31 May 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Medieval, Renaissance
In the February 2007 Renaissance Studies, Victoria Kirkham reviews Patrizia Bettella’s The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque. One chapter “devotes generous space to the ‘guardian,’ since whatever her incarnation — as duenna, chaperone, governess — her function is to ‘guard’ and ‘regard,’ that is, to [...]
30 May 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical
In the latest issue of Seventeenth-Century News (64:3&4), Maureen E. Mulvihill reviews the Van Dyck catalogue raisonné edited by Susan J. Barnes, Nora De Poorter, Oliver Millar, and Horst Vey. Only recently, she writes, “have art historians been in place to confidently compile a ‘complete’ catalogue raisonné of Van Dyck’s paintings. This handsomely produced catalogue, [...]
29 May 2007 | Asia
In the latest issue of Late Imperial China (27:2), Susan R. Fernsebner writes on the Nanyang Exposition of 1910, “China’s first nation-wide exposition”: “expo organizers pursued not only an inventory of empire and a systematic evaluation of its material components (objects, artwork, products, and technologies), but also intended, through the use of both material pedagogy [...]
25 May 2007 | Modern
In the January 2007 Modern Language Review, Martina Lauster argues that Walter “Benjamin’s idea of the flaneur is not only of limited value for an understanding of the nineteenth-century urban experience, but can be seen positively to hamper it. This detrimental effect results from Benjamin’s dogmatic application of a high-modernist, aesthetic concept of self-loss, derived [...]
24 May 2007 | Americas, Museums
In the spring 2007 issue of Latino Studies, Karen Mary Davalos writes on “the meaning of Chicana art collections”: “private collectors fill the vacancy left by local and federal museums and establish a public repository of Chicana art and culture … [like] feminist activists who generate movements for social change … [enacting] a poetics of [...]
23 May 2007 | Americas, Architecture
Diane Brand writes on “Sets and Extras: Ephemeral Architecture and Urban Ceremony in Rio de Janeiro (1808-1821)” in the latest Journal of Latin American Studies (15:3). In the early 19th century, the Prince Regent of Portugal fled to Rio ahead of Napoleon’s anticipated arrival. There, “the royal family indulged in a combination of ephemeral architecture [...]
In the January 2007 Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Jeffrey Weidman reviews the recently released 7th edition of Janson, titled Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition, placing it within the context of “the lineage of English-language art history surveys in America.” The editor of the new edition, Sarah Touborg, abandoned “the stylistic/formalist approach, which had [...]
21 May 2007 | Americas, Conferences, Museums
Has anyone written about the phenomenon of art scholars and curators who also collect? According to Princeton University, John Wilmerding “revealed May 4 at a reception and dinner in honor of his retirement that he is the previously anonymous donor of a major gift of Pop art to the Princeton University Art Museum.” Also, “a [...]
19 May 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Renaissance
David Packwood laments the installation of Craig Clunas as chair of History of Art at Oxford University: “Nobody is better qualified than Clunas to bring a fresh perspective onto the programmes at Oxford University; he has written trenchant books and articles on Chinese art and culture and is admirably suited to ‘join up the dots’, [...]
18 May 2007 | Photography
In a recent article by master’s journalism student John Mitchell, philosopher Robert Sokolowski muses on photography: What is a photograph, anyway? At a time when Adobe Photoshop allows designers to cut, crop, rotate, resize, recolor, and reconstitute any image they please, it’s not always so easy to tell. Sokolowski says the difference between a photograph [...]
17 May 2007 | Conferences, Journals
The most recent issue of Nka (n. 20), devoted to “Lynching, Visuality and Empire,” is drawn from papers delivered at a sympoium at Cornell University. It contains six sections: “Lynching Photographs and the United States,” “Lynching, Visuality, and Empire,” “Exhibiting Lynching,” “Roundtable Discussion,” “Contemporary Artists and Lynching: A Portfolio,” and “Further Readings.” In their introduction, [...]
In CAA Reviews, Larry Silver writes that Rainer Kahsnitz’s new book, Carved Splendor: Late Gothic Altarpieces in Southern Germany, Austria, and South Tirol, is “perhaps one of the most beautiful books ever produced.” Published by Getty, it is “a translation of the 2005 Hirmer edition, with the usual high production values of that Munich art [...]
15 May 2007 | Ancient
How many antiquities have countries such as Greece lost to foreign looters over the centuries? In the latest issue of the lavish Journal des Savants (Janvier-Juin 2006), which is “the oldest literary journal in Europe … founded in 1665,” Alessia Zambon contributes a lengthy article on “Fauvel and Greek Vases”: “[His] first taste of Greece [...]
14 May 2007 | Conferences, Photography
In the most recent issue of History of Photography (30:4), Allison Moore contributes a report from the symposium “Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis,” a recording of which is available online: As soon as the panels began, the need to define atrocity became apparent. Is war in itself an atrocity, or is it only an excess [...]
11 May 2007 | Journals, Theory
“C’est un fait que l’histoire de la peinture en Occident s’est largement construite en rapport avec la littérature.” This statement appears on the back of the most recent issue of Europe (n.933-934), which is devoted to “Littérature & peinture.” Edited by Daniel Bergez, it includes contributions from Yves Bonnefoy, Gao Xingjian, and many others. In [...]
In the most recent Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne (n. 98), Véronique Goudinoux reviews Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art by Charles Harrison: “Can we agree that the question of sexual difference has played a role in the development of modern art since Manet, and if so, what role? … This [...]
In the most recent Colonial Latin American Review (15:2), Jeanette Favrot Peterson reviews Gabriela Siracusano’s recent book El Poder de los colores. De lo material a lo simbólico en las prácticas culturales andinas, Siglos XVI-XVIII: “[This] is a groundbreaking book that bridges the divide between science and art, conservation and aesthetics, or between praxis and [...]
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 [...]
4 May 2007 | Journals
Is garden history a branch of art history? According to David Cooper, author of the recent book A Philosophy of Gardens, it is not. Stephanie Ross notes in her review of Cooper’s book in the Jan. 2007 British Journal of Aesthetics that Cooper “maintains that gardens are not properly appreciated on the model of art [...]
