26: Jun22

ToC

Translating Warhol: Guest edited by Reva Wolf (State University of New York at New Paltz)

Reva Wolf, ‘Translating Warhol: turbamento, transmutation, transference’ 26/RWf1

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn (University of Paris I—Pantheon-Sorbonne), ‘Warhol in French’ 26/J-CL1

Nina Schleif (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München), ‘Schnecken, Schlitzmonger, and Poltergeist: Andy Warhol in German—translations and cultural context’ 26/NS1

Francesco Guzzetti (University of Florence), ‘La Filosofia di Andy Warhol and the turmoil of art in Italy, 1983’ 26/FG1

Annika Öhrner (Södertörn University), ‘Warhol in translation, Stockholm 1968: “many works and few motifs”’ 26/AO1

Elaine Rusinko (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), ‘Andy and Julia in Rusyn: Warhol’s translation of his mother in film and video’ 26/ER1

Jean Wainwright (University for the Creative Arts, Surrey), ‘Translating Warhol for television: Andy Warhol’s America’ 26/JW1

Deven M. Patel (University of Pennsylvania), ‘Translating texts, translating readers: could Andy Warhol’s writings be translated into Indian languages?’ 26/DMP1

Studies on the Cicognara Library, Part 1 of a series: Guest edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto (New York Public Library)

Jeanne-Marie Musto, Introduction 26/JMM1

Barbara Steindl (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut), ‘The early years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s book collection’ 26/BS1

Translation: Barbara Steindl (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut), ‘Collecting art books: the library of Leopoldo Cicognara and his bibliographic system’ 26/BS2

The Print in the Codex: Guest edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto (New York Public Library)

Jeanne-Marie Musto, Introduction 26/JMM2

Sarah C. Schaefer (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), ‘Bibles unbound: the material semantics of nineteenth-century scriptural illustration’ 26/SCS1

The Influence of the Vienna School of Art History II: The 100th Anniversary of Max Dvořák’s Death, Part 2 with the editorial assistance of Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences)

Katja Mahnič (University of Ljubljana), ‘Max Dvořak and the founding of the “Ljubljana School of Art History”’ 26/KM1

Gaia Schlegel (Università della Svizzera italiana and the Philipps-Universität Marburg), ‘Competing images: illustrated volumes by Max Dvořák and his contemporaries shaping national Art History’ 26/GS1

General papers

Hans Bloemsma (University College Roosevelt, Middelburg), ‘Henry Moore and the historiography of early Italian art’ 26/HB1

Chiara Cecalupo (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), ‘The study and dissemination of an iconography: banquet scenes from the catacombs of Rome to the facsimile catacombs of the nineteenth century’ 26/CC1

Samuel O’Connor Perks (Independent, Leuven), ‘Between mysticism and industry: Breuer, the Benedictines and a binder‘ 26/SOP1

Jindřich Vybíral (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (UMPRUM) in Prague), ‘A man of many gifts and the anti-materialistic struggle in the arts: Ferdinand Feldegg’s monographs on Friedrich Ohmann and Leopold Bauer’ 26/JV1

Amanda Wasielewski (Stockholm University), ‘Interfaces of art: Meyer Schapiro, Fernand Léger, and the role of the art historian in anachronistic artistic influence’ 26/AWa1

Alex Weintraub (Columbia University), ‘Perpetual iridescence, or Impressionism’s minor harmonies’ 26/AWe1

Tommaso Zerbi (Bibliotheca Hertziana), ‘”Neo-Medievalism Studies”, Italy, and the Four Ghosts: architectural history and the study of medievalism’ 26/TZ1

Documents

E. H. Gombrich^†, ‘Reflections on teaching art history in art schools paper given, 4th January, 1966’ 26/EHG1

Jonathan Blower (Independent, London), ‘Max Dvořák, Wilhelm von Bode, and the Monuments of German Art’ 26/JB1

