31 March 2008 | Renaissance
In the most recent issue of Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance (69, n3), Frank Lestringant writes on “The Atlas and the Abyss, or the Infernal Cosmography of Jean-Baptiste Trento and Pierre Eskrich: The Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique of 1566″: Despite the upheavals visited upon the 16th century by the great explorations and the concomitant rediscovery of ancient [...]
28 March 2008 | Museums
An anonymous correspondent has provided us with an oh-so-slightly satirized version of a week-long diary recently published by MoMA director Glenn Lowry: Monday To Williams College, which has a strong art history programme (I went there), to deliver a lecture about MoMA’s approach to collecting modern art. I love seeing the energy of students who [...]
26 March 2008 | Uncategorized
From New York Magazine: “Our society now values a Warhol for three times as much money as a great Rembrandt,” [art dealer Larry Salander] thunders, referring to the latest auction reports. “That tells me that we’re fucked. It’s as if people would rather fuck than make love.” An aesthete with no formal art education (nor [...]
24 March 2008 | Books
Should you happen to find it difficult staying awake at CAA one year, you might try gathering tips at the booth of art publisher Abbeville. At one recent conference, they passed the time writing “a story incorporating every single title on display.” Read it at their new blog, the Abbeville Manual of Style, which “discusses [...]
21 March 2008 | Renaissance
Art historian Irma B. Jaffe, 91, is still publishing, which is fortunate, considering that her career, according to the Columbia University alumni newsletter, didn’t begin until almost mid-life: she left the University of Illinois when she was eighteen years old, in her sophomore year, to get married. Twenty years later, the day after she sent [...]
19 March 2008 | Contemporary
In the Winter 2007 Art Journal, Andrea D. Fitzpatrick writes on “The Movement of Vulnerability: Images of Falling and September 11″: Are those who fell to their deaths on September 11, 2001, exploited or honored by the display of images representing their experiences? … images of falling are not new to photojournalism or contemporary art [...]
17 March 2008 | Museums, Renaissance
Fancy a grand tour? This is also a good time to see Renaissance art, with Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome, late Titian in Venice (read more here), Arcimboldo in Paris, our oh-so scandalous man Cranach now arrived in London (read more here, here, here, here, and here), Nethlandish painting on view in Rotterdam, and Ghiberti’s [...]
14 March 2008 | Modern, Museums
If you’re interested in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European painting, you’re in luck. Current exhibitions tackle Courbet, Vlaminck, Vallotton (read here and here), women Impressionists (here and here), and the Barbizon School. Also read here about a lost Cézanne (rough English translation here).
12 March 2008 | Uncategorized
From the Daily Mail (London): Thanks to the bestselling Da Vinci Code, Sotheby’s auctioneer Matthew Festing has his work cut out as the new Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. Ampleforth and Cambridge-educated Festing, 59, finds himself thrust into the limelight as the new leader of the secretive Catholic organisation after a ballot in [...]
10 March 2008 | Books, Teaching
Phaidon is not the only book publisher with a new mega-survey out. Thames & Hudson has recently published Mirror of the World: A New History of Art by Julian Bell: I see art history as a frame within which world history, in all its breadth, is continually reflected back at us — rather than as [...]
7 March 2008 | Books
Frick curator Colin B. Bailey writes in the February 2008 issue of The Art Newspaper: The publication–some 25 years in the making–of the two-volume catalogue raisonné of over 1,100 French ornament and architectural drawings at Waddesdon Manor is a publishing event of the first order … In keeping with Waddesdon’s admirable commitment to publishing its [...]
5 March 2008 | Americas, Photography
The Fall 2007 issue of American Art contains five commentaries on photography. Anthony W. Lee writes: More than most fields, the history of photography is mercurial and eclectic in its interests and methods. This is partly because its subject has continually proved to be a moving target (even the earliest inventors could not agree what [...]
3 March 2008 | Africa, Conferences
The Spring 2008 issue of African Arts contains a review of the recent symposium Global Africa: Through the Lens of Visual Culture, a triennial event that was held concurrently with the University of Florida’s annual Gwendolen M. Carter Lectures on Africa: … we attempt to highlight several of the panels that we believe are indicative [...]
