by Leslie Thompson | 16 April 2010 | Books
Although not a recent publication (2003), Richard Polsky’s I Bought Andy Warhol is worth a read. As someone who normally focuses more on the museum side of the art world, I enjoyed this insider’s take of the contemporary art market. While his chief pursuit centers on the prolific work of Warhol, Polsky enlightens us “outsiders” more generally on the world of art dealers. Readers learn not only the basic procedures of art auctions and challenges in landing deals, but also encounter the many personalities and characters of the dealers and collectors with whom Polsky interacts. No surprise, money is the theme of this narrative (which makes me cringe).
While a large sum of museums’ collections comprise of gifts from private collectors, I’m curious about the extent to which museums play the art market.
by Ben Lima | 16 April 2010 | Contemporary
In the spring 2010 issue of X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly, Damon Willick writes a memorial to the art historian Henry T. Hopkins (1928-2009):
In 1960, Hopkins directed the Huysman Gallery, which was across the street from the Ferus Gallery on La Cienega. Though Huysman’s history was brief, the gallery offered an alternative to the dominant Ferus Gallery and gave many young artists their first public exhibitions. For example, Larry Bell, Joe Goode, and Ed Ruscha showed work early in their careers at Huysman, and Hopkins’s War Babies exhibition of the work of Bell, Goode, Ed Bereal, and Ron Miyashiro is central to any history of L.A. art.
by Jon Lackman | 15 April 2010 | Books
According to The Forward, in a new book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses Stephen H. Norwood describes the “utter destruction of the academic career of art historian Jerome Klein, one of the most popular teachers at Columbia, for publicly protesting Nazi crimes,” at the hands of Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler. Reviewer Jerome A. Chanes writes, “What can be done to recognize these actions 65 years later? With the luxury of hindsight, it might not be a bad idea, in the first instance, for Columbia to remove the ‘Butler’ from the university’s Butler Library.”
It’s striking to read how Oxford and Cambridge (unlike Harvard and Yale) rightly refused to participate in the Nazi-sponsored 550th-anniversary celebrations at Heidelberg.
For a related but inverse topic, see this upcoming talk in New York on the “monuments men” – members of an Allied military service unit charged with the preservation and restitution of artworks damaged during WWII Nazi lootings, many of whom went on to become prominent art historians and museum directors:
http://www.ifar.org/upcoming_event.php?docid=1270147396
And, in a serendipitous moment of overlapping historical inquiry, a conference in Munich will address the German counterpart:
by Jon Lackman | 14 April 2010 | Career, Contemporary
In a recent issue of American Art (23:3), Joshua Shannon writes that the field of contemporary art history is now producing more job openings than “Nineteenth-Century Art and the Art of the United States combined – the two boom fields of a generation ago,” but that it is also changing rapidly. For starters, its center of gravity is shifting away from the postwar period to eras closer to the present, and whereas it once focused heavily on American artists,
Art from around the world is now justly the subject of the discipline [of contemporary art history], with Latin American topics perhaps taking the lead. To date, we have no good textbook to help us reform our courses, but Terry Smith of the University of Pittsburgh is at work on one … [T]he research methods and writing styles in contemporary art history are diversifying, too … [Approaches pioneered in October] clustered around an attention to the unusual forms and structures of artworks and to the radical potential (either for politics or for collective patterns of thought) of those innovations … [Lately there] has been a turn toward more detailed historicization of recent art …
Shannon argues that it is so difficult to define the field – chronologically, geographically and methodologically – that it may not survive as a useful category. He also suggests that it’s impossible for one individual to amass enough regional knowledge to adequately treat each part of the world. Perhaps the subject should be team taught instead, even if this requires historians of earlier periods to brush up on the contemporary scenes in the countries they study.
Shannon discusses his new book, The Disappearance of Objects, at Rorotoko:
by Jon Lackman | 12 April 2010 | Conferences
In the blog Experimental Philosophy, Eric Schwitzgebel writes about recent studies he’s done of conference audiences. He concludes that “most audience members, listening to most academic talks, spend most of their time with some distraction or other at the forefront of their stream of experience. They may not remember this fact because when they think back on their experience of a talk, what is salient to them are those rare occasions when they did make a novel connection or think up an interesting objection.” Most of the time, audience members are more likely to be thinking about their cell phone, an itch, their feelings of confusion, the “skanky taste” of the coffee, or their need to go to the bathroom.
by Jon Lackman | 12 April 2010 | Journals
In a recent issue of Open (n. 16) devoted to “The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon,” Jorinde Seijdel writes
… the art biennial, which was originally an instrument within a politics of nation-states, is increasingly deployed for developing and marketing cities and regions. In order to compensate for this, biennials often put political issues onto their artist agenda … [but] can biennials really represent an alternative political voice in these neo-political times?
