The Art Bulletin articles from September 1995

The Art Bulletin archives from September 1995

Materialist history and its points of difficulty.
September 1, 1995... Art is perforce embedded in history; texts are always and everywhere conditioned by forces that are outside their own articulation. There are two responsibilities for the materialist art historian as a result: (1) imaginatively reconstruct the...

A sculpture, a column, and a painting: the tension between art and history.
September 1, 1995... I encounter nearly every day the instability of the equation "Art > < History." Around the corner from where I work, I pass a Henry Moore sculpture standing at the center of a large square base of marble with deeply cut, radiating lines. Made of...

On not writing the history of Roman art.
September 1, 1995... A centipede was strolling along when a journal editor came by and asked, "How do you know which foot to put down first?" It was days before the centipede could walk again, and weeks before she could stroll. Looking at...

Art, history, and vision.
September 1, 1995... Where there is no vision, the people perish.(1) It is against this double hegemony of a History with a capital H and a Literature consecrated by the absolute power of the written sign that the peoples who until now ...

Art and history: exploring the counterchange condition.
September 1, 1995... In the late twentieth century, one challenging problem in the relationship of art to history is how to connect the multiple histories of the diverse peoples we now study. In the past the discipline focused, understandably, on that history most...

From a better history to a better politics.
September 1, 1995... A Better History The historical inquiry into the art of the past--up to the immediate past--should not be a matter of contention for an academic discipline that calls itself the history of art, no matter how complicated its procedures,...

Motivating history.
September 1, 1995... Under historicism, which entailed the historical study of ancient and modern art as a new paradigm of historical experience, art history handed over lock, stock, and barrel its legitimacy as a medium for aesthetic, philosophical...

Guido Reni's 'Pallione del Voto' and the plague of 1630.
September 1, 1995... With a ferocity that the late twentieth century now understands from the AIDS epidemic, bubonic plague assaulted Europe intermittently from the mid-fourteenth through the eighteenth century, disrupting daily life, devastating populations, and...

The room of maps at Caprarola, 1573-75.
September 1, 1995... This essay, an interpretation of a major Late Renaissance hall of state, is based on four fundamental premises. First, the decorative program of the Room of Maps (Sala del Mappamondo) in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (Figs. 1-5) was based above...

Activating the effigy: Donatello's Pecci Tomb in Siena Cathedral.
September 1, 1995... Most studies of tomb sculpture in late medieval and early modern Europe have focused on the attribution and dating of individual monuments, or have presented typological surveys which emphasize the formal development over time of genres such as...

Crusading ideology and the frescoes of S. Maria in Cosmedin.
September 1, 1995... In the 1260s, Humbert of Romans, former master general of the Dominican order, wrote an instruction book, De predicatione crucis, for aspiring preachers of the crusades.(1) His manual includes several passages of interest to art historians....

Late Medieval Crete and Venice: an appropriation of Byzantine heritage.
September 1, 1995... The complex relationship between Venetian and Byzantine culture in the thirteenth century poses intriguing questions to the art historian. A Byzantine province in the sixth century, Venice became a politically independent state in the early...

Sennacherib's Palace Without Rival at Nineveh.
September 1, 1995... JOHN MALCOLM RUSSELL University of Chicago Press, 1991. 350 pp.; 139 b/w ills. $45.00 The study of ancient Near Eastern cultures is fundamentally different from that of others. No living tradition links us to the Sumerians or Assyrians, the...

The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art.
September 1, 1995... THOMAS F. MATHEWS Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. 208 pp.; 16 color ills., 122 b/w. $49.50 In 336, Donatus, bishop of Carthage (the founder of the schismatic "Donatist" church in Roman Africa), rebuked the imperial...

Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century.
September 1, 1995... FRANCIS FRASCINA, NIGEL BLAKE, BRIONY FER, TAMAR GARB, AND CHARLES HARRISON New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993. 304 pp.; 50 color ills., 200 b/w. $50.00; $25.00 paper. For those who constantly...

Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century.
September 1, 1995... CHARLES HARRISON, FRANCIS FRASCINA, AND GILL PERRY New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993. 280 pp.; 48 color ills., 182 b/w. $50.00; $25.00 paper For those who constantly reconsider what to assign for...

Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between the Wars.
September 1, 1995... BRIONY FER, DAVID BATCHELOR, AND PAUL WOOD New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993. 371 pp.; 64 color ills., 240 b/w. $50.00; $25.00 paper For those who constantly reconsider what to assign for required...

Modernism in Dispute: Art Since the Forties.
September 1, 1995... PAUL WOOD, FRANCIS FRASCINA, JONATHAN HARRIS, AND CHARLES HARRISON New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 1993. 283 pp.; 48 color ills.; 180 b/w. $50.00; $25.00 paper For those who constantly reconsider what...

Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America.
September 1, 1995... DAVID M. LUBIN New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 584 pp., 50 color ills., 140 b/w $45.00 The most ambitious and rigorous studies of 19th-century American ar t have of late donned a coat of many theoretica, methodological colors. This...

Art Education: A Critical Necessity.
September 1, 1995... ALBERT WILLIAM LEVI AND RALPH A. SMITH Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. 280 pp.; 15 b/w ills. $39.95; $16.95 paper When, in 1955, Erwin Panofsky recounted the development of art history in the United States, he turned to the early...

Art History and Education.
September 1, 1995... STEPHEN ADDISS AND MARY ERICKSON Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. 2.56 pp.: 13 b/w ills. $39.95; $15.95 paper When, in 1955, Erwin Panofsky recounted the development of art history in the United States, he turned to the early numbers...

Aesthetics and Education.
September 1, 1995... MICHAEL J. PARSONS AND H. GENE BLOCKER Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. 208 pp.; 11 b/w ills. $39.95; $16.95 paper When, in 1955, Erwin Panofsky recounted the development of art history in the United States, he turned to the early...

Art Making and Education.
September 1, 1995... MAURICE BROWN AND DIANA KORZENIK Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. 240 pp.; 18 b/w ills. $39.95; $15.95 paper When, in 1955, Erwin Panofsky recounted the development of art history in the United States, he turned to the early numbers...