by Jon Lackman | 1 March 2010 | Museums
From The Independent:
There is a new star rising in the Paris art world, still relatively little known to tourists but already a favourite with Parisians. The Pinacothèque, a privately run, wholly unsubsidised exhibition space has come from nowhere to lead the field in just over two years. In the last 12 months, it has outdone all other Parisian exhibition halls in the number of visitors attracted to temporary art shows … How has the fearsome, and much-feared, French state cultural bureaucracy reacted to the competition? Rather badly. The director and founder of the Pinacothèque, Marc Restellini, 45, told The Independent … “When we announced the Munch exhibition, someone very senior from the Centre Pompidou rang the Munch museum in Norway and said ‘Don’t work with this man.’ How do I know that? Because the Munch museum rang me and said: ‘What’s the matter with you French? Why do you behave like this?’ Something very similar happened with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam which agreed to loan us most of the paintings for the Dutch [17th-century] exhibition. Someone very senior in the Paris museums world rang them to say: ‘Don’t do it’.” Mr Restellini is disliked by the French state cultural establishment for several reasons. He is an art historian (and an expert on Modigliani) but he has never taken the official French examination for museum curators. He is young and brash and speaks his mind publicly in a world that prefers discreetly poisonous intrigue … Above all, Mr Restellini believes, he has broken down the walls which fence off different genres and periods of art in Paris (pre-19th century at the Louvre; 19th century in the Musée d’Orsay; modern art in the Pompidou, etc) … “[A]rt does not fall into neat periods. Artists don’t think that way. The public doesn’t think that way.”
by Jon Lackman | 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 that have originated as ‘blind spots’ or ‘stains’ on contemporary art criticism and theory.” It all sounded benign enough on paper, but doesn’t any discussion of discursive marginalization merit at least a little drama? … Carlos Amorales (né Carlos Aguirre) took the stage dressed in an elegant black suit and delivered what appeared to be a formal lecture about the “migration of form” that took his silhouetted drawings from artworks to record-label logos to designer dresses to sexy women’s lingerie. As he did so, a bulky, mustached man dressed in military attire appeared to his left and began barking out threats to strip-search select audience members. A rather complying young woman—performance artist Galia Eibenschutz, who also happens to be Amorales’s wife—presented herself onstage and was stripped down to her lingerie to the applause of some five hundred delighted fans. A ripple of shock could be felt in the first two rows (consisting largely of guest speakers), and the ever-feisty [Jennifer] Sorkin (who the previous day had leveled a devastating critique against Pipilotti Rist’s MoMA installation Pour Your Body Out as its curator, [Klaus] Biesenbach, looked on with perverse delight) quickly grabbed the microphone and demanded to know why Amorales had chosen to undress a woman at a conference on feminism. The artist expressed confusion about why he’d been invited in the first place, gave a feeble apology, and made a hasty retreat before things got really ugly . . . which they did.
The performance by Carlos Amorales can be seen on YouTube.
by Jon Lackman | 23 February 2010 | Books, Contemporary
Oxford University Press recently mailed us a new essay collection by critic David Levi Strauss, From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual. Strauss has remained relatively little known despite plaudits from Arthur Danto, John Berger, Dave Hickey, and others. Perhaps Oxford will change things (his previous collections were published by Autonomedia and Aperture). This book’s essays concern various contemporary artists as well as a few art writers. In a piece on Leo Steinberg, Strauss writes:
…the most serious challenge to the practice of art history is the reported loss of faith in the underlying principles on which it depends. In his influential essay The End of the History of Art? (1987), Hans Belting described this crisis as a “loss of faith in a great and compelling narrative, in the way that things must be seen” … [Steinberg] appears to be a steadfast defender of the traditional values of art hsitorical analysis, using the old tools of iconography and iconology handed down to him by his teachers rather than the newer ones favored by postmodernist theory. It is the way he uses these tools, and what he makes with them, that is different. But Steinberg’s work over the last 50 years has frequently drawn outraged responses and censorious remarks from defenders of the faith–forcing us to ask, Just what faith is being defended?
