Art Journal articles from June 1995

Art Journal archives from June 1995

James Ensor's 'Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889': technical analysis, restoration and reinterpretation.
June 22, 1995... "I didn't know the Getty bought modern art," is fairly typical of the response to the museum's purchase in 1987 of the monumental Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. Many art historians found...

Degas's 'Little Dancer': not just a study in the nude. (Edgar Degas)
June 22, 1995... Edgar Degas both launched and concluded his career as a public sculptor with only one sculpture and one exhibition, Little Dancer Fourteen Years Old [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED] in the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition, 1881. Yet in its...

Andean tapestry: structure informs the surface.
June 22, 1995... Andean tapestries are impressive for bold design, brilliant color, and exquisite craftsmanship. This immediate impression belies a vast body of information below the surface, data that might suggest material selection, production techniques,...

Impossible liberties: contemporary artists on the life of their work over time.
June 22, 1995... Intervene in the normal aging process? In my case? There is not much holy about a ball of yarn. Throw it out. Get a new one. I get a lot of resistance when I display this attitude. - Fred Sandblack The consideration of contemporary...

Two bronze herms: questions of mass production in antiquity. (sculpture)
June 22, 1995... We are all familiar with the idea that there was a Greek "original" and a Roman "copy." When the "original" no longer exists, we attempt to discover it through literary references and its "copies," which we consider in its place. Yet it has...

The politics of derestoration: the Aegina pediments and the German confrontation with the past.
June 22, 1995... It needs a particular courage not to overcome the past but to live with it still. - Geoffrey Hartman(1) The pedimental sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina (Munich, Glyptothek) are among the most famous and important artistic...

Reconstructing medieval pictorial narrative: Louis Joubert's tapestry restoration project.
June 22, 1995... I did not know what the tapestries which ornamented the chapel of Our Lady meant and asked in vain for an explanation. - Louis Joubert(1) Restoring tapestries was part of a broad movement from the mid to the end of the nineteenth century that...

'A small knot of cultivated people': William Morris and ideologies of protection.
June 22, 1995... The intriguing story of the early years of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) tends to be overshadowed by the reputation of its founder, William Morris (1834-1896), with the SPAB seen as a vehicle for the development of...

Raphael's 'Foligno Madonna' at the Louvre in 1800: restoration and reaction at the dawn of the museum age.
June 22, 1995... Until the late eighteenth century, picture restoration was an obscure and marginal business, the practice of journeyman artists and picture dealers (themselves often failed painters). Away from the big city, collectors restored their own...

Remaking Bacon. (artist Francis Bacon)
June 22, 1995... John Russell. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993.192 pp.; 37 color ills., 138 b/w. $11.95 paper A large literary corpus has arisen around Francis Bacon reflecting in its size the consistent popularity of the artist as well as the strong...

Francis Bacon.
June 22, 1995... Andrew Sinclair. His Life and Violent Times. New York: Crown, 1993. 368 pp.; 10 color ills., 52 b/w. $30.00 A large literary corpus has arisen around Francis Bacon reflecting in its size the consistent popularity of the artist as well as...

Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times.
June 22, 1995... Ernst van Alphen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.208 pp.; 15 color ills., 108 b/w. $39.95 A large literary corpus has arisen around Francis Bacon reflecting in its size the consistent popularity of the artist as well as the...

Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self.
June 22, 1995... A large literary corpus has arisen around Francis Bacon reflecting in its size the consistent popularity of the artist as well as the strong impact of his paintings. Despite its size, the literary corpus on Bacon can be broken down into two...

New York Dada.
June 22, 1995... Francis M. Naumann. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. 256 pp.; 42 color ills., 178 b/w. $60.00 Of all twentieth-century movements, Dada may be the one that was most assumed out of historical imperatives. In responding to what was perceived...

The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China.
June 22, 1995... James Cahill. Bampton Lectures in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 202 pp.; 2 color ills., 117 b/w. $32.50 Like his previous book, The Compelling Image: Nature and Sty/e in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting,(1) James...

Ma Hezhi and the Illustration of the Book of Odes.
June 22, 1995... Julia K. Murray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 272 pp.; 10 color ills., 144 b/w; 4 diagrams and 8 tables. 55.00 [pounds sterling] Like his previous book, The Compelling Image: Nature and Sty/e in Seventeenth-Century Chinese...

Learning from Mount Hua: A Chinese Physician's Illustrated Travel Record and Painting Theory.
June 22, 1995... Kathlyn Maureen Liscomb. A Chinese Physician's Illustrated Travel Record and Painting Theory. RES Monographs on Anthropology and Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 244 pp.; 8 color ills., 46 b/w. 50.00 [pounds sterling]...

Transcending Turmoil: Painting at the Close of China's Empire, 1796-1911.
June 22, 1995... Like his previous book, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting,(1) James Cahill's latest book has its origins in lectures delivered as part of a distinguished series. The Painter's Practice: How Artists...

The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923.
June 22, 1995... Of the qualities that we identify as specifically twentieth century in nature, the word-images we encounter everyday - from those we find in advertisements to packaging, from billboards to street signs - have been said to be distinctly...

Art and Psychoanalysis.
June 22, 1995... Laurie Schneider Adams. Art and Psychoanalysis. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 366 pp.; 135 b/w ills. $35.00 Eighty-five years ago Freud made his initial excursion in a psychoanalytic exploration of visual art with his 1910 essay...

Looking at Art from the Inside Out: The Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art.
June 22, 1995... Eighty-five years ago Freud made his initial excursion in a psychoanalytic exploration of visual art with his 1910 essay "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood." This much contested essay is studied today from a variety of...