bklynbiblio

Winter Exhibitions 2012

2012-01-22T00:26:00.000-05:00

I've been M.I.A. for the past few weeks dealing with everything from a stomach virus to real estate drama, work stress, and writing projects I've needed to catch up on. But it hasn't all been bad. I've had a few opportunities to see a exhibitions since Winter began (we had a bit of snow today, but not enough to warrant a first snowstorm post). Last weekend it was all about Brooklyn Museum. I had gone to see Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties with DC soon after it opened, and I thought it was an excellent show, so I was delighted to return with a few other friends and see it again. Encompassing 140 works, the show introduces you to new artists and works you've never seen before, then pairs them old standards that take on new life seen from this 1920s-only perspective. When I first wrote about going to see this show, I used the Luigi Lucioni portrait of Paul Cadmus as my image, but this time around I thought I'd show from the exhibition this beautiful photograph of the actress Gloria Swanson by Nickolas Murray (image: George Eastman House, Rochester). According to the curators, positioning her arms in this way became a 1920s trope of feminine beauty: "A beautiful woman’s depth was to represent her holding her face, masklike, in her hands, as if to signal the simultaneous acts of self-invention and containment." In addition to mixing paintings, sculptures, and photographs, I love that the show focuses on portraiture and the body, although there is an entire room devoted to abstraction and the urban environment. Even the section on still lifes is fascinating. Who knew that grouping paintings of calla lilies by artists as diverse as George O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others, and then mirroring them with a Grant Wood portrait of an old woman holding a cactus, could provide to be such a fascinating cross-section of art from one decade? The show closes this weekend and travels, but I'm determined to buy the exhibition catalogue, the show was that good.

We also saw HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the gay/lesbian art exhibition, which I had first seen in Washington, D.C. with RL back in December 2010. Now, I know I should be supportive of this exhibition. After all, it is the very first show to focus on gay/lesbian art by a major museum (National Portrait Gallery and now Brooklyn Museum). And of course I do support it from a social-historical perspective. It is important and it is ground-breaking, even if there had not been any controversy over the inclusion of David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly. There are a number of works in the show that are interesting and worth seeing, like the earliest work you see here, a photograph of the poet Walt Whitman by the painter Thomas Eakins (image: NPG). Whitman became a champion of male-male love with his poems in Leaves of Grass (1855) and was known to have a longtime lover named Peter Doyle. And yet, as I went through the exhibition (again), I found myself often questioning why other works were even in the show. For instance, why include George O'Keeffe? The wall text talks about the sexual imagery inherent in her flower paintings, but then notes that she often denied it. What does this have to do with gay/lesbian art? O'Keeffe was not a lesbian, so presumably the implication is that this is about sexual identities, not gay/lesbian identities? But it doesn't say that. And the concept of "portraiture" is really stretched here, which typically isn't a problem, but it's not defined up-front for audiences, so I feel like people don't necessarily understand this is more about gay/lesbian identities then specifically pictures of gay/lesbian artists or sitters. My lesbian couple friends told me they didn't think there were even any women artists in the show because all the promotional material seemed to focus so much on men. That was surprising to hear, but definitely a noteworthy point. There are women artists and subjects in the show, but they are minimal. What was interesting is that Youth and Beauty actually seemed to have a greater celebration of the gay/lesbian subcultures of the 1920s than HIDE/SEEK did. So the exhibition is worth seeing for certain, but it may leave you with more questions than answers.

Over at The Met, I've finally been able to get to see some of the current exhibitions. Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine will leave you chuckling aloud, showing that we've always had a sense of humor for hundreds of years now. The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini is an impressive grouping of paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the 15th to early 16th centuries. The room dedicated to the de' Medici family is excellent, and the busts by Mino da Fiesole are absolutely brilliant. The new galleries for paintings and sculpture in the American Wing also just opened, and they really are beautiful. The New York Times published a press preview by Carol Vogel and a great review by Holland Cotter, who with his usual flair describes them as "sensational." The highlight of the galleries is Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, an enormous picture that has been restored and newly framed, but let's face it, we're most excited to see John Singer Sargent's Madame X, 1883-84, is back and hanging proud (image: Met).

I still have to get over to see the Met's Victorian electrotype sculpture show, which I hear is very interesting. At the end of February, their spring blockbuster The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and Parisian Avant-Garde opens. Supposedly it will include at least one recreation of Gertrude Stein's home in Paris, which should be great to see. Tomorrow, I'm making a point to head to the Guggenheim to see Maurizio Cattelan: All before that show closes, although I'm sure I'll have to fight through the crowds to get in, it has been so popular. I missed the Museum of Modern Art's show on Willem de Kooning, which I hear was great, but I'm really excited to see their upcoming retrospective on photographer Cindy Sherman, which also opens in February. Considering how cold it is these days, it's always pleasant to think there's good art show to look at and keep you warm.

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T11:39:00.001-05:00

Is it really 2012? Someone needs to tell Father Time to slow down! The weather here in NYC is surprisingly mild, pushing into the 50s today, although we are expecting a cold snap with highs in the 20s on Tuesday. Since I've been recovering from another sinus infection and feeling perpetually exhausted, I decided to lay low last night. I wound up watching the 1934 film It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, which was surprisingly racy for the time, with blatant sexual innuendos and flashes of bare flesh. The film itself was okay, but it wasn't easy listening to all that misogyny, as if constantly belittling a woman was a sure way to win her heart.