See here for a 2004 interview of Strauss by Hakim Bey.
by Jon Lackman | 19 February 2010 | Conferences
Bad at Sports discusses the recent CAA conference in the first few minutes of their latest podcast:
So Mark [Staff Brandl], you’re the only one of us who’s actually been at CAA for the last couple of days. I stopped by yesterday to buy a book and promptly ran away. There’s a huge number of humans there and they all seem to be art fans in one way or another, but I don’t see that sort of hungry excitement of an art fair, I see a kind of lonely hearts club vibe and it’s creepy.
Mark: Well there aren’t any collectors here so there’s no money and most of the people are art historians which means there’s a lot of guys who look like Jerry Saltz … But it’s fun, it brings out the scholarly, academic side in me. I just saw a great thing on eighteenth century painting of … dogs.
by Jon Lackman | 19 February 2010 | Ancient, Conferences
Coming to Bristol this September, “Seduction and Power is the second in a series of major international and interdisciplinary conferences focusing on the reception of antiquity in the performing and visual arts.” Paper topics include: “Woman on Top? Semiramide and the Power of the ‘Oriental Woman’”; “‘Jewel-in-the-belly-button’ Orientalism in Oliver Stone’s Alexander: The Fantasy of the Harem and Hollywood’s Ancient World”; and “The Lure of the Hermaphrodite in the Poetry and Painting of the English Aesthetes.”
by Jon Lackman | 19 February 2010 | Uncategorized
“The trouble with art history? It’s boring,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones:
At just the same time that Simon Schama was calling on art to help bring social history to life, art historians were disappearing up a dark theoretical hole. They were rejecting the kind of old-school art history epitomised by EH Gombrich or Kenneth Clark and instead modelling themselves on post-structuralisms of various varieties. The “new art history” is no longer new. But it still seems to result in books that don’t quite work as either history or criticism. Sometimes they’re all right. But often in reading the old art historians – for example Panofsky – I am struck not so much by scholarship that may or may not have stood the test of time, but a strong, humane insight into an artist.
Meanwhile, according the Hamilton Spectator, a major Canadian university is considering eliminating its art-history degree:
The art history degree could soon be history at McMaster as the university considers redirecting resources to meet growing demand for a broader fine art program … Demand for spaces in the standalone art history program has dwindled to the point where only seven students chose the specialty this year … There are now 37.5 students in all years of the program, making it about one tenth the size of English or history by comparison. Meanwhile, there is a lineup to get into the 35 spaces available in each year of the existing studio art program … all current students would be able to finish their art history degrees, with the door closing behind them as they graduate. Though the proposal has yet to enter a four-stage approval process, the idea of phasing out the art history degree is already causing an uproar among art history students, who have started a campaign to save their program … Art history courses would continue and possibly expand under the new degree programs, but there would be no specialty degree in the field of art history … McMaster’s art history BA has earned [a reputation] in the field, with grads going on to prestigious schools and programs such as those at Harvard, Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
INFORMATION on our facebook group to keep up to date with current facts and figures:
“Stop phasing out the McMaster Art History Program!”
by Jon Lackman | 16 February 2010 | Conferences, Modern
Artinfo is running advertisements for what must be the most hyped art-history conference in recent years — “Russia and the Global Cézanne Effect, 1900-1950.″ Sponsored by Gazprom, the government-controlled petroleum producer, the conference will be held in Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in St. Petersburg. (There are other sponsors listed as well, including The Art Newspaper and Art + Auction, an affiliate of Artinfo.) Speakers include Denis Coutagne, Albert Kostenevich, André Dombrowski, John Milner, Shigemi Inaga, James Oles, Partha Mitter, Rachael DeLue, Anna Gruetzner-Robins, Friederike Kitschen, Joseph Rishel, Bruno Ely, Isabelle Cahn, Jayne Warman, Michel Fraisset, and Aurelia Bourquard. The conference’s website comes complete with links to its Twitter and Facebook pages, a countdown clock and an amusing musical animation implying that this conference will not be of international but intergalactic importance. The site’s text expresses some confusion over expected attendance (“We expect that over 400 people … The number of participants will be over 300″) and promises that tickets would be available starting Feb. 15 (no sign of that option yet), which leaves one cautiously optimistic that the conference will in fact be webcast in translation as promised. The conference is clearly intended to be (at least in part) a proof of Russian modernity, of technological prowess, up-to-date intellectual climate, and cosmopolitan outlook: “The international coverage, the geographic breadth of the invited audience and the technologically advanced facilities will make this event the first of such quality and reach in the new history of Russia and in the study of global modernism at large.”
