13 June 2007 | Uncategorized
We’ll resume publication Tuesday, September 4. (If you’d like to receive an email when we do, write us.)
13 June 2007 | Architecture, Journals
Another angle of the ongoing Robert Moses re-evaluation can be considered in the March 2007 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Christopher Klemek writes: “a Manichean narrative depicting an epic clash of the titans — [Jane] Jacobs the Defender versus Moses the Destroyer — has become a popular trope about the salvation of New [...]
12 June 2007 | Uncategorized
A few art historians are starting a discussion, over email, of new ways to write art history. (To join, write us.) The catalyst: A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education described an unusual attempt by a doctoral student to revise Robert Caro’s 1974 portrait of “master builder” Robert Moses, The Power Broker, which [...]
11 June 2007 | Books
In the most recent issue of Revue André Malraux Review (v. 34), Michel Lantelme reviews a 2006 essay collection edited by Jeanyves Guérin and Julien Dieudonné. Its goal, Lantelme writes, is to “rehabilitate Malraux’s art writings”: Knowing he would be read the wrong way, Malraux himself underscored that ‘La Métamorphose des dieux is in no [...]
8 June 2007 | Renaissance
We read that art historian James Beck died recently, at the age of 77. In a festschrift devoted to Beck published last year by Mark Zucker and Lynn Catterson, titled Watching Art, they argued that “Beck should be remembered first and foremost as a great teacher,” in the larger sense of the word. They note [...]
7 June 2007 | Americas, Contemporary
We recently received the book Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, edited by artist Sam Durant, with contributions from Danny Glover, Amiri Baraka, Kathleen Cleaver, St. Clair Bourne, Colette Gaiter, and Greg Morozumi. Durant writes in his introduction, “Many of the images in this book may shock viewers coming to them for the [...]
6 June 2007 | Museums
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden has created a digital facsimile of its Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The copy resides in Second Life, which is a popular “3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” More from the press release: … all 750 masterpieces in the exhibition are on display. The doors are open 24 hours [...]
5 June 2007 | Baroque/Neoclassical
Need a dissertation topic? In the Spring 2007 Renaissance Quarterly, Ann Jensen Adams welcomes two recent books on Rembrandt’s portraits, but finds that still more work needs to be done. In particular, the long-beloved late “half-length introspective figures created in broad strokes brown and ochre … raise important and as yet unanswered questions about contemporaneous [...]
Academic journals often fall comically behind in their publication schedule. For example, we recently received the latest issue of Présence Africaine, by no means the worst offender, dated “1er semestre 2005.” A good read all the same, this issue is devoted to “African Aesthetics and Philosophical Discourses.” Jean-Luc Aka-Evy contributes an article on “the resistance [...]
1 June 2007 | Modern
In the most recent issue of The Polish Review (LII: 1), Bozena Shallcross reviews Marek Bartelik’s Early Polish Modern Art: Unity in Multiplicity. Shallcross notes that at least three recent books “research the same area of Polish culture in its historical formation during the [1920s and 30s], focusing on its fascinating field of visual arts [...]