For the past few years, I've been redesigning the look of bklynbiblio on New Year's, and today is no exception. A few months ago Google introduced some new templates, but despite their sleek looks and functionality, none of them worked for me. Since I believe the look of the blog shouldn't overwhelm the posts themselves, I've gone for a more streamlined look for easier reading. (If you read these posts by email or RSS, go to http://bklynbiblio.blogspot.com to see it live.) So here's to another year of blogging. Happy 2012!

Keighley and Perry

2011-12-26T20:44:00.001-05:00

Although I talk about libraries and museums on this blog, I haven't said much about my job at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I work part time as an Associate Museum Librarian in the Image Library, which for over a century has been the repository and archive for the collection and dissemination of visual images in all media for educational and commercial uses. The collection holdings include stereoscopes, negatives, and 35mm slides, although not surprisingly we work almost exclusively with digital images now. I do a variety of tasks, including reference, instruction, and cataloging, but I'm also project manager for a few digitization projects. For instance, I'm currently working on selecting and cataloging historic views of the Met's galleries from the 1900s through the 1950s, which will be scanned from our lantern slide collection. This is a project being done in partnership with NYU's Institute of Fine Arts Visual Resources Center. But another project on which I was working for more than 5 years (with IFA and ARTstor, in particular a large number of individuals deserving lots of credit for all their hard work over the years) has been the digitization of selected images from the William Keighley Collection, a set of about 35,000 slides donated to the Met from 1958 through the 1970s by Keighley, a well-known film director. He had a second career as an amateur art and architectural historian and with his directorial eye took beautiful images of exterior and interior spaces throughout Europe, including private estates closed to the public at the time. We've been working to make about 10% of these images available for educational uses in digital format, including the image you see here showing the library of Saint Florian Abbey in northern Austria, which ARTstor is using to promote the collection. In order to see and download the images, you must belong to a university/museum that subscribes to ARTstor, but you can read more about the project here and see the official release here.

In related news, bklynbiblio readers may recall my very positive blog review of the Grayson Perry exhibition currently on at the British Museum. I subsequently revised and expanded this review in its entirety and I am pleased to announce that it has just been published in the Winter 2012 newsletter of the Historians of British Art. (I do hope the teddy bear god Alan Measles is pleased by the news.)

Christmas 2011

2011-12-24T22:01:00.000-05:00

The tree you see here is from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. It is installed in the Medieval Hall during the holidays. The enormous tree and the nativity scene, with accompanying angels decorating the tree itself, were made in Naples in the 18th century. To all the bklynbiblio readers out there, here's wishing you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas!

Random Musings 10

2011-12-17T16:11:00.000-05:00

I'm heading to Florida for a dysfunctional family Christmas. If you're wondering if this is a picture of my relatives, it's not, but I swear if my lesbian cousins (the DG-JBs) were to ever really let loose, I'm convinced they would be just like Edina and Patsy (more on them below). I've been saving up a bunch of links and posts to blog about, so enjoy this Random Musing.

The Guardian has an interesting interactive guide that allows you to zoom in and find out more about drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, in conjunction with the National Gallery's current exhibition about his years at the court of Milan.

When I was at the YCBA, my co-visiting scholar was Georgina Cole, who received her PhD from Sydney University in Australia. She was there working on a project relating to the senses in 18th-century British painting. She's also started a new blog/website, Early Modern Art Network, which focuses on news relating to art from the 17th and 18th centuries. She's transcribed a funny 18th-century letter to the editor from an enraged parent about how having his children trained to be artists had made his life miserable: "When I the other Day found that Remonstrance was in vain, and rage exerted without Effect, and clasped my Hands and sighed with pure Vexation, my Daughter told me I looked like the Soldier in Belisarius; my eldest Son said I was more like West’s weeping Grenadier, and my youngest, a little Imp about ten Years of Age, got into a Corner of the Room with his Chalks and blue Paper to copy my Face, his own Father’s Face, Sir, for a Head of Despair."

I've blogged about the World of the Year in the past, but unfortunately we now have conflicts depending on the source as to what the actual word of 2011 is. Dictionary.com had declared "tergiversate" to be the annual word (huh?), but now Merriam-Webster claims the word of the year is "pragmatic," based on the number of people who searched for that word. Complicating matters is the Oxford English Dictionary, which apparently declared "squeezed middle" the word of the year, never mind that's a phrase, not a word.

Thanks to my dear friend SVH, my latest sci-fi obsession is Farscape. Yes, I'm a little late to this, as it's been off the air for a while, but it's fun. A pregnant bio-ship with a sexy lost human and escaped alien prisoners, none of whom know or trust one another? What a fun concept!

New York magazine has declared 2011 to be the year in which male bodies were exploited in the movies, such as Chris Evans here in Captain America. There is a rather lovely slideshow of images worth seeing on the site, although I do find it odd that they all look alike (never mind why Evans insists on shaving his chest hair). Unfortunately, my fantasy boyfriend Ewan McGregor wasn't on the list, although I guess he didn't actually take his shirt off in any films this year (a first for him!). His film Beginners, with Christopher Plummer as his aging father who comes out of the closet late in life, was absolutely one of the best movies of the year. The Anglophenia blog put up a post earlier this year with video clips of all things Ewan, so check it out.

And unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure you've heard the news that--20 years after the first episodes premiered--Absolutely Fabulous is coming back with some new episodes with Edina and Patsy partying hard and Saffie scolding them the whole time. I can't wait! Here's a hilarious clip from the newest episode in which they trash-talk the Kardashians (who I still to this day do not understand why people think they are important!!). Enjoy, sweetie dahling!

