The Art Bulletin articles from September 2008

The Art Bulletin archives from September 2008

Raphael's Transfiguration as visio-devotional program.(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... Even to his contemporaries, Raphael's Transfiguration (ca. 1518-20) must have seemed both beautiful and strange (Fig. 1). Combining two distinct narrative subjects with anachronistic witnesses in a single setting, it had few equivalents for...

Gustave Moreau and the reinvention of history painting.(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and histories of art associate Gustave Moreau with fin de siecle Symbolism or Decadence. While this categorization has undoubtedly helped to save Moreau's oeuvre from the oblivion in which despised...

Kuroda Seiki's Morning Toilette on exhibition in modern Kyoto.(Kyoto, Japan)(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... The story of Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924), who left Japan for France at age eighteen to study law but returned almost a decade later an accomplished painter, eventually to revolutionize the art world in his home country, has often been told. A...

The medieval masons' lodge as paradigm in Peter Behrens's Dombauhutte in Munich, 1922.(Munich, Germany)(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... It is my dearest wish no longer to speak of art, rather, that we, those of us who concern ourselves with the field, had the right to call ourselves craftsmen. It is therefore understandable that we came to give our building the name...

Revaluing Minimalism: patronage, aura, and place.(Critical essay)
September 1, 2008... Patronage studies are scarce in the literature on contemporary art for a reason: patrons have rarely exercised a decisive sway over the course of that art, broadly viewed. But the leading patrons of the Minimalist movement may be counted as an...

Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China.(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005. 501 pp.; 21 color ills., 119 b/w. $60.00 Eugene Wang's book on the world of the Lotus Sutra in medieval China is a new and challenging contribution to the field of art history of east Asia, an...

The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture.(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 246 pp.; 49 color ills., 88 b/w. $45.00 Petra ten-Doesschate Chu's The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture seeks to replace the long-standing...

Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War.(Book review)
September 1, 2008... New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 240 pp.; 30 color ills., 95 b/w. $60.00 Returning from Spain just prior to the fascist victory there, George Orwell, who fought with the republican forces, wryly noted, "There are occasions when...

How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness.(Book review)
September 1, 2008... Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007. 384 pp.; 22 color ills., 31 b/w. $30.00 "How to see a work of art in total darkness? One cannot, of course, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, such as when darkness itself forms the basis...

Recent books in the arts.
September 1, 2008... ALAVA, CARLOS J. MARTINEZ. Del romanico al gotico en la arquitectura de Navarra: Monasterios, iglesias y palacios. pamplona, Spain: Gobierno de Navarra, 2008. 432 pp. Cloth[euro]35.00 (8497823529551) ALLEN, CLORIA SEAMAN. A Maryland...

Reviews online: January-March 2008.
September 1, 2008... caa.reviews, published online by the College Art Association, is an online journal devoted to the peer review of new books, exhibitions, and projects relevant to the fields of art and art history. To access a review, type in the URL...