The issue’s contributors include Pascal Gielen, Michael Hardt, Chantal Mouffe, Thierry de Duve, Boris Groys, Simon Sheikh, Brian Holmes, Charles Esche, Maria Hlavajova, and Irit Rogoff.
by Jon Lackman | 12 April 2010 | Uncategorized
From the Washington Post:
Toiling in the bowels of the National Gallery, CASVA’s intrepid scholars shape what all the rest of us will someday believe about art. We may think we come at pictures with fresh eyes and ideas, but our everyday insights are likely to echo the thoughts, once esoteric and radical, of some long-dead expert. If we look ahead to an art scene 15 or 20 years in the future, we’ll find that its exhibitions, its wall texts, its college primers, its PBS specials — even its newspaper reviews — are likely to depend on research being done now by the unsung heroes of CASVA. At any given time there are something like 35 of these operatives, based in Washington or scattered overseas. They work in the shadows to find new insights into art — so the rest of us don’t have to. One CASVA scholar has shown that Renaissance patrons had such flexible ideas of time that they could know a bronze of Jesus was brand-new, yet still count it as dating to the time of Christ. A CASVA lecturer made the convincing case that a tame seascape by Edward Hopper — nothing more than a boat, Sunday sailors, water and sky — was in fact all about World War II and radio newscasts … “No one questions that physicists need to operate in a very rarefied and esoteric environment, where they can entertain wild ideas, many of them unprovable,” [Alexander] Nagel says. “But it’s not obvious to everyone that art history needs to get done at that level — so it’s good that a place exists that insists it does.”
by Jon Lackman | 9 April 2010 | Uncategorized
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by Jon Lackman | 9 April 2010 | Museums
The Guggenheim Museum is digitizing archives and blogging about the highlights. Particularly exciting:
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Reel-to-Reel collection holds recordings of artists’ talks, symposia, lectures, interviews, and performances. Programs highlight artists such as Pablo Picasso, Vassily Kandinsky, Robert Motherwell, Juan Gris, and Vincent Van Gogh. Speakers include Thomas Messer, director of the Guggenheim Museum (1961–88), and Pulitzer prize-winning author and collector James Michener. The reel-to-reels have valuable content, but are relatively inaccessible in their current format. To preserve the audio content, the Library and Archives Department was awarded a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to digitize the recordings. Safe Sound Archive, a nationally known vendor for audio preservation and reformatting, has been contracted to preserve and digitize the recordings. Once complete, all audio will be accessible for public research on site at the museum and select audio tracks will be available online.
Here’s hoping the online selection will be generous.
(via ArtDaily)
by Jon Lackman | 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 extent swimming against the tide. The dominance of a linguistic model in the social sciences has sustained recent criticism from a number of scholars, among them the art historian David Summers, who has argued that whereas language is conventional, works of art ‘are embodied under certain conditions, and these are only secondarily conventional” … my own conceptual framework is a bricolage of ideas drawn not only from scholarship on other premodern frontier regions (notably Anatolia, Armenia, Spain, and Sicily) but also from a myriad of disparate disciplines, including art history, anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, and linguistics … [I]mplicit in my use of contemporary theoretical work is a rejection of any notion of a ‘return to the object’ as if it were preexistent or self-subsisting. A subsidiary aim of the book is, therefore, to contribute to a negotiation of the (often-marked) boundaries between empirically driven and theoretically informed scholarship on pre-modernity …
by Jon Lackman | 9 April 2010 | Uncategorized
(FYI: This post will remain atop the site for a week. New posts will appear directly underneath.)
Now — for a short time only! — this is your opportunity to join the family of Art History Newsletter contributors.
The Art History Newsletter, until now essentially a one-man operation, will soon become a group blog. Such blogs seem well suited to academe (see for example this one.) Contributors contribute at their leisure. Individual posts are signed by their authors. Freedom is given to contributors to post information, to express opinions, or to do both.
For over four years, The Art History Newsletter has endeavored to synopsize news and opinion of interest to art historians and to provide original reporting on conferences, lectures, and other special events. It seems fair to say that it is now the preeminent site of its kind (setting aside the website of the College Art Association itself). It typically receives over a thousand visitors a day, and judging from the email we’ve received, it is read by many of the field’s most prominent scholars.