28 New Haven Days: Part 4

2011-12-13T21:54:00.000-05:00

If you've been following my posts about New Haven, you know that I've been lamenting about the crime here. Shermania commented on my last post about how he's in New Orleans right now and that their crime is much higher, and the RL-DGs have told me as well that since they moved to New Orleans, they have been warned about the crime and it has prevented them from exploring their neighborhood like they normally would. In a bizarre coincidence, The New York Times happened to publish an article last week about crime in New Orleans. This year they have had 175 murders, which is a ratio of 51 per 100,000 citizens. Compared to NYC, where it's 7 per 100,000, that is a shocking difference. The current population of New Haven is about 130,000, however, which means this city has a ratio of about 28 murders for the same number. Clearly it's not as bad as New Orleans, but it's certainly much higher than NYC. In thinking more about this, I've come to the conclusion that 2 issues here are at stake: (1) people (myself included) envision this area as a "New England college town" when in fact it is a city, even if it is small; and (2) NYC has become so safe it has given us a false sense of security about how other cities really are. On Sunday, the PR-AMs came from NYC to visit, and even they were a bit surprised that we were asked for money by people out in the street about six times. Our favorite incident happened during dinner when a guy asked us for $3 and when we said no he went back to the bar where he was drinking a beer. Not surprisingly, he ducked out without paying.

After all is said and done, however, I cannot emphasize enough how fantastic my time here has been. The staff of the YCBA has been simply incredible. This really has been an amazing opportunity and it has helped me tremendously in my dissertation research. The picture above is a shot of the Reference Library where I spent most of my time in one of those study carrels on the mezzanine level, upper right. I'm going to regret leaving in a couple of days! And in spite of the issues with crime, I have ventured out and eaten a number of delicious meals here: vegetarian restaurant Claire's just across the street from the Taft (great soup), Big Bear Saloon (awesome burgers), Zinc Artisan (tasty personal pizzas), Istanbul Cafe (yummy Turkish), Zaroka (inexpensive Indian buffet), Woodland Cafe (tea & bagel sandwiches), Caseus Cheese food truck (delectable grilled cheese), and of course the old standby Atticus Cafe & Bookshop on the ground floor of the YCBA. There are many good restaurants here too, but I haven't had time to eat everywhere.

As far as my work goes, last Friday I gave a presentation to the YCBA staff. About 25 people showed up, which was great, and they provided boxed lunches for everyone. Although I gave an overview of my dissertation itself using PowerPoint, I focused more on things I've discovered since I've been here. What started out to be an almost 25-minute presentation turned into nearly 75 minutes of round-table discussion with excellent feedback, which I needed and greatly appreciated. One of the challenges of working on an artist from the past (in particular one who hasn't had a book published on him since an edition of his memoirs came out in 1911) is that there is a tremendous amount of information to cover, and so I must be very selective in what I work on, or postpone for a future project. For instance, in the process of working on John Gibson, I've found myself now also interested in his brother Benjamin (1811-1851), who also was a sculptor. This portrait bust of John is by Benjamin, made about the year 1838 (image: YCBA). Benjamin was 20 years John's junior and was never the success his brother was, but he did work in John's Roman studio, taught himself Latin and Greek, and published a few articles on archaeological discoveries in Rome. He was frequently ill, however, and sadly he died near the baths of Lucca when he tripped and suffered a concussion. He is buried in Lucca, but John also set up a memorial in his honor in Rome at the Protestant Cemetery where he himself was buried in 1866. My interest in him is probably not too much a coincidence; he was about my age when he died.

28 New Haven Days: Part 3

2011-12-06T22:43:00.000-05:00

After my last New Haven post, I was starting to think that I may have overdone it in my descriptions about the urban environment here. Okay, so it's a city and it has crime and sharp contrasts in socio-economic classes. But the university area is of course delightful, as you can imagine from the picture I took here of a rather adorable Justice figure decorating the exterior of the neo-Gothic Yale School of Law. But then my friend JM was here for 2 nights (his mother had to have emergency surgery, so I was able to provide him with a place to crash; she's recovering!), and he agreed with me that he saw exactly what I was talking about. Having grown up in CT, he knows many other areas in the state are like this as well. Still, I thought, I must be exaggerating. After all, when last week citizens gathered in the park to light the big Christmas tree, they had a carousel, snacks, petting zoo, and so on. I had no idea there were so many children in this city! It couldn't be that bad. And then, I heard it again: this morning on the local news they announced that yet another murder had taken place during the night. This is New Haven's 32nd murder this year. So now I know for sure I'm not cracking up. Surprisingly though the community seems to getting upset as well. This evening I was coming out of the Beinecke Library and I heard/saw what must have been a crowd of over 200 people protesting and marching in the streets. At first I thought it was an Occupy New Haven event, but their chants corrected me: "What do we want?" - "SAFE STREETS!" - "When do want it?" - "NOW!" I rest my case.