by Jon Lackman | 15 February 2010 | Conferences
Keynote speaker Dawoud Bey, who “began making photographs in 1969 after seeing the ‘Harlem On My Mind’ exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” has a blog, to which he has posted a transcript of his remarks. Excerpts:
The art world is often presumed to be a rather liberal place. But–to be sure–it contains more than its fair share of those who are invested in re-inscribing art and culture itself as an arena of privilege and exclusion. Too often these acts of exclusion have left us as a community ever more isolated from the larger social community. It is that larger community that has the potential to embrace our work and make it imperative, giving it a much deeper and sustained presence in the fabric of society … I was reminded of this not too long when I found myself at dinner with a couple of young curators and their patrons. None of them knew the work or name of a single black artists that I asked them about, all of whom I confess had emerged before the 1990s. None of these rang a bell for these young art historians and museum workers who are charged with mounting exhibitions and writing publications that document the expressive work of our time. And these were not obscure or marginal names…to me anyway.
University of Cincinnati graduate student Auna R. Hearne, aka BlackAesthetic, wins this year’s award for best art-historian twitterer:
Riding to Chicago with 2 weird white girls and a foreign one. Let the crazy tweets begin…
At the #CAA2010 Convocation, very cool to see my favorite artists & art historians: Griselda Pollock, Barkley Hendricks, & Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter is a cute dude! Wow…and he talks exactly the way I thought he would! Cynical and intelligent! #CAA2010
The #CAA2010 Convocation speaker is pissing off all the ppl ready to pour up at the gala. Chill, Dawoud Bey is speaking
Art nerds unite! I feel like I’m going to be doing a lot of eye rolling this next couple of days. These people are passionate #CAA2010
Old white people at #CAA2010 stop staring. No I’m not a part of the hotel staff, I’m a grad student.
Getting up to put the monkey suit on. Thinking about hitting the Students & Emerging Professionals breakfast shindig #CAA2010
Last night the convocation speaker said “Think about what you are here for.” That was the most resounding statement. #CAA2010
At the book fair, is there a broke grad student discount?! I would love to buy about every book but… ha! #CAA2010
headed to my 1st session at 12:30 entitled “How is Queer Art Relational?” #CAA2010
Yes, I am identifying. The gay and black art historian goes to gay and black sessions #CAA2010
At the Queer Art session with a bunch of white butches and some old queens. lol #cantwait #CAA2010
I agree, forget Bourriaud #CAA2010
#overheard at #CAA2010 “I didn’t think I would see other black ppl here, are you going to the black thing too?!” #joyinmyspirit
Images make papers interesting. Virginia Solomon’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties: Queer Aesthetics & Cultural Politics” AND images #FTW #CAA2010
#Futurebabymama Kara Keeling, Ph.D. University of Southern California
I live to be a discussant like Jennifer A. Gonzalez of UC Santa Cruz from the Blacknss as Model session. Amazing commentary #CAA2010
Debating on whether or not I’m crashing the Yale U reception. My advisor is an alum and said she would claim me but #idontknow #CAA2010
A presence from the queer session was in the “black” session. Shared feeling of otherness? #CAA2010
I had to leave that last session. It was shameless Artist’s Self Promotion. I don’t like your art, don’t impose it on me #CAA2010
I went to the Yale U reception to find Glenda Swan & my advisor. Neither were there and I was clearly not wanted #CAA2010 #Itscool #noshade
Fuck yo Ivy League reception in the ballroom, this is how urban research institutions get down #CAA2010 http://yfrog.com/1em1mj
I have so much respect for my school director right now. what a stand up dude. Really appreciate this free, unlimited alcohol
just heard about a party in 1276…Queers…I’m on my way
I literally got
wasted last night. I was gone off of … WHITE WINE?! What is going on? white wine! I had about 2 bottles tho I know we went somewhere, to a Mexican joint. They charged my card for some food I didn’t eat. I’m not sure how I got back to the hotel
Today, I’m wearing grey and purple. If you see me at #CAA2010 speak! Yes, I’m attending the conference. No I don’t work at the Hyatt
I’m running late, but I’m fine. Headed to the African Diaspora session because Jacqueline Francis is in charge #FTW
Bronze Level, West Tower, Water Tower pow pow pow I just sunk your battleship #CAA2010
Dear #CAA2010 the African Diaspora session is full, there are people spilling out the door. Take notice and give us a bigger room next yr!
