by Jon Lackman | 15 October 2009 | Theory
We belatedly take note of a new online journal, Republics of Letters, a “peer-reviewed, open-access publication [that] is dedicated to the study of knowledge, politics, and the arts, from Antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the early modern period … sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL) of Stanford University.” In its inaugural issue, co-founder Dan Edelstein asks, “Is Theory Dead?“:
… The fact that these two incompatible perspectives on the state of Theory – it’s totally passé, good riddance, vs. have you read the late Derrida? – can nonetheless coexist does not bode well for the future of the field. Indeed, it is beginning to look increasingly as though Theory will not go softly into that dark night, but rather that the humanities will become engaged in the methodological trench warfare that already defines anthropology and philosophy … There are deep problems with the way Theory has been taught and caught up in academic politics. There is no going back to the ‘80s. At the same time … it is worth recognizing the genuine intellectual thrill that studying Theory can trigger. This means taking a frank look at how and why Theory failed to live up to its promise, and how it could be recast. … the fundamental problem with Theory is that it stopped being theory. Derrida, or Lacan, or Deleuze, were not invoked to question, but to answer … The great theorists of the ‘60s and ‘70s produced works of dizzying interdisciplinarity … While there is no reason that humanities scholars must march in lockstep with the vanguard of other disciplines, intellectual integrity demands that we consider the challenges and debates in those fields. Healthy interdisciplinarity requires regular check ups … Must Althusser or Agamben have the last word on political thought? There is an entire discipline of political theory waiting to be tapped and queried (as Josiah Ober points out in his piece in our inaugural issue). Symbolic thought is a fascinating topic, but wouldn’t it be worth considering, say, Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics instead of just Saussure’s? … Why else do we end up telling the same story over and over again? A story of resistance to power, in which the oppressed are once again endowed with agency, and struggle to overthrow the selfish political and economic structures of class and race … It is time we told some new stories.
by Jon Lackman | 14 October 2009 | Ancient
In a public announcement, NYU Institute of Fine Arts director Patricia Rubin states:
The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University notes with deep sadness the death yesterday of our valued colleague, Dietrich von Bothmer, Distinguished Research Curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to his long curatorial career, Dietrich von Bothmer was on the faculty of the Institute between 1965 and 2006.
According to the Dictionary of Art Historians:
Born to an aristocratic Hanover family, Bothmer worked as a youth for the German-Expressionist artist and sculptor Erich Heckel … In Oxford he met J. D. Beazley with whom he would study … [During WWII] Bothmer joined the U. S. army though not a citizen, and was assigned to the south Pacific theatre … In 1959 Bothmer advanced to Curator. The same year he was elected President of the American committee for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, which he held until 1983. In this capacity, he author two fascicules in the CVA, one for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and another for the Metropolitan … he was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities at Oxford, Trier and Emory, named a Chavalier de la Legion d’Honneur and a member of both the Académie française and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI) … Bothmer’s career at the Metropolitan was often controversial … Bothmer was also accused that his eagerness to secure excellent pieces for the Museum resulted in rewarding unscrupulous dealers and thieves.
by Jon Lackman | 13 October 2009 | Renaissance
A small portrait, the object of considerable controversy over recent years, is increasingly attributed to Leonardo, reports the Guardian:
The small picture of a young woman in profile was previously believed to be a German work from the early 19th century and has changed hands in recent years for around £12,000. But a growing number of leading Leonardo scholars agree the work is almost certainly by the Renaissance figurehead because it appears to have his fingerprint on it. Carbon dating and infrared analysis of Leonardo’s techniques back up the theory. If the scholars are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified for 100 years and will be worth tens of millions of pounds. Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, is so convinced the portrait is a Leonardo that he has written an as yet unpublished 200-page book about it.
For more, see this article from the Antiques Trade Gazette.
Not long ago Martin Kemp dismissed a fingerprint in a similar situation. What makes this case SO different?
by Jon Lackman | 13 October 2009 | Uncategorized
From The New York Times:
Robert M. Murdock, an art historian and curator of 20th-century and contemporary art who organized some notable exhibitions, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 67 … his exhibitions included the first one-person museum show of Richard Tuttle’s work (1971); “Poets of the City: New York and San Francisco” (1974); and “Jess: Translations Salvages Paste-Ups” and “Berlin/Hanover: The 1920s” (both 1977) … exhibitions devoted to the work of Siah Armajani, Helen Frankenthaler and Inge Morath … a retrospective of the Dutch Conceptualist Jan Dibbets … “Theater in Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde Stage Design, 1913-1935” (1992) and “Two Lives: Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz” (1993).