Sticking within the enclave that is the museum and university environment, I joined the YCBA staff for their annual holiday party, which was delightful. I also went to a lunch-lecture last Thursday sponsored by the Material Culture Study Group. Becky Conekin, Senior Research Fellow in the History Department, gave a fun talk about '60s model Twiggy and mopeds. She based the talk on a series of photos taken of Twiggy in the late 1960s and proceeded to explore more about how the moped in the shots related to new ideas about youth, women, sexuality, and London as a new counterculture city. I also went today to an "Art in Context" talk at the YCBA, which is free and open to the public, although many people in the university art community come as well. Set in conjunction with the current exhibition Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the British in India, 1770-1830, the talk was about this near life-sized painting you see here, Dancing Girl, 1772, by a little-known English painter named Tilly Kelly, who had a productive career in India. The talk was given by Gillian Forrester, Sylvia Houghteling, and Holly Shaffer, each of whom addressed different aspects about the painting, from the subject to details like the sari the woman wears. One of the more intriguing things about this picture was that conservation work and x-rays have shown that the subject originally was part of a much larger painting in which the woman was performing or paired with another figure, probably a man who was reclining looking up at her. The background was also completely different and repainted by Kelly, perhaps to suit a patron who decided he wanted just an exotic Indian woman. More research needs to be done to consider other aspects about this picture, but it just goes to show how art shouldn't be taken at face value. There is often much more going on behind the layers of paint, and its social history makes it a much more living thing.

Gerald Mocarsky: War Paint

2011-12-05T22:24:00.001-05:00

My friend Gerald Mocarsky is having an exhibition of works entitled War Paint, a documentary-style photography series with images of women over 40 applying make-up. Some of my favorites from the series are ones like this of Esther because of the way the mirror refracts what you see. The exhibition is at Causey Contemporary Gallery in Brooklyn. The opening is on Friday, December 16 at 6pm, so if you're in the NYC area, come check it out. The show runs until January 22, 2012. For more about Mocarsky and his work, including this series, see my blog interview with him, which you may recall also was published in a revised, expanded version in The Gay & Lesbian Review. His website is http://www.geraldmocarsky.com.

The Roman Advertiser

2011-12-02T19:38:00.001-05:00

I've been browsing through issues of The Roman Advertiser, a weekly newspaper that premiered in October 1846, but only lasted for the next 3 years. Although it was short-lived, at the time it was important because it provided British and American tourists who didn't speak English with an opportunity to know what was going on in Rome. These tourists would frequently stay in Rome for months, not 3 days like tourists today, so they would become part of this English-language community while they were there. Keep in mind also that "Italy" did not exist as an independent country until 1861, and even then Rome was still an independent country until it was annexed in 1870 (which is why Vatican City is still an independent country). Rome was always a major tourist spot, as you can see from this 1821 painting by Sir Charles Eastlake of A View of Trajan's Forum, Rome (image: YCBA). Painting pictures like this (18 years before photography was officially invented) allowed tourists the opportunity to record visual memories to bring home. In our world, we snap digital pictures and we read our newspapers online, so it was rather exciting to actually turn the pages of a 19th-century newspaper, skimming articles and reenacting what someone else in Rome actually was doing more than 150 years ago. Although I've been focusing on art-related news for my research, I came across a few things today that I couldn't resist blogging about. (Stay tuned for the funny stuff below!)

Even though each issue opened with local news about the Pope and the surrounding Italian states, the real juice was when they talked about the famous people who had come to town and what hotels they are staying in. When the Duke of Devonshire showed up to spend the winter in Rome, the newspaper reported regularly on his dinner parties and the aristocrats he hosted, such as Prince and Princess Torlonia, the Earl and Countess Shelbourn, Lady J. Grey, etc. He also had Mr. and Madame Oury perform concerts for his guests, he a violinist, she a pianist. Although there was social excitement, Mother Nature sometimes got in the way too. In early December 1846, after a storm the Tiber River overflowed and flooded the streets of Rome. Although devastation was more extensive in the Campagna, the city itself had its share of problems. The jeweler Castellani had to take out an advertisement to let patrons know that he had temporarily moved after "being visited by the Tiber in his establishment."

On April 10, 1847, they published an article on current demographics about Rome. At that time, they estimated there were 177,971 people living in Rome. Of this number, 17,606 were domiciled strangers such as John Gibson and other artists living there, which accounted for 10% of the population. There were 32 cardinals, 21 archbishops and bishops, 313 physicians, 223 surgeons, 66 midwives, 339 masters and mistresses of schools, 46,672 shopkeepers, and 16,552 servants. Curiously, they also reported that there were 3,828 Jews living in Rome, which accounted for 2% of the population. To put this all in context, I did some Googling and discovered that at about same time NYC had a population of 371,223, while Paris was at 1 million and London 2 million. In other words, Rome was small in comparison. What is even more staggering is that 1800 years earlier during the reign of Emperor Augustus Caesar, the city of ancient Rome had 800,000 people living in it, and that may not even include the slaves!

Now for the humor. At the end of each issue, there were advertisements. Many of these related to the tourist industry, restaurants and hotels marketing themselves for clients. But there were personal ads also, individuals seeking employment from the tourists. For instance, one young woman was apparently desperate to leave Rome and was willing to work for it: "A LADY wishes to go to England, or Paris, with a family as travelling companion, and would be happy to take the charge of young persons, or to devote her attentions to an invalid." Another woman sought employment in Rome: "WANTS A PLACE as lady’s maid a Swiss who can speak several languages and knows very well her business. The best references can be given." The Swiss maid must have found work, for a few weeks later his mistress was leaving town and wanted to help her find another employer: "A LADY about to leave Rome after Easter, is anxious to procure a situation for her femme-de-chambre (a Swiss, speaking French, German and Italian) whom she can recommend in every respect as honest and industrious, capable of dressing hair, making dresses and getting up fine linen.—Has also no objection to undertake the charge of one child." Women seeking employment as companions, nurses, maids, etc. were not uncommon (image: Justin Cormack's Flickr). A single woman in 19th-century society really had few options if she had been unable to marry. What is very strange, however, is this next ad, in which a man seems to be seeking similar work. I may be reading too much into this, but if I didn't know any better, this guy was looking for his own Sugar Daddy! It ran: "WANTED, by an English Gentleman, of good family, aged thirty, the situation of companion to an Invalid, or Elderly Gentleman, or that of Secretary or Amanuensis. He speaks French fluently, also a little German and Italian; plays on the Organ and Piano with considerable talent; possesses a good voice for reading and writes an excellent hand. Superior and unexceptionable references can be given in Rome, Paris and London." Hey, I could have written that ad! (Well, maybe not.)