Thoroughly enjoying this session. Next up…Tobias Wolford: “What is Africa to me? African American art & the problem of origins” #CAA2010
This speaker sucked the life out of this session. Not sure if its his tone or the subject of the paper. Mass exit #CAA2010
Putting my art history hat back on, heading to the second queer art session: “Desire is Queer!” oh yes it is #CAA2010
Argh! Missing the Art & Violence session! But I’m more gay than violent & there is a white butch w/ an Irish accent speaking #sold #CAA2010
I just got on an elevator going up with some stiff looking artists/art historians. And its 34 floors in this hotel #FML #CAA2010
I know I’m not the only black and gay art historian at #CAA2010 I’m just the only one tweeting lmao
This session’s next paper – A Long Hard Look: Queer Desire in Contemporary Life Drawing #somegayshit #FTW #CAA2010
I’m super boo, grad student broke like a jok but I just bought the LAST copy of this book on Kara Walker at the #CAA2010 Book fair #fistpump
UChicago Press is handing out glasses of white/red wine at their #CAA2010 booth but due to last night, I know the powers of white wine
Chancing white wine again…just one (very expensive) glass of Chardonnay
Last session of #CAA2010: African American Art. I was running late but I’m here. Very underwhelming audience. I’m slightly disappointed
You don’t want to argue with me. Especially not on Twitter. I write better than I speak and I will light your ass on fire
#sigh Most of the presenters on the African American art panel are white. I’m not racist but I would like to see faces like mine #CAA2010
Argh! This session is sooo dry. Why do I feel out of place at an African American art session?? #CAA2010
And the only black scholar speaks like a Southern preacher and is an unimpressive academic. #wevegottodobetter #CAA2010
This presenter is having technical difficulties and keeps pronouncing Catlett phonetically. CAT-LET #Fail #gtfoh #CAA2010
I’m starting to realize that! The most impressive well spoken speakers @ the #CAA2010 sessions I attended…were visual artists
I can’t wait to read this book: Kara Walker-No, Kara Walker-Yes, Kara Walker-? … I bought the last copy available at #CAA2010 pow pow pow
Everybody that knows me knows that I’m not impressed with Kara Walker. I bought the book to bolster my own personal opinion #CAA2010
This could have been written by almost any self-impressed grad student. Why is it taking up space here?
That’s kind of harsh, Mamie. I thought it was light and funny.
I think the tweets are excellent, but just want to observe that only certain folks are allowed to say things like this:
“I’m not racist but I would like to see faces like mine”
“I’m not a racist but…”
This person broke everything down to race. “two weird white girls” “old white people” “white butches” this person seems more interested in the color of the people and presenters than the art or info.