Tomáš Kowalski (Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic, Bratislava), ‘Conference report on: Max Dvořák and the “Denkmalpflege”, 13 October 2021, Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic’ 26/TK1

Elizabeth McGoey (Art Institute of Chicago) and Elizabeth Siegel (Art Institute of Chicago), ‘Photography and Folk Art at the Art Institute of Chicago: new models for exhibitions and scholarship’ 26/EMcG1

Discussion about Matthew Rampley, ‘Networks, horizons, centres and hierarchies: on the challenges of writing on modernism in Central Europe’, special issue of Umění: Journal of The Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, 69:2, 2021, edited by Steven Mansbach. This journal is normally only available on subscription but the editor has kindly agreed to allow the publication of this issue for readers of Katarzyna’s review. 26/U1 (7mB file)

Reviews

Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius (Birkbeck College, University of London), ‘The place of Modernism in Central European art’. Review of: Discussion about Matthew Rampley, ‘Networks, horizons, centres and hierarchies: on the challenges of writing on modernism in Central Europe’, special issue of Umění: Journal of The Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, 69:2, 2021, edited by Steven Mansbach, pp. 142-215, 19 col. plates and 6 b. & w. illus., 99 CZK, ISSN 00495123 26/KMM1

Ian Verstegen (University of Pennsylvania), ‘America’s greatest empiricist’. Review of: Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind by C. Oliver O’Donnell, University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019, 272pp, 36 b. & w. illus. ISBN 9780271084640 26/IV1

ABSTRACTS

Translating Warhol: Guest edited by Reva Wolf (State University of New York at New Paltz)

Reva Wolf, ‘Translating Warhol: turbamento, transmutation, transference’ 26/RWf1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/UOBXJAH.00004072)

Abstract: Andy Warhol (1928–1987) is one of the most famous and influential artists of the twentieth century, and a vast global literature about Warhol and his work exists. Yet almost nothing has been written about the role of translations of his words (understood as collaborative creations), and those of his critics, in his international reputation. ‘Translating Warhol’ aims to fill this gap, developing the topic in multiple directions and in the context of the reception of Warhol’s work in various countries. The contemporary artist Ai Weiwei has often said that the first book he read in English was The Philosophy of Andy Warhol because it was easy for a non-English speaker to understand. A closer look—the kind afforded by the intimacy of translation—offers a different picture, however. ‘Translating Warhol’ explores the questions of interpretation raised by the challenges of translating the double meanings, ambiguities, paradoxes, now-obscure cultural references, and slang populating Warhol’s publications. Linguistic as well as other forms of translation are considered. The articles comprising ‘Translating Warhol’ also reveal how, for example, Warhol’s queer identity has been either concealed or emphasized through the process of translation, or how translation has affected the presentation of his political and social positions and attitudes. Translation extends Warhol’s collaborative approach to crafting language, and like it, transmutes and yet also promotes the human understanding we all seek.

Keywords : Warhol, translation, Warhol in translation, translation studies, Warhol’s publications

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn (University of Paris I—Pantheon-Sorbonne), ‘Warhol in French’ 26/J-CL1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004074)

Abstract: To translate is like playing a violin: more or less off-key, but always off-key. To examine the translations of Warhol—of his words and film images—is to see in evidence an effort, conscious or otherwise, to water down the power of these words and images, to bring them into a normativity that they exceed. It is to follow the moment in which a culture digests, for better and worse, what nourishes its body.

Keywords: Warhol in French, Warhol’s films, translation and sexuality, Victor Bockris, Alain Cueff

Nina Schleif (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München), ‘Schnecken, Schlitzmonger, and Poltergeist: Andy Warhol in German—translations and cultural context’ 26/NS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004075)

Abstract: This paper focuses on the role German translations played in Warhol’s early and unusually wide critical reception in West Germany. Here he had some of his earliest exhibitions and collectors, here his art and films found an exceptionally appreciative audience. His art-historical reception was governed, from the beginning, by the teachings of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, which divided his West German audience into two camps: one that believed his art was Marxist, the other that it was anti-Marxist. This unique reception was key to the chronology and varying quality of the German editions of Warhol’s books.

