by Jon Lackman | 11 October 2010 | Journals
Something else I’d love to see collected into a book: The Burlington Magazine is in the middle of publishing an excellent 18-part series in which authors reconsider seminal books from twentieth-century art history. Published so far:
June 2009: Alexandra Gajewski on “Emile Mâle’s ‘L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France. Etude sur l’iconographie du mozen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration’, 1898″
July 2009: David Summers on “Heinrich Wölfflin’s ‘Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe’, 1915″
August 2009: Richard Verdi on “Roger Fry’s ‘Cézanne, a study of his development’, 1927″
September 2009: Colin Amery on “Nikolaus Pevsner’s ‘Pioneers of the Modern Movement’, 1936″
October 2009: Carmen C. Bambach on “Bernard Berenson’s ‘The Drawings of the Florentine Painters Classified, Criticised and Studied as Documents in the History and Appreciation of Tuscan Art, with a Copious Catalogue Raisonné’, 1903″
December 2009: Christopher Wood on “Ernst H. Gombrich, ‘Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation’, 1960″
January 2010: John Elderfield on “Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s ‘Matisse. His Art and His Public’, 1951″
March 2010: Boris Groys on “Clement Greenberg’s ‘Art and Culture’, 1961″
August 2010: Louise Rice on “Francis Haskell’s ‘Patrons and Painters. A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque’, 1963″
In a preface to the series published in the June 2009 issue, the editors wrote:
Some books were immediately obvious candidates; others, a little more marginal, have been included for the questions they raise about changing attitudes to art and art history … An early consideration was to choose texts that are still easily available; another was to cover a wide range in the genre of art-historical writing; and a further one was that the books in question are still referred to and cited (if not always read) … On occasion we have chosen a less obvious title to reconsider – some may have preferred Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, with its greater breadth of topics, to the highly concentrated ‘Cézanne: a study of his development’ … A further objection to our choice may be that we have not included contributions to the subject that have taken the form of an article or a substantial review. One thinks of crucial essays such as Erwin Panofsky on the Arnolfini portrait (1934) or Rosalind Krauss’s ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’ (1978) … In defence of this restriction, it may be said that a book’s reach is always made greater from the fact that it has been translated into various languages (as have all the books we have selected), while articles, unless anthologised, are invariably not.
Alas, most of the Burlington Magazine’s content requires a somewhat costly subscription or a trip to the library. But attention students: you can get an online sub for just $24/year.
No mention of Edgar Wind’s ‘Pagan Mysteries of The Renaissance’? What a travesty!
$24/year for a digital subscription to hear someone talk about someone else’s book is exactly indicative of the significant short sightedness that plagues art publications. I’d say they are even more clueless in embracing the digital revolution than the arcane clunkers in print news media.
Kind Regards
H Niyazi
Thanks for bringing attention to this series; I will definitely make a visit to the library soon.