by Jon Lackman | 12 February 2010 | Conferences, Renaissance
On March 6 a symposium on French Renaissance art will convene at NYU in honor of art historian Colin Eisler. This is apparently where Gregory Hedberg will present his argument for the new Degas plasters (although it’s not clear what that topic has to do with French Renaissance art). The full roster:
Thomas Crow
Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, IFA; Associate Provost for the Arts, NYU
Opening RemarksSuzanne Boorsch
Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, Yale University Art Gallery
‘la roine d’escosse marie/ estamt petite’: François Clouet’s Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, as a Little GirlRoger S. Wieck
Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum
The Prayer Book of Queen Claude de FranceYassana Croizat-Glazer
Independent scholar
Beauty Secrets: the Art of Cosmetics and Perfumery in Renaissance FranceNaomi Miller
Professor Emerita, History of Art and Architecture Department, Boston University
Globalism Ltd. French Sixteenth-century City ViewsGeorge A. Wanklyn
Associate Professor of European and Mediterranean Cultures and Art History; Chair, Department of European and Mediterranean Cultures, The American University of Paris
New Light, New Thoughts on Baptiste Pellerin as a DraughtsmanStuart W. Pyhrr
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Curator in Charge, Department of Arms and Armor,
Metropolitan Museum of Art
French Armor Drawings in the Metropolitan MuseumIan Wardropper
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Designs for Tombs in Sixteenth-Century FranceMary L. Levkoff
Curator and Head of the Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, National Gallery of Art
Death and Afterlife of the late Valois Court Style in SculptureAnne L. Poulet
Director, The Frick Collection
A Consideration of French Renaissance Sources in the Work of ClodionGregory Hedberg
Director, European Paintings and Sculpture, Hirschl & Adler Galleries
New Insights into Degas’ Creative Process in SculptureBannon McHenry
Adjunct Professor, Fordham College of Liberal Arts
A French Renaissance Revival/Second Empire Palace in the Hudson ValleyJonathan Brown
Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, IFA
Closing Remarks
Dear Sir/Madam,
I would like to attend this conference, would you please forward further information on this.
Thank you,
Teresa Watts,
Professor, Art History
RSVP to [email protected] with “Eisler” in subject line
by Jon Lackman | 11 February 2010 | Conferences
Newcity Art has dug up a forty-two-year-old letter to Allan Kaprow from Jan van der Marck, then director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, in which he describes that year’s CAA conference in Chicago: “The CAA is a hotel full of aging fags. I was certain it would be raided by the police.”
by Jon Lackman | 11 February 2010 | Conferences, Contemporary
College Art Association conference attendees, you could return home with some actual art — free! That is, if you’re willing to leave the hotel to look for it. From yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:
[Patrick Skoff] tools around Chicago for a few hours and leaves hundreds of dollars worth of his art in random spots. He drops hints about the locations via Twitter and texts. Then he goes home … At last count, Skoff figures 700 people … were following his exploits, receiving digital hints about where and when he would leave new artwork … “He makes people work to find art,” said Tricia Van Eck, associate curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, “which is interesting, but does it mean anything? It would mean more if there was some criticality to it” … Maud Lavin, chair of visual and critical studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said Skoff’s hunt is a “kissing cousin” of relational art, which deals in human contact and not framed pieces … Patrick Skoff and Samantha Brown (@SkoffAndSam on Twitter) plan to conduct their next art scavenger hunt Sunday.
by Jon Lackman | 10 February 2010 | Conferences
starwarsmodern Blizzard and an Earth Quake in Chicago – God’s way of saying no to the CAA?
brilliant wishing i was @collegeart in chicago, because earthquakes and blizzards make for good art dialog #caa10
by Jon Lackman | 10 February 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical
After disappearing mysteriously in late 2008, the excellent blogger-art-historian David Packwood appears to have resurfaced a few months ago. In one recent post, he discusses the recent debate over two apparent Anthony Van Dycks:
That – and other connoisseurship issues – may be resolved by the large Van Dyck exhibition being planned for the Prado in 2012, but the relationship between Rubens and Van Dyck still fascinates with its narrative of intergenerational tensions, multiple studio operations and competitive rivalry … Van Dyck’s genius was born of painful necessity, which takes the shine off the myth of the aristocratic artist fashioning courtly pictures for jaded and decadent elites. Van Dyck’s financial embarrassment and its consequences may well have instilled in him that competitive and determined nature that gave him the confidence to go up against one of the greatest of baroque masters.