Keywords: Andy Warhol, Frankfurt School, critical theory, translation, artist books, Pop art in West Germany

Francesco Guzzetti (University of Florence), ‘La Filosofia di Andy Warhol and the turmoil of art in Italy, 1983’ 26/FG1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobx.00004076)

Abstract: The article revolves around the first Italian edition of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. By reconstructing the history of the reception of Warhol in Italy since the 1960s, I position the book within the cultural moment at the turn of the 1980s. I look at the strategies behind the publication and compare it with the original English edition to assess both the editorial presentation and the quality of the translation. Focusing on the similarities as well as the diverging aspects, I argue that the book reinforced the perception of Warhol in Italy as an influential, yet controversial, figure.

Keywords: history of publishing, Italian studies, visual studies, Germano Celant, Pop art, translation studies

Annika Öhrner (Södertörn University), ‘Warhol in translation, Stockholm 1968: “many works and few motifs”’ 26/AO1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004077)

Abstract:The essay explores aspects of translation in connection to Andy Warhol’s first major exhibition in Europe, at the 1968 Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, viewed as a unit of verbal as well as visual texts. The catalogue performed translation as such, of phrases attributed to Warhol. While translation tends to be understood as a functional mode of transport of original meaning to any position, this study, following the theories of Michel Espagne, focuses on how the show was ‘coded’ into the new space, something which is here contextualised through an exhibition project in Sweden occurring the previous year, Multikonst. The concept of repetition is found as the core message of this translation. It has been argued that the Warhol show had a general negative response locally, but on the contrary, it appears to have resonated well both in intellectual circles and in the Swedish art world in general. In addition, Warhol’s exploration of ‘queer’ identity in his films was discussed openly in Sweden.

Keywords: Andy Warhol translated, Andy Warhol in Stockholm, Multikonst, Moderna Museet 1968, repetition.

Elaine Rusinko (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), ‘Andy and Julia in Rusyn: Warhol’s translation of his mother in film and video’ 26/ER1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004079)

Abstract: Andy Warhol’s first language was Rusyn, an East Slavic language related to, but distinct from, Russian and Ukrainian. His mother, Julia Warhola, spoke Rusyn with Andy all her life. Warhol taped her Rusyn-language discourse and oral narratives in three unreleased Factory Diary videos, which provide insight into Julia’s personality, Warhol’s biography, and the mother-son relationship. Warhol’s film from 1966, The George Hamilton Story, popularly known as ‘Mrs. Warhol’, featured his mother speaking heavily accented English, which Warhol exploited for cinematic comedy. Viewers familiar with Julia’s speech style and the Carpatho-Rusyn context discern a serious effort at communication on her part, which is thwarted by Warhol’s defamiliarization, resulting in what Warhol called creative ‘transmutation’.

Keywords: Rusyn language, Andy Warhol, Julia Warhola, ‘Mrs. Warhol’, Factory Diaries.

Jean Wainwright (University for the Creative Arts, Surrey), ‘Translating Warhol for television: Andy Warhol’s America’ 26/JW1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004080)

Abstract: This paper discusses the challenges inherent in translating Andy Warhol’s art for television, focusing on the treatment of Pink Race Riot [Red Race Riot] (1963)and The American Indian (Russell Means) (1976 –1977) for the 2022 BBC2 documentary Andy Warhol’s America. The role of the director and producer, the interviewees and archival selection are examined in terms of translation from the scripts and editing to the screen. The medium specificity of television is explored, drawing upon interviews with the programme’s creators. What happens in the compression of historical intricacies, political imperatives and art historical debates for the purpose of translation into moving image sequences? What becomes lost, gained, compromised, distorted, fragmented or transposed in the process?