by Jon Lackman | 12 October 2009 | Books, Modern
Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word (1975) and Yve-Alain Bois’s Painting as Model (1991) have just received Portuguese translations. A reviewer for the Brazilian newspaper Estadao takes them to be representative of two opposing views of American modernism.
by Jon Lackman | 12 October 2009 | Modern
The Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute have released a new online edition of van Gogh’s letters:
The edition, based on fifteen years of research, was edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker … For each of the 902 letters the edition gives a transcription of the original Dutch or French text, a translation into English, a full (zoomable) facsimile, comprehensive annotation, and illustrations (about 2000 in all) of the works of art discussed in the letters … An accompanying six-volume book edition is published in three languages (Dutch, French and English).
by Jon Lackman | 6 October 2009 | Uncategorized
Tonight at the Metropolitan Museum, Salman Rushdie in conversation with curator Carmen Bambach, curator Navina Haidar Haykel, and Harvard professor David Roxburgh:
Salman Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence brings together Renaissance Italy, Mughal India, and the cultures that lie between in a tale that has been described as a “sumptuous mixture of history and fable.” The book combines imaginative stories with meticulously researched historical detail, referring widely to works of art of the period. Artists and their creations—from gilded manuscript pages to monumental architecture—form a key to the central themes of the book. In evoking them, Enchantress brings the world of the art historian alive. Rushdie will talk with curators and art historians to explore the aspects of the novel that deal with the visual arts, culture, and historical setting of the period.
by Jon Lackman | 6 October 2009 | Uncategorized
From Artinfo.com:
On Wednesday night, at a benefit to help fund upcoming projects, [The] X [Initiative] honored legendary dealer Paula Cooper and Picasso biographer John Richardson … [Richardson] unleashed a devastating attack on art history professor Rosalind Krauss, a vocal Richardson critic, who — Richardson cheerily noted — once suggested that he would “set Picasso studies back 50 years” through his work … “The history of art is usually taught as the history of artists, of movements, of styles,” Emory University art historian James Meyer told the crowd in his panegyric to Paula Cooper. “The dealer is the unsung hero of these narratives. The gallerist supports the artists morally and financially.”
by Jon Lackman | 6 October 2009 | Museums
From the Telegraph:
Lovers of France’s two great symbols of cultural exception – its haute cuisine and fine art – are aghast at plans to open a McDonald’s restaurant and McCafé in the Louvre museum next month … “This is the last straw,” said one art historian working at the Louvre, who declined to be named … There was already an outcry last year when Starbucks opened a café perilously close to the Right bank museum’s entrance. Employees and art aficionados sent management a petition in protest … France has become McDonald’s biggest market in the world outside of the US, according to the chain.
This story is ridiculous. The “Carrousel du Louvre” has been filled with cheap food-court fare for years. Why should a McDonald’s cause such an uproar? They make it sound like it will be in the museum proper– highly misleading.
indeed. there is a starbucks right near the entrance.
by Jon Lackman | 30 September 2009 | Photography
Thomas Morton recently wrote for Vice:
… Detroit is being descended on by a plague of reporters … The interest in coverage is legitimate … [but they all] write the same story as everyone else. The photographers are the worst. Basically the only thing they’re interested in shooting is ruin porn.
On The Media‘s Bob Garfield interviewed Morton:
BOB GARFIELD: … At one site in particular, Morton noticed that photographers were essentially cropping out the adjacent prosperity.
THOMAS MORTON: And so, he took us on top of this mound where he had taken one of the pictures that really, really evokes this desolation, but if you tilt the camera even just like a little bit to the right or to the left on one side [LAUGHS] there’s this really well-kept food factory building with a nicely manicured lawn out front, and the other way there’s an office building that when we there everybody was out like eating their lunch; it was bustling. There was all this activity.
BOB GARFIELD: A wider shot would have spoiled the mood, eh?
THOMAS MORTON: That is true. Michigan Grand Central Terminal, which is a huge, dilapidated old train station, it’s been that way since the ’80s and there’s been a lot of pictures of it, but it’s kind of considered like an iconic shot to be matched up with the current stories about the bottom falling out of the automotive industry, and such. But it’s just, it’s disingenuous. It’s like going to the base of Roosevelt Island and taking pictures of the old mental hospital from the ’50s to underscore some point about “Obama Care.”
[...]