To become a contributor, email [email protected].
by Jon Lackman | 8 April 2010 | Architecture, Journals
The online edition of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians is going high tech:
The new illustrations include zoomable color photographs [and] videos, some of which are clips from historic films or works under review, while others represent three-dimensional models in a convenient way. Music, spoken word, and ambient noise are also part of the new JSAH, and panoramic photography, which stitches together many photographs to create a virtual environment, provides an especially valuable complement to traditional tools for the illustration of architecture. JSAH Online will publish maps with embedded GIS coordinates, allowing interconnection with Google Maps. Google Earth will provide the platform for viewing animations, in which the experience of visiting sites and seeing them change through time can be simulated.
The March 2010 issue includes an animation “showing scaled overlay of Melchior Lorichs’s Panorama and digital model of Istanbul, comparing the viewpoints from the Galata Tower and from the sea walls”; a re-creation “of Roman funeral music and ritual lamentation based on experimental archaeology”; a virtual reality image of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye; and Google Earth Model of the Roman Forum that allows you to choose which historical incarnation of the forum you’d like to view.
The Melchior Lorichs article is available free to nonsubscribers as a sample.
The new online edition was developed “in partnership with University of California Press and JSTOR … for more than two years and has been made possible by two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. SAH is indebted to JSAH Editor, David Brownlee, and JSAH Online Founding Editor, Hilary Ballon.”
Inside Higher Ed reports that non-member subscriptions will be available starting next year, that the online edition
is intended to encourage scholars to explore the use of digital storytelling tools while nudging publishers to renovate their digital journals and e-textbooks to support those tools, says Pauline Saliga, executive director of the society. And she believes the JSAH Online‘s influence won’t be limited to architectural history. “I think this development is going to really impact a lot of disciplines,” Saliga says, citing music history and anthropology as examples. “A lot of societies and publishers were waiting for somebody to solve this problem,” she says. “We’ve solved the problem.… Now they can adapt it for their own purposes.”
very useful; is it accessible ?
by Jon Lackman | 8 April 2010 | Conferences
From CAA News:
The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, has received a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to convene an international task force of art librarians, scholars, and information specialists from Europe and the United States to discuss the future of art bibliography. Recent events, including discussions of art-library closures, scant funding resources for ongoing support of art libraries and projects internationally, and the cessation of the Getty’s support for the continuation of the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) provide the catalyst to review current practices, take stock of changes, and seriously consider developing more sustainable and collaborative ways of supporting the bibliography of art history in the future.
(via CultureGrrl)
Kind of interesting to hear about the Getty receiving, as opposed to giving, a grant. I guess times really have changed. Maybe Kress had better endowment managers.
by Jon Lackman | 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 Europe had arranged a process of secularization where religious art suddenly became aesthetic art. This process, which to my limited knowledge, never happened in Africa, or India, not even in China despite great breaks they’ve made with their past. So, it’s not easy to expand the European concept of art history to the other civilizations because it means bringing European concepts to them. We are in a peculiar situation at the moment because there are still people who pursue traditional research topics and there is also a new interest in what I would even describe as artifacts. It’s a new interest in the signs and monuments of religion, life, and public life that has created what is called cultural studies—not a very beautiful term but a strong trend. How, in the face of this trend, will you save the professional knowledge of traditional art history and expertise? All of these are open questions that are not discussed enough …
We have to ask ourselves what is looking? Is looking a strictly visual process or is it a deep, emotional process? We should test and totally absorb the emotional process in front of a work of art and then, as art historians, we should undergo the critical task of asking ourselves whether the emotional impact of the art is identical with the historical, or original, mission of the object. One must ask oneself what the tension between these two things is and then bring them together. Today in the art history of Bildwissenschaft or media studies people want to throw away the emotional side of art history so that works of art become examples of information. We must defend the emotional effect of art even if, in Germany, we experienced irrationalism among art historians who swam in their emotional impressions alone. So, we have the task of putting our emotional impression through critical enlightenment, but if we remove the emotional side then we can close shop.
Sauerländer subsequently wrote in to clarify a few things.
by Jon Lackman | 3 April 2010 | Uncategorized
We recently discovered the audio archives at ArtOnAir.org, which includes interviews with various scholars such as Tom Huhn, David Joselit, Tom McDonough, and Hal Foster, as well as a recording of a Museum of Modern Art panel discussion on the Institutionalization of Feminism.
by Jon Lackman | 2 April 2010 | Americas, Conferences, Modern
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote this in advance of last weekend’s Romare Bearden symposium:
Artist Romare Bearden … is the subject of a symposium … at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, Downtown. “Bearden in the Public Realm,” include[s] a Friday conversation with novelist John Edgar Wideman … Saturday’s keynote speaker will be Mary Schmidt-Campbell, who was recently named vice chairman of President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities … Among the goals of this symposium are to draw attention to and discover more about the breadth of disciplines Mr. Bearden engaged with and influenced. His collage painting, “The Piano Lesson,” for example, was the inspiration for August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title … More than 22 national artists and scholars will participate in six panels ranging in topic from “Pittsburgh Memories” to “Printmaking as Practice.”
by Jon Lackman | 2 April 2010 | Career, Museums
The New York Times profiles nine emerging curators: Rajendra Roy, Hao Sheng, Jen Mergel, Alison Gass, Diane Waggoner, Scott Rothkopf, Diane Waggoner, Clara Drummond, and Samantha Rippner. MoMA film curator Roy says, “When I first heard they were looking for someone I was convinced I was NOT the person. I was too young, too out there, not academic.” “Fifteen interviews later, he was offered the job.” Eight of the nine have a master’s degree; two also have a PhD.