Keywords: translation, Andy Warhol, race riots, The American Indian (Russell Means), television

Deven M. Patel (University of Pennsylvania), ‘Translating texts, translating readers: could Andy Warhol’s writings be translated into Indian languages?’ 26/DMP1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004081)

Abstract: Translating time- and context-bound subjects cross-culturally requires creative negotiations that often exceed the usual challenges a translator faces. Translating Andy Warhol’s writings, ever so resistant to translation for multiple reasons explored here, presents layers of complications that might make one question if the effort is even worth it. Drawing upon the insights of veteran translator-scholar A.K. Ramanujan and Bhupen Khakkar, India’s first Pop artist, this article speculates on how one may approach a translation of Warhol’s writings into Indian languages other than English and why such an enterprise has yet to be undertaken even if it were to be desirable and possible.

Keywords:Warhol, translation, Ramanujan, Khakkar, Pop, cross-cultural

Studies on the Cicognara Library, Part 1 of a series: Guest edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto (New York Public Library)

Jeanne-Marie Musto, Introduction 26/JMM1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004082)

Abstract: ‘The early years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s book collection’, the first of two articles by Barbara Steindl that follow, was first presented at the 2019 College Art Association Annual Conference. This article forms a prequel to the second, ‘Collecting art books: the library of Leopoldo Cicognara and his bibliographic system’, which first published in 2014 in Italian. Translation of this article into English forms part of a larger project to expand the reach of the Digital Cicognara Library. Funds for this project have been provided by a grant from the Kress Foundation’s History of Art Grants Program. Steindl’s studies of the Cicognara Library are indispensable to a solid understanding of the history, scope, and organization of the Cicognara library – a historic collection that survives intact as the Fondo Cicognara in the Vatican Apostolic Library.

Key words: history of libraries, Leopoldo Cicognara, College Art Association, Kress Foundation, Digital Cicognara Library, art libraries, art historiography

Barbara Steindl (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut), ‘The early years of Leopoldo Cicognara’s book collection’ 26/BS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004083)

Abstract: Based on a newly discovered inventory, the article examines the early years of Francesco Leopoldo Cicognara’s book collection. Begun in 1798 as a suitable activity for a diplomat and as a cover for subversive contacts in Masonic circles, the collecting activity is described during the turbulent years between 1798 and 1804. Cicognara’s attitude and interests seem to have changed during these years, so that the focus shifted from purely bibliophilic interests to the content of the books themselves, turning the collection into a scholarly tool for research in art history.

Keywords: Leopoldo Cicognara, book collection, Italy, political situation 1798-1804

Translation: Barbara Steindl (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut), ‘Collecting art books: the library of Leopoldo Cicognara and his bibliographic system’ 26/BS2 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004084)

Abstract: Based on a newly discovered inventory, this article examines the early years of Francesco Leopoldo Cicognara’s book collection. Begun in 1798 as a suitable activity for a diplomat and as a cover for subversive contacts in Masonic circles, the collecting activity is described during the turbulent years between 1798 and 1804. Cicognara’s attitude and interests seem to have changed during these years, so that the focus shifted from purely bibliophilic interests to the content of the books themselves, turning the collection into a scholarly tool for research in art history.

Keywords: Leopoldo Cicognara, book collecting, Cisalpine Republic, Italian Republic, history of libraries, art historiography

The Print in the Codex: Guest edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto (New York Public Library)

Jeanne-Marie Musto, Introduction 26/JMM2 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004085)

Abstract: Sarah Schaefer’s study of nineteenth-century Bibles is the first of two papers from a session held at the 2021 College Art Association Annual Conference that will appear in this journal. Entitled ‘The Print in the Codex’ and sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America, the session considered books transformed through the incorporation of independently printed images. In tracing the transformation of extra-illustration into standardized illustration, Schaefer provides significant insights for both book and print history. In the next issue of this journal, a paper by Sylvia Massa will consider codices created to house single-sheet prints. The integration of these codices into public collections has frequently meant removing the prints from the bindings altogether and, thereby, removing their historical context. Focusing on developments at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, her paper sheds light on an overlooked aspect of book and print history of importance to both curators and print historians.