Images were not yet regularly appearing in the mainstream press at this time, so advertisers had to rely on clever writing to market their work. If ever you thought bodily concerns were just something we worried about now, think again. Here's an ad for Grimstone's Aromatic Regenerator:

EYEBROWS, MUSTACHIOS and WHISKERS produced in a few weeks, and Baldness removed by the use of GRIMSTONE'S AROMATIC REGENERATOR, an essential spirit, drawn from aromatic herbs and flowers, a few drops of which cure headache in a few minutes; it is also a most delightful, fragrant toilet perfume. Sold only in triangular bottles, protected by the Government stamp, at 4s [i.e. shillings]; double the size, 7s; and double this size, 11s each; enclosed in a Pamphlet, containing testimonials of undoubted authority, entitled "Three Minutes' Advice on the Growth and Preservation of the Human Hair, etc."

It grows hair, removes baldness, cures headaches, AND is a perfume?? No way! Do you think it works? I wonder if anyone has tried it? Well, what do you know...

Mrs. Weekley, of No. 3, Swan-street, Borough, takes this opportunity of publicly thanking Mr. W. Grimstone, of the Herbary, High-gate, for the efficacy of his Aromatic Regenerator, in having completely restored the hair on her head after using it about four months, and her hair is now much stronger and more luxuriant than it was previous to its falling off. Mrs. W. inserts this testimony, thinking that the virtues of his preparation cannot be too generally known, not only in the restoration and production of hair, but in the cure of nervous and other headaches, and will be happy to answer the inquiries of any respectable person.

Technology may have changed, but advertising certainly hasn't!

28 New Haven Days: Part 2

2011-11-28T22:25:00.001-05:00

The picture you see here is a view from the kitchen window of my flat at the Taft Apartments. It's an interesting sight, showing bank towers, church towers, and Occupy New Haven tents on the lawn. The visual diminution from right to left is almost poetic; it says a lot about this city. I have to confess, I'm not fond of New Haven. I've been here a number of times, and while the Yale architecture and environment is beautiful in all its 19th-century glory, the rest of the city leaves much to be desired. Once you leave the university area, it's a shady city. The extremes of wealth and poverty are bizarre. Whenever I turn right to head to the (only!) grocery store in the entire city, I start moving into the "bad" side of town. It's a little nerve-wracking at times. People at the YCBA have said things like "Don't walk too far in that direction after dark!" and "There was a shooting a block away from the museum a few weeks ago!" It doesn't instill a sense of serenity, as you can imagine. I went back to the City (in other words, NYC!) over the weekend, and it amazes me how I can feel 100% safer there than I do here. Don't get wrong, I'm not paranoid. But what do you make of a city where you're sitting in Starbucks and you overhear two police officers telling people they have to order drinks or they'll get thrown out for loitering, and then telling the manager about how dangerous this neighborhood is? Or, better yet, I get off the train last night and while waiting for a cab only see a number of police cars just near the train station. Turns out there was another shooting in that area just before I returned. According to the local news, that was the 31st murder in New Haven this year. If you calculate that statistically, that means there's been a murder here approximately every 10 days. And this is Yale? It's bizarre, but what can you do? Stay within the university environment as much as possible apparently. Life is much more enjoyable when you're living in the proverbial ivory tower. As I mentioned, though, the campus area itself is lovely, as my previous post showed with some pictures, and there are some fun surprises at times. For instance, I was returning from the grocery store this evening and bumped into one of the YCBA curators and we chatted for a few minutes in the street. It occurred to me that this was one of the joys of small city living, just randomly bumping into people you know and having a chat. I also spent a lovely Thanksgiving with my friends, the JJK-SPs, who live near here, and they said they'd take me around so I can see more of the surrounding area too, so I'm looking forward to seeing more.

But of course I am here to research and network, and that I have been doing. I've met a number of people and have been surprised to discover that the YCBA is bigger than I thought, but they all seem to know one another. I attended a lecture given by visiting senior scholar Clarissa Campell Orr, a well-published historian who is writing a biography about Mary Delany (1700-1788), maker of fascinating paper cut-out botanical collages, about which the YCBA recently did an exhibition. I have a computer work station in the library and have already worked in the Rare Book Room, plus I have access to resources in other libraries on campus. I've also had the opportunity to examine more closely the John Gibson busts in the collection, and they've now actually brought 2 of them out for the public to see, which is great (one of them being the unknown young woman about whom I blogged).