The University of Western Ontario is launching a new major in Museum and Curatorial Studies, “in response to an increased demand for training in these areas.” The University adds, “While other Canadian universities have similar programs, offering it at the undergraduate level makes Western’s program unique.”
According to the L.A. Times,
a group of USC undergrads who have taken over the [university's] museum in a new approach to hands-on learning. The class project turned them into curators, forcing them to apply art theory to actual practice, and shut down a long-running exhibition in midrun. Over two weeks the students mounted their makeover of the show, employed criticisms of traditional museum exhibits and used contemporary art and multimedia to rethink art history for the intervention … Richard Meyer, a co-professor of the course Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating who is responsible for the takeover, said the idea came from the class using the L.A. museum world as a laboratory. “We wanted them to develop a constant consciousness that everything you see in museums is choreographed.”
by Jon Lackman | 1 April 2010 | Uncategorized
In full:
DATE: April 1, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE GETTY PROVIDES FREE ACCESS TO THE BHA ON ITS WEBSITE
LOS ANGELES—As of April 1, 2010, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will be available free of charge on the Getty Web site at http://library.getty.edu/bha. Free Web access to BHA is an advantage not only to all traditional users of the database but also to such potential users as institutions in developing countries and independent scholars worldwide, who until now have been unable to afford access to the BHA. Since ending its collaboration with the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)–CNRS in December 2007, the Getty has been searching for partners to continue the production and distribution of BHA. This process has been complicated, and with no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site.
“The Bibliography of the History of Art has been an indispensable resource for scholars and students for many years. We are delighted to announce that BHA will be available on the Getty Web site. We remain firmly committed to making the present BHA accessible to all,” says Thomas Gaehtgens, Director of the Getty Research Institute. BHA on the Getty Web site offers both basic and advanced search modules, and can be searched easily by subject, artist, author, article or journal title, and other elements. To search BHA, please visit, http://library.getty.edu/bha. Note that the database search includes the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), covering the years 2008 and part of 2009. The Répertoire de la litterature de l’art (RILA), one of the predecessors of BHA, with records that cover 1975-1989, will be online by May 1.
by Jon Lackman | 1 April 2010 | Uncategorized
According to a Getty press release, it “decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site.” Alas, that still leaves open the question of who will continue updating and maintaining the BHA.
The Getty and its research institute are undoubtedly experiencing difficulties adjusting to endowment investment losses. That said, it’s hard to imagine what could be more important to the scholarly community than a healthy Bibliography of the History of Art. The BHA has for decades indexed 20,000-odd records a year, serving thousands of users around the world. As the Getty itself said in a 2008 study (pdf) of the database, “Scholars continue to need research databases” and “users value authoritative content.” The report also asserts, “Quantifying the work helps justify it.” Alas, in this case apparently even numbers couldn’t save the day.
by Jon Lackman | 1 April 2010 | Uncategorized
Souren Melikian writes in Art+Auction:
Art is all about perception. The sales of Old Masters at Christie’s and Sotheby’s New York in January offered a fascinating illustration of how shifts in perception can influence prices. As greater works become rarer, substitutes of lesser quality are being upgraded in status. At the same time another, more insidious process, rarely acknowledged by professionals, keeps down the prices of some admirable masterpieces. Because buyers have fewer and fewer works on which to train their eyes, a dwindling number of connoisseurs can recognize great paintings.
Re the latter argument, shouldn’t the movement of great paintings from private to public collections provide connoisseurs with more great paintings “on which to train their eyes”? After all, connoisseurs don’t just look at paintings that come up at auction. Melikian writes:
… now that superior versions by Jan Breughel the Elder come up [for sale] only at very distant intervals, his images have become hazy in the minds of collectors, who are no longer in a position to make comparisons that would be unflattering to the son’s imitations.
But any connoisseur who frequents European museums should be familiar with superior paintings by the elder Breughel, right?
In the attached link you can listen to Kai Ryssdal interview Richard Polsky. It’s very interesting approaching art a price rather than an experience.
http://www.polskyart.com/welcome.html