Key words: Bibliographical Society of America, College Art Association, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, extra-illustration, print rooms, book history, history of collecting

Sarah C. Schaefer (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), ‘Bibles unbound: the material semantics of nineteenth-century scriptural illustration’ 26/SCS1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004086)

Abstract: This article takes as its starting point The Pictorial Bible, considering it as an historiographical vehicle for both biblical imagery and print history in the nineteenth century. The publication is significant alone as a compendium of visual forms, functioning for viewers even today as a vast collection of Judeo-Christian pictorial expression in the West stretching back to antiquity. This will become an underlying characteristic of much nineteenth-century scriptural illustration: the attempt to underscore the heterogeneity of the Bible while preserving its status as discursively unified object. What distinguishes this context from earlier moments in the history of the Bible and of print culture are an increased emphasis on historical authenticity and objectivity, and the availability of a diverse set of print processes, each with its own layers of perceived value.

Keywords: pictorial Bible, family Bible, Charles Knight, John Kitto, wood engraving, Cassell, steel engraving, Julius Schnorr von Carlsfeld, Gustave Doré, Harper & Brothers

The Influence of the Vienna School of Art History II: The 100th Anniversary of Max Dvořák’s Death, Part 2 with the editorial assistance of Tomáš Murár (Czech Academy of Sciences)

Katja Mahnič (University of Ljubljana), ‘Max Dvořak and the founding of the “Ljubljana School of Art History”’ 26/KM1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004087)

Abstract: France Stele, Vojeslav Mole and Izidor Cankar, who are considered the founders of Slovenian art history as a modern scientific discipline, were all students of Max Dvořak. Traces of the relationship between Dvořak and his three Slovenian students and of his influence over them can be found in different types of sources. I first focus on the preserved personal and intimate documents, their mutual correspondence and on their autobiographical and biographical texts in which we can learn a great deal about Dvořak as a person and teacher. Then I turn to the “historiographical” texts among which Stele’s texts hold a special place; in them he outlined the process of forming the “Ljubljana School of Art History” and defined the origins of its conceptual and methodological framework with one of its key foundations being the ideas of Dvořak.

Key words: France Stele, Izidor Cankar, Vojeslav Mole, Ljubljana School of Art History, Max Dvořak

Abstract: This article focuses on the visual material of illustrated volumes of art and architectural histories produced and published by Max Dvořák and his contemporaries. On the one hand, such images were considered necessary instruments to disseminate art-historical knowledge. As ‘visual archives’, they served as collections of scholarly working objects. On the other hand, the images moreover became visual representatives of heritage, constructing national identities in Central Europe and having a lasting influence on art historical discourses. This article considers how audience and publishing requirements, technical possibilities of the visualisation and image reproduction processes and lastly ideologies shaped the images of (national) art of the time.

Key words: art historiography, visualisation, heritage, patriotic art history

General papers

Hans Bloemsma (University College Roosevelt, Middelburg), ‘Henry Moore and the historiography of early Italian art’ 26/HB1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004089)

Abstract: Henry Moore’s fascination with early Italian art manifests itself not only in his work but also in interviews, letters and other texts. His comments on Giotto, Masaccio and Giovanni Pisano are of special interest. They testify to Moore’s admiration for these artists and for qualities in their work that fuelled his own modernist ambitions. They also bear witness to art-historical debates about early Italian art at a moment when it was undergoing a particularly formalist construction. In this article, Moore’s ideas will be situated against the background of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century scholarship on early Italian art. The article will explore to what extent Moore’s observations are comparable to that of contemporary art historians. It will also identify moments where Moore’s ideas offer unique and original perspectives on the work of Giotto, Giovanni Pisano and Masaccio that were not shared by his contemporaries.