Thanks for the alert that David Packwood is blogging anew! Here’s the link to him:
by Jon Lackman | 10 February 2010 | Conferences
Alas, the Art History Newsletter has been snowed out of Chicago. Which means that we’ll have to cover it from a distance. And that you won’t be able to ask Jon Lackman in person your burning questions about the Parisian underground movement UX. (However, someone will apparently read his paper for him at Thursday morning’s session on “Autonomizing Practices in Art, Art History, and Education.”)
Although we won’t be covering the conference in person, it appears that CAA’s official blog will be teeming with content. It’s being staffed this year by some well caffeinated art students from Columbia College Chicago, who have already posted seven interviews! Their coverage has so far focused mostly on the studio side of the conference, which is not surprising given that apparently only one of the correspondents is an art-history major, but hopefully the coverage will grow more comprehensive over time.
by Jon Lackman | 10 February 2010 | Conferences
This promises to the be the first extensively tweeted College Art Association conference. Attendees have already started chiming in:
profbarryRjones Why would anyone schedule a conference in February? In Chicago? CAA = crazy
ebukva Off to a CAA conference in Chicago tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing some old friends.
kueblerwolf CAA in Chicago this weekend. Gotta get my academic game on: swanning around in fancy scarves, funky glasses, cute shoes, & attitude.
hollo #CAA2010 visitors in Chgo this week who don’t know how to dress for the cold: hahaha (sorry). The Free Store has sweaters. C u there.
If you’re looking for a hashtag to use, #CAA2010 seems to be the early favorite.
There’s also the character-saving #CAA10 in action! And now some tweets using both variations. Which will prevail?
I hadn’t seen the #CAA10 tag when I wrote this. It seems to be getting more play and it does win out on brevity.
Still other people seem to be using #collegeart
by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2010 | Renaissance, Teaching
Connecticut College professor Robert Baldwin has decided to place online a large proportion of everything he’s ever written,
200 essays, lectures, bibliographies, and interdisciplinary syllabi on Western Art with a focus on European art, 1300-1700. This web site is aimed at ABDs and recent PhDs struggling to work up new courses, hunt down primary source readings (which are the only ones assigned in my 9 courses), and get up to speed on major works of European art for 1300-1700. The web site opens with about 2,000 pages of material and will add 200 pages of new essays annually.
by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2010 | Conferences
CAA’s website says confidently, “CAA’s 98th Annual Conference will take place as scheduled.” Nonetheless, as the event approaches, snow falls, and many wonder if and when they’ll make it there. Few seem to be as worried about the week ahead as the blogging PhD candidate and conference presenter known as “MrAntiquity“:
… So that impending panic, tightness, whatever that had begun to resurface is back in the extreme.
What’ s causing it?
1. Chapter 5 (the data chapter). Sent in one part, but not the other….so it’s hanging there and I can’t focus with all the instability….
2. CAA conference. I’m not comfortable with my grasp of the statistics, and have been basically too anxious to write the damn paper. This is problematic…and combined with the thesis (which I’m struggling with because of the noise) it’s adding extreme anxiety.
3. Can’t talk to women at all. We know now that that’s pretty closely linked with anxiety, but I’ve tried everything to get out of it (obviously that DOES NOT WORK)
so chapter, conference, and inability to talk to women. Causing extreme problems. And none of the “epiphanies” that I periodically come up with really have any effect the next day.
Let’s look from a CAA perspective.
1. I’m anxious because I’ve hardly started the CAA project
BUT: the work is done–I just need to put it in the powerpoint2. I’m anxious because I’m not comfortable with statistics and might not know the answers and look like a fool
BUT: I’m not supposed to be a statistician. I can refresh my memory. If I rehearse the material I’ll be fine. IF I DON”T KNOW THE ANSWER TO A QUESTION< SO WHAT?3. Women. Refuse to speak...at all...after trying everything
BUT: obviously this isn't ALWAYS the case.