I've been asked to give a presentation on Dec. 16th about my research (yikes!). Fortunately, I've already uncovered some new interesting little tidbits of information, so that should help. For instance, Yale has digitized a travel diary written by Susan Horner (1816-1900). In 1847-48, she accompanied her sister Frances and newlywed brother-in-law Charles (later Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury, 8th Baronet, and Lady Bunbury) on a trip to France and Italy. An artist and historian, Horner later authored books such as Walks in Florence: Churches, Street and Palaces (1877) and Greek Vases: Historical and Descriptive (1897). In the 1850s and 1860s, she carried on a regular correspondence with Gibson and they saw one another socially in London and Rome on future visits, but it appears she first met him while on this trip with her family. Gibson had been living in Rome for 30 years at this time, so he was well-acquainted with everything the city had to offer, and he delighted in acting as a tour guide when it came to art. Ever the classicist, he always looked to ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration. The drawing you see here is but one of many examples of his sketches in which he explored Greco-Roman subjects. The drawing is from the Greek playwright Euripides and shows Antigone Discovered over the Dead Body of Her Brother (image: Royal Academy). I thought it would be interesting to share one of Horner's encounters with Gibson. On this occasion they visited the Vatican Museum, much like you or I have done in the past, traipsing through the same corridors she mentions as well. The only difference then was that there was no electricity, just natural light and maybe gas lanterns or candles for evening visits. Their particular visit together took place on April 10, 1848--exactly 122 years before I was born.

At three we called for Mr Gibson at his studio. He showed us a beautiful drawing he is making, and also some engravings from his works, very well executed; he then accompanied us to the Vatican, where Charles and Frances walked through the Gallery together, and Mr Gibson showed me its wonders. The galleries are very beautiful and very rich, and as we walked along, he stopped me at the most remarkable among its treasures. We entered the Braccio Nuovo which has been added of late years. Mr Gibson pointed out to me the statue of Minerva as the best time of Greek art. ... As Mr Gibson is occupied making a drawing for a bas relief of Hyppolitus, he examined these well, and satisfied himself as to the legitimacy of adding ears or horns to his creatures. I asked him, why it was necessary to confine himself to an imitation of the ancients, to which he replied, that when treating a Greek subject, it ought to be treated as a Greek artist would have conceived it, whereas, in Christian subjects the master is free to use what models he may please. (fol. 51v-52r)

Books of 2011

2011-11-25T23:06:00.001-05:00

It’s that time again! The annual “best” lists have begun. They seem to be happening earlier and earlier each year, including The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2011, which was published today on their website. As I’ve noted in the past, I rarely read these books as they’re published, but their potential sustainability appeals to me. After all, a good book (song, movie, etc.) needs to transcend its momentary popularity. If you read it years later and you can still feel its impact, then the author has proven him/herself. The NYT list is divided into fiction/short-stories (no poems this year) and non-fiction, although they haven’t yet published their usual explanation for how they came up with their list. Only 5 of the titles on Amazon’s Top 10 Fiction & Literature Books of 2011 made it onto the NYT list, which once again seems strange to me. In any case, based on the NYT recommendations, I’m adding to my wish list the novels The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (sounds like a Japanese twist on The Joy Luck Club) and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child (must catch up on his earlier books too). In biography I’m going for Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie. I’m also tempted by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s Van Gogh: The Life, but another Vincent van Gogh biography? (Try Judy Sund’s Van Gogh [2002], which people I've told about always seem to love.) Of course, you can’t always trust lists like these, as I discovered this past year. In 2010 the NYT had Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists (stories about people working at an English-language newspaper in Rome) on their list, but I read it and I wasn’t nearly as thrilled by it as they seemed to be (I’m convinced there’s some journalististic nepotism at work here).

Since last year’s post on this topic, I’ve read 29 books. This is down a bit from the 44 of last year, but 2010 was an exceptionally intense year studying for my PhD Oral Exam. Among my noteworthy art historical reads were Alex Potts’s Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994) and Henry Fuseli by Martin Myrone (2001). One of my favorite non-fiction books was The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Or, The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale (2008), an 1860s true-crime murder mystery which every mystery buff should read. I also couldn’t resist reading Betty White’s memoir If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t) (2011). Between her comedic sense of living and her devotion to the proper care of animals, how could you not love Betty White?

Last year at this time I was reading Howards End (1910) by E.M. Forster. The Schlegel sisters are divine, but it was even more fascinating how Forster was able to anthropomorphize the homes themselves so that even they became characters in the novel. I was sitting in a coffee shop reading one afternoon and a non-descript gray-haired woman saw me and squealed in delight because it was one of her favorite books and I had now saved her from the despair of thinking no one ever read Forster anymore. Among some of the other novels I read, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (2002) was thought-provoking and worth reading, but The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (English ed. 2008) was an incredibly smart, witty, tour de force of a novel (thank you, PR, for the gift). Shermania has more than one blog post about this book, so that should tell you how good it is. My big fiction discovery this year was British novelist Barbara Pym (thanks to TC giving a paper at the Barbara Pym Society earlier this year). Excellent Women (1952) will have you chuckling aloud as you pour a cup of tea and join the witty, thirtysomething spinster Mildred Lathbury through another seemingly boring day with her fellow church ladies and her high-strung neighbors. Another must-read. Since I’ve been here in New Haven, I’m reading The Night Watch (2006) by Sarah Waters. It’s a World War II-themed story and includes both a lesbian and gay male couple, both living under the radar since it was illegal then. Curiously, the story moves backwards through time, which should prove interesting, although I have to confess right now it’s moving a bit slowly. Waters is great storyteller though, as bklynbiblio readers will recall me saying not too long ago.