Key words:Henry Moore, early Italian art, Giotto, Masaccio, Giovanni Pisano, formalism

Abstract: The text traces the discovery and the history of two important banquet scenes from the Roman catacombs (from the Catacombs of Callixtus and from the Catacombs of Priscilla). It focuses on the interpretations given to the scene from the 19th century onwards and on its fortune in Europe: reproductions of the scenes found in various churches and chapels up to the middle of the 20th century are here presented. This overview will be useful to understand how the study and reproduction of a single iconography can contribute to a general reconstruction of the development of the discipline of early Christian art history.

Key words: catacombs, banquet, paintings, facsimile, copies

Samuel O’Connor Perks (Independent, Leuven), ‘Between mysticism and industry: Breuer, the Benedictines and a binder‘ 26/SOP1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004091)

Abstract: In much of the recent literature covering the interaction between religion and aesthetic modernity, modern ‘sacred’ architecture has been understood as an initiative to safeguard an autonomous, separate notion of ‘sacred space’ against the reifying effects of a technocratic modernity. Within this historiographic lens, modern ‘sacred’ architecture is placed in opposition to what the historian of religion Mircea Eliade refers to as the ‘junk space’ of modern profane architecture. However, when examining the conceptual interactions between the Benedictine monks of Collegeville in Minnesota and the Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer during the course of their collaborative project for an Abbey Church in their religious community (1953 – 1961), a more nuanced picture of the interaction between ‘functionalist’ (modern) and ‘symbolist’ (pre-modern) ideas emerges. Drawing on a key series of documents Breuer collated in a binder throughout the course of the project, this article unpacks the way in which key terms such as ‘functionalism’ and ‘symbolism’ were negotiated across this cultural divide. The first part of the article examines the extent to which Breuer’s architectural design at St John’s could be considered ‘symbolic’. The second part interrogates the reasons behind the rejection of a design for the main window by fellow Bauhäusler, Josef Albers. The article concludes with a coda on how the arguments mobilised throughout the collaboration questions key tenets of much of the historiography which has informed discourses on modern ‘sacred’ architecture.

Key words: functionalism, symbolism, sacred, Benedictine, Bauhaus

Abstract: The paper deals with two monographs of contemporary architects, published in Vienna in 1906-1918 by Ferdinand von Feldegg. The founder and long-time editor of the magazine Der Architekt was one of the central figures of the Central European architectural scene around 1900. As the main author of a book about Theophil Hansen from 1893, he became the founder and for a long time the most important representative of the genre of architectural biography in Austria. However, the monographs on Ohmann and Bauer are not part of historical discourse, but arose in the process of formulating the principles of modern architecture and were supposed to prove the historical legitimacy of its more conformist faction. Feldegg presents Ohmann and Bauer as the creator of the synthesis of historicism and modernity as the postulated architecture of the future. At the same time, they appear in the monographs as an antitype of Otto Wagner, whom Feldegg criticized for extreme anti-artistic rationalism. The paper shows the narrative strategies of Feldegg’s monographs and reconstructs the historical and cultural context of both works.

Key words: modern architecture, architects´monographs, aesthetic individualism, opposition to modernity

Amanda Wasielewski (Stockholm University), ‘Interfaces of art: Meyer Schapiro, Fernand Léger, and the role of the art historian in anachronistic artistic influence’ 26/AWa1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004093)

Abstract: In the 1930s Meyer Schapiro introduced the modern painter Fernand Léger to a tenth-century Beatus manuscript (M.644) in the collection of the Morgan Library. This encounter inspired formal changes in Léger’s work during the 1940s, as evidenced by his series of paintings titled Divers and Acrobats. While this anecdote has been regularly related in the scholarship on both the Morgan Beatus and Léger’s work, it has never been seriously analyzed. This article looks at this episode in depth and argues that, by treating the mutual influence between the manuscript and Léger’s work as an essential part of the life of each of these artworks, we reassert the importance of art historians in mediating and influencing the course of contemporary art in their own time.

