15 May 2010 | Museums
The Centre Pompidou-Metz, which officially opened Wednesday, is one of a recent surge of “satellite museums” in what would seem to be a contemporary phenomenon. Yet the desire to make use of collections otherwise confined to storage could arguably have emerged simultaneously with the idea of the modern French museum. In 1750, even before the [...]
14 May 2010 | Conferences, Photography
As a San Francisco Chronicle article noted, the SFMOMA recently hosted a symposium, “Is Photography Over?” Refreshingly, its website published the panelists’ statements and created a forum to extend the conversation and draw in more voices (W.J.T. Mitchell wrote, “I am a little grumpy about the premise of this symposium.”) In the Chronicle, critic Kenneth [...]
13 May 2010 | Books, Conferences
In a recent issue of Art Documentation (28:2), Maureen Whalen warns that Many studies have been conducted about the ill effects of being on the ‘wrong’ side of the digital divide. In the field of art history, it appears that the fetish for the printed book and a reluctance to incorporate digital technologies into the [...]
12 May 2010 | Books, Modern, Renaissance, Theory
I am fascinated by the systems through which art is deemed legitimate, and I taught a course on fakes and frauds this past January. The premise was that we can learn about how art is produced, controlled, and valued by focusing on taboo objects. Sometimes such scrutiny will result in a reattribution, such as the one [...]
Also in the April 2010 Art Newspaper, Christopher Riopelle considers Susan Siegfried’s Ingres: Painting Reimagined: The past 15 years or so have been something of a golden age for Ingres studies. The central role that David played a generation ago in studies of the heroic origins of modern art has faded somewhat as scholars now [...]
11 May 2010 | Career
[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of personal reflections by Oliver Shultz on the process of building a career in art history.] Last December, I along with hundreds of other aspiring art historians sent our graduate-school applications out into the void. In the instant after clicking submit, I couldn’t help but wonder [...]
9 May 2010 | Ancient, Books, Modern
Recently in the papers: Stuart Ferguson reviews Ravenna in Late Antiquity, by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis Ingrid D. Rowland, “Radiant, Angry Caravaggio” [$] Julian Barnes on a new, 2,520-page edition of Delacroix’s Journal (“un document étonnamment complexe, hybride, chaotique, labyrinthique”)* Dalia Judovitz on her book Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company
7 May 2010 | Books, Renaissance
In the April 2010 issue of The Art Newspaper, Sylvia Ferino reviews Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s book Arcimboldo: Visual Jokes, Natural History, and Still-life Painting: Since the most recent exhibitions devoted to Arcimboldo, in Paris and Vienna in 2007-8, his composite heads of “The Four Seasons” series, 1573, in the Louvre are said to have become [...]
6 May 2010 | Conservation
Vasari’s “Last Supper” and the Ghent Altarpiece prepare to enter the conservation studio (thanks to the Getty) as the St Korbinian Altarpiece makes its exit.
6 May 2010 | Contemporary, Museums
A few people have already commented on Cy Twombly’s recently unveiled ceiling for the Louvre (here and here) – including one technically detailed letter that reveals a significant part of it was painted by a professor of art history! Last night art historians Alex Potts (who has a forthcoming book on post-war art) and Richard [...]
6 May 2010 | Architecture, Theory
Robert Hewison’s Ruskin on Venice has been reviewed by Steve Donoghue, Jonathan Glancey, Jonathan Wright, and Kevin Jackson. The productive tension between Ruskin’s Protestant moral sense, and his sensual affection for the visual arts, resulted in a distinctive prose variously termed “idiosyncratic,” “incomparable,” “magnificent,” and “gorgeous, insanely overwrought.”
6 May 2010 | Architecture, Medieval
A recent Bulletin Monumental (167-4) carries an obituary of Anne Prache (b. 1931), who died May 1, 2009. “A great figure in the history of art,” she was educated at the Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne, authored numerous books and articles, and eventually returned to the Sorbonne as professor of medieval art. She completed [...]
4 May 2010 | Contemporary, Journals
In a recent issue of Grey Room (n. 37), T.J. Demos writes …. In the journal October, art historian and critic David Joselit raises the seeming contradiction of discovering art that is critical toward consumerism in the very site of the commercial art gallery … [However] the potential of the gallery as a site of [...]
3 May 2010 | Uncategorized
From the Jerusalem Post: [The artist Avigdor] Arikha was also an art historian and published books on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and on the art of painting (Peinture et regard, 1991, On depiction, 1995). He also acted as curator for several exhibitions, including exhibitions of Nicolas Poussin and Ingres at the Louvre in Paris. Also among his [...]
2 May 2010 | Journals
I am fascinated by the state of publishing right now, as we are witnessing extreme polarization of access to information. Kelly just mentioned McGill University’s new journal SEACHANGE, which is part of the Open Access Movement. Free for all. No subscription needed. Instant online access. More such journals are popping up all the time. The University [...]
1 May 2010 | Journals
The first issue of a new journal based at McGill University, SEACHANGE, was just made available electronically. Designed as a venue for creative, interdisciplinary scholarship, its mission is to reconfigure inherited critical discourses in art, media, culture, and technology. Each individual issue is centred around a singular theoretical or affective event, formulated as an “intellectual [...]
