The Art Bulletin articles from June 1996

The Art Bulletin archives from June 1996

Prophets, canons, and promising monsters.(Rethinking The Canon)
June 1, 1996... I used to be almost embarrassed to admit to friends and colleagues the place where I spent so many hours with things medieval. It was constructed to be, and can still be construed as, celebrating those aspects of art history that I had despised...

Colonialism, orientalism and the canon.(Rethinking The Canon)
June 1, 1996... The recent inquiry in art and architectural history that centers on "rethinking the canon" is closely linked with the current focus on sociocultural intersections of the "Western" and "non-Western" worlds. This is clearly manifested, for...

World art studies and the need for a new natural history of art.(Rethinking The Canon)
June 1, 1996... A man looks in through the glass observation window of a dolphinarium. He is smoking a cigarette and blows a puff of smoke into the air. Through the glass he sees a young female dolphin swim off to her mother and take a suck of milk. She then...

Theory as a place. (art theory)(Rethinking The Canon)
June 1, 1996... Theory and History Some years ago I wrote for a collection entitled The New Art History (1986), edited by Al Rees and Frances Borzello.(1) I'm not sure quite what turned out to be the critical fate of this attempt to establish some...

Can the canon burst? (art)(Rethinking The Canon)
June 1, 1996... Without the canon, we cease to think. - Harold Bloom(1) Men think in myths. - Claude Levi-Strauss(2) In his classic study of the caste system in India, Louis Dumont demonstrated in Homo Hierarchicus that Indian society was structured on a...

Cigoli's 'Immacolata' and Galileo's moon: astronomy and the Virgin in early Seicento Rome.
June 1, 1996... A fresco painted by Lodovico Cigoli in a papal chapel in Rome at the beginning of the second decade of the seventeenth century represents the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet,"just as Saint...

Sebastian Brant: the key to understanding Luca Penni's 'Justice and the Seven Deadly Sins.'
June 1, 1996... The Florentine-born painter Luca Penni (1504?-1556/7) was at least in his mid- to late twenties when he made the most critical decision of his career: to travel to France and enter the service of King Francis I.(1) Possibly as early as 1530 he...

Laurentian patronage in the Palazzo Vecchio: the frescoes of the Sala dei Gigli.
June 1, 1996... During his rule of the Florentine government (1469-92), Lorenzo de' Medici imposed his control, ideology, and taste on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of civic power. Although Lorenzo's patronage has been a focus of recent...

The lost wheel map of Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
June 1, 1996... The world map that Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in 1345 for the communal palace of Siena has long since vanished, but not without leaving spectacular traces of its unique design [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1, 2 OMITTED!. A rotating wheel, the work...

Lament for a lost queen: the sarcophagus of Dona Blanca in Najera.
June 1, 1996... The death of a queen in childbirth and the grief of her bereaved husband are represented on one of the most memorable tombs produced in Spain during the twelfth century: that of Dona Blanca of Navarre (d. 1156), wife of Sancho III, king of...

The White Obelisk and the problem of historical narrative in the art of Assyria.
June 1, 1996... The limestone slabs carved with reliefs that lined the walls of the Assyrian royal palaces are among the most admired works of ancient Near Eastern art. These often beautifully preserved sculptures, bearing scenes of royal conquest,...

The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles le Brun's "Conference sur l'expression generale et particuliere.'
June 1, 1996... Spying the love-smitten Juliet from afar, Shakespeare's similarly afflicted Romeo could know the state of her mind, even though she uttered no words: "She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that? / Her eye discourses, I will answer it."(1)...

Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History.
June 1, 1996... Alex Potts's compelling book on Winckelmann might have been called "Mourning the Impossible Ideal." From its wry and poignant choice of jacket illustrations to its Freudian speculations and daring challenges to received wisdom, it sweeps the...

Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France.
June 1, 1996... Readers familiar with Thomas Crow's previous writings will find in his new book the qualities they have come to expect: the same attention to the interaction between artists and institutions, the same sensitivity to the politics of style, and...

Claude Monet: 1840-1926.
June 1, 1996... The four volumes under review offer in microcosm a revealing insight into the state of Impressionist studies: two very different catalogues of major exhibitions, one lavish monograph published to coincide with one of these exhibitions, and a...

Claude Monet: Life and Art.
June 1, 1996... The four volumes under review offer in microcosm a revealing insight into the state of Impressionist studies: two very different catalogues of major exhibitions, one lavish monograph published to coincide with one of these exhibitions, and a...

Monet, Narcissus, and Self Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self.
June 1, 1996... The four volumes under review offer in microcosm a revealing insight into the state of Impressionist studies: two very different catalogues of major exhibitions, one lavish monograph published to coincide with one of these exhibitions, and a...

Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist.
June 1, 1996... The four volumes under review offer in microcosm a revealing insight into the state of Impressionist studies: two very different catalogues of major exhibitions, one lavish monograph published to coincide with one of these exhibitions, and a...

Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979.
June 1, 1996... Shortly after the Chinese Communists gained control of China and established the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, its doors were closed to capitalist countries. As a consequence, Westerners knew very little about the painters, the art,...