Key words: Meyer Schapiro, Beatus, Fernand Léger, Morgan Library, provenance, taxonomy, Apocalypse

Alex Weintraub (Columbia University), ‘Perpetual iridescence, or Impressionism’s minor harmonies’ 26/AWe1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/UOBXJAH.00004094)

Abstract: In histories of modern colour, simultaneous contrast has become something of an idée fixe. From Paul Signac’s 1899 treatise, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, to Laura Anne Kalba’s celebrated monograph, Color in the Age of Impressionism (2017), all paths seem to lead back to Eugène Chevreul and to the maximization of chromatic intensity. This essay develops an alternative history of modern colour, which simultaneous contrast has thus far outshined—that of iridescence. The Impressionist (and Neo-Impressionist) desire to represent iridescent colours is found to relate to a contrasting—and more paradigmatically Impressionist—aesthetic rationale for the same formal procedures of divided touches, which are typically associated with simultaneous contrast. Through an examination of iridescent colours in cognate fields of glassware, fashion, and photography, alongside close analyses of a few signal paintings by Berthe Morisot, it is argued that by the end of the 1870s, one of the major aesthetic antinomies that would go on to determine later critical debates surrounding avant-gardist and Modernist approaches to colour had already emerged: whether colour’s aesthetic value derives from its meaningfulness within a pictorial representation or from its physiological effects on the viewer’s experience.

Key words: Impressionism, colour theory, Paul Signac, Berthe Morisot, Modernism

Tommaso Zerbi (Bibliotheca Hertziana), ‘”Neo-Medievalism Studies”, Italy, and the Four Ghosts: architectural history and the study of medievalism’ 26/TZ1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004095)

Abstract: This historiographical piece has two main objectives. On the one hand, it sets out to offer the first sustained discussion of the study of – and the tendency to ignore, underestimate, and criticise – Italian neo-medieval architecture. On the other, by focusing on the Italian case, it reflects on the interplay of architectural history and medievalism studies, making the special claim that, if medievalism and medievalism studies can be defined as the responses to the Middle Ages and the study of those responses, respectively, then ‘neo-medievalism’ and ‘neo-medievalism studies’ shall describe the architectural and artistic manifestations of medievalism and their study. Using the analogy of the ‘Ghost of the Present’, the ‘Ghost of the Future’, and the two ‘Ghosts of the Past’, the article opens by discussing the reasons for the neglect and marginalisation of, and bias towards, Italian neo-medieval architecture. After reconstructing a critical history of the key episodes in scholarship that has touched upon Italian neo-medieval architecture, it proposes an analysis of the notion of – and an apologia for the study of – neo-medievalism beyond the boundaries of space, style, and time.

Key words: architectural history, medievalism, neo-medievalism, revival, Italy, historiography, architecture

Documents

E. H. Gombrich^†, ‘Reflections on teaching art history in art schools paper given, 4th January, 1966’ 26/EHG1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004096)

Abstract: With the creation of the Dip. A. D., formal teaching of art history became mandated in the Uk’s art schools. In a talk to university heads of art history, who would be required to train the required art historians, Gombrich addressed the problem of what they should teach. Far from advocating the common university curriculum, he recommended drawing upon local traditions of art and craft practices. While suggesting that students should have a basic awareness of art history’s historical map, if they should become needed to teach the subject, ‘I should try to investigate with them what it was like to be an artist in the past, what tasks he had to perform and in what concrete contexts the works of art took shape which we still admire.’

Key words: history, distrust of clichés, orientation, styles, liturgy, local objects, artistic values

Jonathan Blower (Independent, London), ‘Max Dvořák, Wilhelm von Bode, and the Monuments of German Art’ 26/JB1 (https://doi.org/10.48352/uobxjah.00004097)

Abstract: This paper was originally published on the ninetieth anniversary of Max Dvořák’s death, in ARS – Journal of the Institute of Art History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (2011). It is based primarily on the correspondence between Dvořák and Wilhelm von Bode, the so-called Bismarck of the Berlin museums. In conjunction with various other sources, this correspondence reveals that Dvořák – who is usually hailed as the founding father of Czech art history – was heavily involved with Bode’s Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft (est. 1908), a very German society of art historians, and that he even drafted the programme of its grand series of art historical publications, Die Denkmäler der Deutschen Kunst (The Monuments of German Art), a monumental undertaking that was projected to stretch to some four hundred volumes.

