor Fischer Prize-winner Christian Welzbacher has published his research on the state architecture of the Weimar Republic, which was torn between tradition and modernity. Political instability, among other things, doomed efforts to define a state style (Jürgen Tietz). It was not the young avant-garde of the Bauhaus or Werkbund, but older, more measured modernists who [...]
28 August 2006 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
Bettina Erche reviews a new catalog of the drawings of Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850), who worked on paper before learning to sculpt. The 2300 drawings, carefully assembled by the book’s three authors, show the artist’s knack for ethnology, physiognomy and caricature. His perspective was human-centered (animals and landscapes were always domesticated). He dedicated himself to [...]
22 August 2006 | Books, Modern
Christoph Lüthy reviews Bodo Vischer’s new book on Goya’s still lifes, The Eye of Nature. Only ten of these remain; made from 1810 to 1812, most found their way via Paris to the wider world, thanks to the late 19th-century French intoxication with Spain. Vischer argues that the paintings somehow look back at the viewer, [...]
17 August 2006 | Books
Ian Wilson’s new popular book on the rock art of northwest Australia is drawing attacks, notably from the reclusive expert Grahame Walsh. At issue: the painters’ artistic, political and cultural relationship to the present-day aborigines, and the proper balance of conservation and exhibition. Articles include Robin Hanbury-Tenison’s in the TLS (“Some of Wilson’s hypotheses are [...]