28 New Haven Days: Part 1

2011-11-20T19:47:00.001-05:00

I've been in New Haven for approximately 55 hours, and while I'm more settled now than when I first arrived, so far it's been a relatively quiet start. Friday night I was staying at the Graduate Club, and I spent that afternoon getting my Yale ID, then touching base with the YCBA staff and getting acquainted in more detail with the Library itself. Because yesterday was the annual Harvard-Yale game (I presume that's football?), plus with Thanksgiving coming up, I'm arriving here during an unusual time when many things are shut down for the week, including some of the Libraries. Nevertheless, I managed to keep myself entertained a bit this weekend. On Saturday, I moved into the Taft Apartments, which you see here. They were built in 1912 and named for Pres. Taft, who after his presidency taught at Yale and lived here. The apartments, however, are perhaps more famous because they're next to the Shubert Theater, which historically has been a testing ground for plays before heading to Broadway, but these days seem to be stuck doing revivals and seasonal works like A Christmas Carol in early December. The Taft has made an appearance in more than one film too, like All About Eve (1950), when Eve (Anne Baxter) is performing at the Shubert and she is confronted in her Taft apartment about her own past. (If you haven't seen this movie, get it now...it's one of Bette Davis's best films with her classic line "Fasten your seat belts--it's gonna be a bumpy night!") As for my apartment, so far so good, although my previous occupant wasn't exactly the cleanest person, leaving behind half-dirty dishes and her long black hair on more than one towel, including (shockingly) the kitchen dish towels which, alas, I did not discover until after I cooked my dinner and found hair in my food. (Yes...very gross.)

Shermania had written me about an exhibition at Artspace called Library Science, and I'm so glad he told me. It's the perfect combination of contemporary art and librarianship coming together in a way that would satisfy any bibliophile or library nerd. Candida Höfer was of course included, showcasing one of her large-scale photographs of libraries, but a number of other artists in the show were new to me and had some interesting ideas about libraries, books, and cataloging. Mickey Smith rephotographs found photos of people posing with faux libraries as backdrops, calling into question what the library is meant to suggest when it is not real. He also laid out an entire collection of hundreds of volumes of the Federal Reserve in a way that one quite literally walks over the books in order to look at his photographs. Considering this entire series is now available through online databases, Smith makes us rethink the evolution of information and the gradual disappearance of books in the e-publishing world as we walk all over them and what they historically have represented. Reynard Loki reenvisions the idea of cataloging with an ongoing project in which he indexes on paper his entire library by the first and last lines of each book he owns, and Erica Baum's large-scale photographs of subject heading cards from old card catalogs suddenly makes words like "Power" take on a whole new visual sensibility. This was an interesting exhibition for sure.

I was working on a different review today, but by lunchtime I decided I needed to get some air so I took a long stroll and wound up, oddly enough, in the Grove Street Cemetery. Yes, I admit, I'm a cemetery stroller. I find cemeteries to be very peaceful places where you can commune with nature (loved the birds and squirrels), but also look at the sculpture of the tomb stones and learn about people with whom I have no connection but who were important to someone at some time enough that a marker still exists to mark their remains. A number of the oldest tombstones here date from the 1700s and are now in very bad shape, but a number of 19th-century stones are still intact. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the grave for Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin), but of all the plots I saw the one that caught my eye was that of Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901), which you see in the foreground of the image above. It's not that the sculpture is of great significance, but when you read the accomplishments of this man, most notably his becoming Yale's first Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit during a period when hardly anyone knew a thing about these languages, you realize he was an important academic figure. I had to look up more about him and discovered that his entire collection of books and manuscripts was donated to the Libraries and are the foundation for the Near East Collection. Looking in WorldCat, however, I was surprised to see what he had authored. While he did publish a few tracts on things like the Persian cuneiform alphabet (1849), he also wrote about Michelangelo (1861), and published a number of books about genealogy and his own family history. It makes you realize how specialized we've become in academia today, and it reminds me of the importance of making sure I don't get too pigeon-holed in my own work.

DW: Christmas 2011

2011-11-19T18:42:00.000-05:00

The trailer for the annual Doctor Who Christmas special has been released. Entitled The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, you can imagine that it definitely is taking as its inspiration C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but with an alien twist, I'm sure. It takes place during World War II, so the added historical element will make it an even more enjoyable Christmas, as last year's did, inspired by Charles Dickens but successfully mingling the futuristic with the past. From the new trailer, it looks like Amy and Rory are both absent from the episode, which is a refreshing change. It will be good to see Doctor Matt have his own adventure without having to rescue those two. Here's the trailer, but if YouTube breaks the link, you can view it here, or keep up with all things Doctor Who on their BBC America website.

Gibson and the YCBA

2011-11-17T18:51:00.000-05:00

I'm off to New Haven to begin my Visiting Scholar Award at the Yale Center for British Art, about which I posted back in April. This is not to be confused with the "Artist's Studio in Britain" seminar I attended there back in June (which I posted about here, here, here, and here). You'd think with all my traveling I would have packing down to a science, but it's not easy coordinating a wardrobe when the weather is moving from temperately chilly to cold but could warm up at any time. In any case, the fellowship is in support of my dissertation on John Gibson. The bust of an unknown young woman that you see here is by Gibson and from the YCBA collection. They date the marble bust to the late 1820s, which seems reasonable based on her hair style, but her identity is a mystery. One of my many goals for this trip is to identify her. I would like to think that it is a bust of Emily d'Aguilar Robinson from Liverpool. She was one of Gibson's earliest supporters. She was married, but she and Gibson may have had a bit of a love affair. She died in 1829 while he was in Rome, and he designed her funerary monument which is now in the Oratory at St. James's Cemetery in Liverpool. Of course, it's very possible the bust is of someone else, so that and many other Gibson mysteries await me as I spend some time doing research.