Key words: Max Dvořák, Wilhelm von Bode, correspondence, Vienna School, monuments, CIHA

Abstract: The year of 2021 was remembered as the centenary of the death of Max Dvořák, one of the leading figures of the Vienna School of Art History. The branch of Austrian monument protection represented a lesser-known field of his professional career. This extended report gives an overview of the international online symposium organized by the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic.

Key words: Max Dvořák, monuments protection, heritage conservation, international symposium, report

Abstract: In the 1930s, a surging interest in early American vernacular arts, collectively referred to as folk art, converged with major photographic documentation projects of the Great Depression. These twin impulses—to collect the past and record the present—flourished concurrently during this critical period in American history. As artists, curators, collectors, and even government administrators sought to define American visual identities that were distinct from Europe, they found symbols of an American culture that was egalitarian, unpretentious, and self-made. The exhibition Photography and Folk Art: Looking for America in the 1930s (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2019) brought documentary photographs and folk art objects together to explore the aesthetic and conceptual connections between two fields—linked by overlapping networks of cultural agents—that had long been studied separately in disciplinary silos. This article details the exhibition’s collaborative research and discovery process, innovative display and interpretive strategies, and ultimately present-day relevance for twenty-first century audiences.

Keywords: photography, folk art, Great Depression, Index of American Design, Farm Security Administration, Works Progress Administration, Art Institute of Chicago

Discussion about Matthew Rampley, ‘Networks, horizons, centres and hierarchies: on the challenges of writing on modernism in Central Europe’, special issue of Umění: Journal of The Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, 69:2, 2021. This journal is normally only available on subscription but the editor has kindly agreed to allow the publication of this issue for readers of Katarzyna’s review. 26/U1 (7mB file)

Abstract: Discussion of Matthew Rampley’s ‘Networks, horizons, centres and hierarchies: on the challenges of writing on modernism in Central Europe’, with contributions by a number of scholars, edited by Steven Mansbach.

Key words: East Central Europe, pitfalls of western art history, postcolonial theory, horizontal art history, canon, hierarchy, centre and periphery, Piotrowski

Reviews

Abstract: Piotr Piotrowski’s concept of horizontal art history was first formulated in his article ‘On the spatial turn, or horizontal art history’, published in Umění in 2008. Devised for East Central Europe, it derived its impetus from critical geography, which offered him tools for negotiating both the pitfalls of western art history marginalising the peripheries, as well as the conceptual framework provided by postcolonial theory. The precepts of the horizontal art history, widely discussed and used both within and outside the region, have been recently re-examined by Matthew Rampley who submitted to Umění a provocative article, assessing its aims and impact, as well proposing a new set of insights on methods and practices of studies on modern art of the region. This text is a review of the debate which, stimulated in turn by Rampley’s contribution, was published in the same issue of Umění in 2021. Guest edited by Steven Mansbach, the issue includes texts by Beáta Hock, Marie Rakušanová, Milena Bartlova, Magdalena Radomska, Jeremy Howard, Raino Isto, Claire Farago, Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács.

Key words: East Central Europe, pitfalls of western art history, postcolonial theory, horizontal art history, canon, hierarchy, centre and periphery, Piotrowski

Abstract: In this first biography of Meyer Schapiro, C. Oliver O’Donnell presents an account of Schapiro as theorist, to connect him more thoroughly to intellectual trends of the twentieth century. O’Donnell makes his case through a series of well-researched “debates” in which Schapiro engaged, including Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud. This review considers the interpretation of these encounters and the profile of Schapiro that we are left with.

Key words: Meyer Schapiro, John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Marxism, art historical methodology

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