also have been syaing "HI" more loudly than ever, and more consistently
it will take LOTS MORE TIME
by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2010 | Modern, Museums
The exhibition “Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Garde” opens Thursday at Tate Modern. The Telegraph writes
… a small group of Dutch artists and architects came together, united by an ambition to redesign the world on purer, better lines – and those lines would always be straight ones … After his death, Alfred Barr, founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, wrote that [van Doesburg] was a “painter, sculptor, architect, typographer, poet, novelist, critic, lecturer and theorist – a man as versatile as any figure of the Renaissance”. He didn’t, however, do everything equally well. His voluminous writings, like those of Mondrian, suffer from severe problems of incomprehensibility. Art historian Carel Blotkamp confessed: “Even we Dutch authors sometimes have not the slightest idea, after half a century, of the meanings of certain statements made by these elated men.”
by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2010 | Uncategorized
Charles J. Pratt, a freelance game designer and a researcher at NYU’s new Game Center, writes a two-part review (1, 2) of the recent “Art History of Games” conference in Atlanta, GA, asking first of all, are games art?
“It’s interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place,” said co-organizer, author and IGF Nuovo Award finalist Bogost (A Slow Year) in his opening remark … “Is the art of games found in the visual arts?” [John] Sharp asked, adding, “Another place we can look is that the art of games is in their worlds. This lends itself to thinking of games as sculptural.” The speakers pointed out that, of course, games can also be enjoyed from a technical point of view … “[Or] is the art of games in the game design?” Sharp asked … Sharp laid out one final way that one could claim games are art. He pointed out that the act of play itself has creative aspects. “Is the art of games found in the player’s performance?” he mused. “This suggests that the real power lies with the player rather than the designer” … Sharp pointed out that “you don’t usually see games in a museum. A lot of our historical understanding of games comes from representations in art. There’s a sort of paradox there” … “If we look at a definition of art we can see that games meet most criteria,” Sharp said. “Games have the potential to deliver deep meaning, just not in the places we’re used to looking” … [Game designer Frank] Lantz argued that perhaps the trick is not to change games to make them more like our conceptions of art, but to change the way we think about art in light of games … if aesthetics cannot take games into account then we should re-engineer our ideas about aesthetics: “The way we think about aesthetics needs to change.”
by Jon Lackman | 5 February 2010 | Uncategorized
We recently discovered that the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture launched a blog in June of last year, Enfilade. One recent entertaining entry concerns “Academics and the F-Word” [i.e. fashion]:
With the spring conference season here once more, many of us will soon find ourselves rummaging in the closet with an open suitcase on the floor, asking ourselves what an art historian should look like now … Academic Chic offers a fascinating glimpse at the unique challenges professors and college instructors face. In the site’s own words: “Three feminist PhD candidates at a Midwest university, on a crusade against the ill-fitting polyester suit of academic yore.” They continue:
We are three Ph.D. candidates in the humanities, who believe that academia and fashion are not at odds. When beginning graduate school we each had an existential wardrobe crisis. What does one wear in grad school anyway? We recognized that our undergraduate hoodies and jeans were no longer appropriate but were unwilling to accept the shoulder-padded khaki polyester suit that was ubiquitous among our female professors. As feminist scholars, we were also forced to reconcile the perceived-superficiality of our interest in style with our academic commitment to questioning gender and class essentialisms.
Today, in the face of all our eye-rolling colleagues, we defiantly wear dresses, fitted jackets, and pointy toe shoes. To teach in. And sometimes just to the library!
Medievalists trying to be Modernists? If you teach well, no one cares how you dress.
Where would we be without pointy toe shoes?
The Pinacothèque has showed great exhibitions over the past 12 or even 18 months. It is not surprising its owner has ruffled (is still ruffling) a few feathers…
Can you imagine someone opening this sort of space in London? The reactions would fe FAR worse! In Europe, a private, commercial, and wholly unsubsididsed exhibition space could only happen in Paris – the only city which art scene is dynamic enough for that!
I have absolutely no worries: the Paris art scene will accept the presence of the Pinacothèque – even if it takes some time. In a sense, these events are good for the owner! It means the English Press can talk about him. Since British newspapers never write anything positive about France, they would not even mention his name if things were running smoothly!