THOMAS MORTON: I think when you’re presented with a photo and then a little bit of description of it, the image stands so strongly that it’s almost hard to argue it; you’re throwing what seem like minor quibbles at this shot of utter desolation.
by Jon Lackman | 30 September 2009 | Uncategorized
Artsjournal.com blogger Tyler Green has taken aim at an ongoing contest sponsored by the National Arts Journalism Program, a contest being co-directed by Artsjournal.com founder and editor Douglas McLennan (Green hasn’t mentioned the connection):
Several weeks ago, the National Arts Journalism Program launched a contest hoping to find new models for arts journalism. I questioned the exercise but wrote that I was grateful that NAJP had “provided an opportunity for a broader discussion of what art journalism should become.” Not any more … Of the NAJP contest’s five announced presenters (apparently five contest finalists are being held back in secret until Oct. 2), four have little-to-nothing to do with journalism. Three are infotainment projects that more closely resemble a hybrid of iTunes and Access Hollywood than they resemble the investigation, presentation or analysis of events, facts or news … The National Arts Journalism Project’s drift away from journalism is disappointing, but the next problem with the NAJP contest is just as puzzling. It laid down guidelines for entrants [regarding the eligibility of nonprofit projects] — and then admitted that it was disregarding them … Moving the goalposts after the entrants were in strikes at the integrity of the enterprise.
Addenda: Green apparently also weighed in on the journalistic credibility of one of the contest entrants. Worth noting also that fellow Artsjournal.com blogger Lee “Culturegrrl” Rosenbaum entered the contest. [I have included links to Google cache pages, because some original NAJP pages aren't working, at least not at the moment.]
Thanks for the post.
Re: the Rail, if a site isn’t journalism, it can’t have “journalistic credibility.” The mere printing of words doesn’t make something journalism…
Thanks for singling out my CultureGrrl entry. Here’s a better link to what I submitted for the contest: http://najp.org/summit/projects/culturegrrl/. Winners haven’t been announced yet, but, sadly, I was not among them.
Tyler Green has to be one of the grumpiest people on the internet, which is saying something. The combination of bile, pique, outrage, and prolific production seems to have made him the most prominent art blogger around.
by Jon Lackman | 26 September 2009 | Contemporary
From The Prague Post:
Galerie Václav Špála’s current exhibition features seven contemporary Czech artists who were invited to collaborate with other artists – their predecessors as well as their contemporaries – from Czech and Western art history. As a result, art history is not only referred to in this show but is also stolen, changed or recreated. This is only fitting, since the history of art offers endless opportunities for appropriation and reinterpretation …
Ondřej Brody and Marek Meduna are showing Pissoire (2009), a video of the two artists urinating on the grave of the revered Czech art historian and theoretician Jindřich Chalupecký (1910-90). These two were likely inspired by the line from the [show's] manifesto, ‘The artist can use the art to create blasphemies.’ “
by Jon Lackman | 25 September 2009 | Conferences
The Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a conference this Thurs-Fri (Oct 1-2). Participants include Douglas Crimp, Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, Constance Penley, Kaja Silverman, Janet Wolff, Jonathan Flatley, Julia Bryan Wilson, Darby English, Jennifer Gonzalez, Alex Galloway, Brian Goldfarb, Kimberly Christen, Aaron Glass, and Norman Vorano.
by Jon Lackman | 24 September 2009 | Awards, Teaching
From a Pasadena Community College press release:
Art History Professor Sandy Haynes, who developed an online version of Art Fundamentals … is being honored with a top award by the international, learning management company Blackboard … her course was one of only eight submitted by faculty and course designers from around the world that was awarded Exemplary Course designation for 2009. Art Fundamentals is an art history course taught not from the traditional linear, chronological-historical perspective, but from the broader view of looking at the universal language of art through the study of theory, terminology, themes, design principles, media and the history of the visual arts across time and diverse cultures, Haynes explained. “A rich variety of assessments and assignments offers students with differing learning styles, the tools to build meaning while acquiring an understanding of the conceptual goals that are reflected in the student learning outcomes established for the course. Through the organization and presentation of course materials, students are constantly prompted to think about the most fundamental of question in relation to art, ‘What is art?’ ” she said.
by Jon Lackman | 23 September 2009 | Conferences, Contemporary
This November brings the 1st Former West Congress in Utrecht, “the first major public program of the long-term, multifaceted international research, education, publishing, and exhibition project” that “is an attempt to rethink the West and its art out of their hegemonic self-narration and to propose another, speculative view of the history of western art after 1989, one evolving around significant social and political changes and in active dialogue with post-communist and postcolonial thought.” Speakers include Charles Esche, Sarat Maharaj, Renata Salecl, Boris Groys, Paul Gilroy, Catherine David, Simon Sheikh, Claire Bishop, Douglas Gordon, Okwui Enwezor, and Tom Holert.
by Jon Lackman | 21 September 2009 | Museums
We belatedly catch up with former Met director Thomas Hoving, who finished serializing his memoir at Artnet over the summer:
If I could do it over what would I do differently? I would not have gotten my Ph.D. in art history and archaeology nor would I have become a museum curator. I would have taken a great dollop of art history, sure, but I would then have gone to a series of schools and apprenticeships for art conservation. That would have satisfied my hunger for the objects themselves, my desire to become an active artist and would have allowed me to help preserve for other generations wondrous works of art. I would have not restricted myself to great paintings, but would have learned the techniques of fixing up and preserving paper, sculpture, leather and anything blessed artists had used over time to create divine things. Conservation would have enabled me to study and reveal fakes in a more professional way. Plus, since conservators are in such demand, I’d always be employed.
