9 May 2006 | Uncategorized
Robert M. Edsel, author of the new book Rescuing da Vinci, yesterday wrote for the Dallas Morning News: “Today we celebrate V-E Day, the 61st anniversary of the Allies’ defeat of Nazi Germany and the victory in Europe. It should also become V-I Day: victory over ignorance … How different things were 65 years ago [...]
9 May 2006 | Uncategorized
If you’re a young art historian on the market — the meat market that is — consider House Music at the Guggenheim: “So I’m at dancing to some really deep House Music at the Guggenheim with this cute young chef/art historian and his friend that I met at a restaurant earlier. The place is really [...]
9 May 2006 | Conferences
You can now order audio recordings of CAA, including the whole conference in mp3 format for $99.95. Download it to your iPod and listen to your favorite sessions over and over.
8 May 2006 | Journals
The inaugural issue of November arrived at our offices. From the Lukacs G.C. Hechnoh article: “…How can we conceptualize this reappearance [of pre-WWII avant-garde aesthetics in contemporary IKEA productions] theoretically? Will it ever be possible for me to stop being nostalgic about the 1920s? And does my own Freudian-like repetition of the same basic argument [...]
8 May 2006 | Contemporary
Images of war: still an all too urgent topic. The edited volume War Visions incorporates analysis of comics and computer games into the study of the aesthetics of war (reviewed by Anne Ulrich). Agnes Matthias considers 30-odd artists who have used photography to address wars of the 1980s and 1990s, connecting them to the history [...]
8 May 2006 | Teaching
Blogger Seven Bellfifth writes: “Ok, Art History. Whatever. It’s what I’m taking a mental break from studying now. My question is: Who the hell cares? Don’t get me wrong–I like art a lot, and I like knowing about art. I just hate being made to memorize bunches of images and their titles and artists and [...]
5 May 2006 | Uncategorized
From the blog Giornale Nuovo: “The second of the four fascinating essays in the Lithuanian-born art-historian Jurgis Baltrušaitis’ book Aberrations is entitled ‘Pictorial Stones’ and is concerned with the varieties of natural imagery found in marbles, agates, alabasters, and the like; and with the kinds of artificial imagery painted upon such stones. The plates in [...]
5 May 2006 | Americas
“Margaretta M. Lovell, a professor of American art and architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of a Smithsonian American Art Museum award that recognizes outstanding scholarship in American art. A three-member committee of American art scholars recently recommended Lovell for the 18th annual Charles C. Eldredge Prize for distinguished scholarship in [...]
5 May 2006 | Career
In Terry Zwigoff’s new film, “Art School Confidential,” “Anjelica Huston pops up as an art-history professor who lectures on the endurance of true art, her warmth, sincerity and seeming lack of desperate ambition making her the film’s most sympathetic figure.”
4 May 2006 | Ancient
From the New York Times: “Inscribed on Sumerian clay tablets more than 4,000 years ago, the Code of Ur-Nammu may be the earliest known recorded set of laws in the world: dozens of rules written in cuneiform about commerce and taxes, family law and inheritance. But many scholars won’t go near the one largely intact [...]
4 May 2006 | Contemporary
“Schein ist mein Lebensthema,” declared Gerhard Richter in 1989 (“appearance is my life’s subject”). Correspondingly, critics have seen in his work a deep skepticism of reality — its declarations, moralities, movements, positions, and ideologies. Jürgen Schreiber’s provocative new biographical study of the artist’s family pictures reaches a radically different conclusion, writes Eduard Beaucamp. According to [...]
4 May 2006 | Ancient
“The archeologists could barely hide their excitement. Beneath the main square of Ecija, a small town in southern Spain, they had unearthed an astounding treasure trove of Roman history. They discovered a well-preserved Roman forum, bath house, gymnasium and temple as well as dozens of private homes and hundreds of mosaics and statues — one [...]
1 May 2006 | Uncategorized
The Art History Newsletter is on vacation and will resume publishing May 4.
In the catalogue to the current Carnegie Museum of Art exhibition Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750-1900, “the first serious, full-scale examination of the subject of animals in art [and] the first to incorporate scientific materials and concepts,” featuring “not only paintings, sculptures, and photographs, but also natural history displays, zoos, taxidermy, and book illustration,” [...]
1 May 2006 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
Martin Warnke’s new book on Velázquez elaborates his conception of the artist as a paragon of artistic freedom. A riposte to Carl Justi’s and José López-Rey’s version of biographical art history, this book takes multiple approaches, tackling the economic decline of the Spanish court; jester and dwarf depiction as an anti-courtly impulse and a lesson [...]