But if Hoving had become an art conservator (they are such a mild-mannered breed), how would he have satisfied his lifelong and relentless search for fame and publicity?
by Jon Lackman | 17 September 2009 | Architecture, Teaching
From the Yale Daily News:
After more than 60 years teaching art history and architecture at Yale, Sterling professor emeritus Vincent Scully is stepping away from the lectern and turning his attention to writing and research. At the age of 89, Scully — a New Haven native who over the years has been called Yale’s greatest lecturer and, by the late architect Philip Johnson, “the most influential architecture teacher ever” — said he does not feel well enough to teach his “Introduction to the History of Art” course … The course will not be offered this fall, and the History of Art Department has not yet decided who will teach the course next year in Scully’s place.
by Jon Lackman | 15 September 2009 | Uncategorized
With this quote from Morelli — “. . . [the] art historian will gradually disappear, no great loss either, you will admit” — the Dictionary of Art Historians injects welcome notes of modesty and humor into what could otherwise come off as a po-faced celebration of largely trivial figures.
We’ve often linked to the Dictionary, but never stopped to remark upon its impressiveness. In the last year alone it’s added 66 new entries to its collection of profiles. It was begun in 1986 as a card file by art librarian and bibliographer Lee Sorensen, who still directs the project and now makes use of a few helpers.
We’ve found it indispensable. As Sorensen notes, “Biographical and methodological information about art historians can be difficult to find. Tucked away in obscure obituaries or foreign-language Festschriften, the basics of where an art historian trained or who his/her major influence was, or even what methodology the scholarship employs are often impossible to discern.”
Amen.
[Tangential question: what would be the best collective noun to designate a group of art historians? A punctum? A vernissage? An intaglio? A carousel? I seem to remember the latter was first suggested by James Elkins in one of his books.]
by Jon Lackman | 10 September 2009 | Museums
In a recent essay for caa.reviews, Carleton College Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection Laurel Bradley considers the fate of the university art museum, a topic on many minds following the recent Rose Art Museum debacle:
Between 1942 and 2008 campus art museums increased dramatically in number … A new funding formula, drawing on private donors in the community, and foundations and government agencies favoring K–12 programs, increasingly replaced the past system that relied wholly on university coffers. New community-based funding solutions to museum budgeting triggered a realignment of mission. As Susan Taylor, then director of the Wellesley College Art Museum, wrote in 1988: “If a college museum seeks outside funding it is critical that its administration recognize the museum’s responsibility to a broad public” … The campus museum began to resemble the civic or independent art museum not only in its professional practices but also in its audience … Students, despite their status as a captive audience, can be hard to find in a college/university art museum … In the shift to the twenty-first century, the tide may be turning back … There are signs that the art museum is being redefined within the university as an active site for teaching and learning for students and faculty not only in the disciplines of studio art and art history but all across the curriculum.
Bradley reviews this new trend at length, then concludes:
Holland Cotter penned a stirring rebuttal to Reinharz’s devaluing of campus museums in the New York Times this past February. With “Why University Museums Matter,” the critic reviewed three exhibitions at various Yale University museum venues. Cotter sees the academic museum as the ideal vehicle to sustain museums and museum practice through hard times … Apparently, campus museums do not need to choose between serving the outside public and internal campus stakeholders. Research-driven exhibitions, inclusive of the questions and experiments at the heart of academic discourse, can also please outside visitors including New York Times critics, and may be essential to the survival of all museums in the twenty-first century.
by Jon Lackman | 9 September 2009 | Modern, Museums
Hamburg is hosting an exhibition on Rosa Schapire, the art historian, feminist and champion of Die Bruecke (she arranged Karl Schmidt-Rottluff‘s first solo show). She battled sexism and anti-Semitism to become a significant scholar and collector, without the help of an inheritance or a rich husband.
Though I haven’t made my way through it, the September issue of Frieze magazine also tackles the “Whatever happened to theory” question.
[...] this week, the Art History Newsletter noted the premier of a new online journal, Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of [...]