Autumn Leaves 2011

2011-11-10T21:40:00.000-05:00

Word is out that this coming weekend is the last chance we'll have in NYC to see beautifully colored fall foliage on the trees. Soon the leaves will all be brown and dropping to the ground. I took a lovely walk in Central Park today during my lunch break. The sun was shining and there was a cool breeze blowing. Here are a few pictures I took, all in the vicinity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To see more pictures from my walk, click here. Enjoy!

Random Musings 9

2011-11-03T23:05:00.001-04:00

This morning I received an email from Sladmore Gallery announcing the current exhibition at their Jermyn Street location in London, and I so wish I could go see this in person before it closes next month. The picture you see here should give you a clue. Yes, they’re doing The Dog Show. Now, in the world of art history, animals have never been taken too seriously. Think “dog” and “art” and the first think that comes to mind is the ridiculous picture of dogs playing poker. To some extent, Victorians like Edwin Landseer perhaps did make animals in art seem trite with paintings like Trial by Jury where dogs hold court, but Landseer also was enormously famous for Monarch of the Glen, a beautiful picture of a stag in the highlands which came to be seen as an icon of national pride. Dogs, however, have been faithful companions for centuries and frequently appear in art, such as in just some of these important paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Anthony van Dyke and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The exhibition at Sladmore Gallery focuses on 19th- and 20th-century paintings and sculptures, which is another reason to see the show since combining these two media in one show is so infrequently done. And if you’re wondering why I chose this particular image of a West Highland Terrier by the British artist Lilian Cheviot, it is an homage to the memory of my own adorable little Westie named Duchess, who died in 2003.

Speaking of the Met, the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia opened to the public on Tuesday. I had an opportunity to preview them the week beforehand, and they are simply magnificent. The image you see here is of the restored Damascus Room, which is but one of the many galleries that have been reinstalled after an 8-year renovation. The room showcasing a number of exquisite carpets is just stunning, but my personal favorite sections showcase objects from the Ottoman Empire and India. Considering that cultural relations between the U.S. and various Islamic nations and peoples have been precarious to say the least, these galleries can only help in educating about the fascinating culture of Islam and its exquisite works of art from so many parts of its world for over a millennium. You can read from The New York Times a full review and description of the galleries by Holland Carter, who describes them as being “beyond fabulous,” which they are.

In case you haven’t heard the news, the world population is now at over 7 billion. That number alone is staggering to say the least, but the rate of growth is even more disturbing. At the current rate of population growth, it is estimated that by the year 2080 we will have 10 billion people on the planet. Whatever happened to those futuristic modules of living in underwater colonies or outer space? Someone needs to start working fast to accommodate our ever-increasing population. But did you ever wonder what number you were at your birth? Turns out, I was person number 3,678,956,784. I’m also the 77,803,200,647th person who’s ever lived on the planet. Go to the BBC population calculator app to find out your numbers and learn more about population growth around the world. You may be surprised by what you find out.

Finally, whenever I report on the British royal family, I always get scolded by a number of my friends for being a royal follower. Whatever...it’s part of history, and I love it. (Besides, I recently made a lovely visit to Hampton Court Palace, and without the royal family, that place probably wouldn't exist right now.) Parliament made history this week by reforming the rules for the royal family’s line of succession. It has always been that daughters are passed over in favor of sons, even when they are born first. Henry VIII had two daughters before he got his son, who became Edward VI. Only because Edward died young and childless did Mary and Elizabeth subsequently become rulers. This change means that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Will & Kate) have a daughter, she will automatically be the heir to the throne regardless if a son is born afterwards. Interestingly, this law now automatically changes the current line of succession. It had been Charles, William, Harry, Andrew (Charles’s brother) and his daughters Beatrice and Eugenia, then brother Edward, then Anne and her children. But with this change, Princess Anne now has moved to 4th and her son and daughter are higher in the line of succession now too. The Guardian had an interesting report on all this, and they pointed out a few important historical turns that could have made British history very different if this law had been changes ages ago. One of the more interesting possibilities from modern history relates to Queen Victoria’s first-born, Princess Vicky (1840-1901), whom you see here. She was married to the Crown Prince of Prussia and eventually became Empress of Germany when that country was united. Her son eventually rose to power and took over the imperial throne as Emperor Wilhelm II, ruling Germany during World War I. But technically speaking Vicky would still have been heir to the throne of England, so upon the death of her mother she would have been named Queen Victoria II but remained Dowager Empress of Germany. When she died 7 months after her mother, her son Kaiser Wilhelm II then would have become King of England and thus united England and Germany into one imperial nation. Can you imagine if that had happened? World War I may never have happened...or we all would be speaking German right now.

All a-Twitter

2011-11-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

I've moved another step forward in social networking and I now have a Twitter account (finally). You can follow my tweets by going to @bklynbiblio. I'm not sure yet how much activity we'll have, but in just following some of my friends (and a celebrity or two) it looks like it's going to be another obsessive virtual world worth exploring. I'll be tweeting (and retweeting) shorter posts and link that I don't always get to on the blog, where I can write more substantial posts than the 140 word limit. So stay tuned, because this "bert" is ready to start "tweeting"!

First Snowfall: 2011-2012 Fall/Winter

2011-10-29T12:11:00.000-04:00

It's the perfect day for me to be home writing my dissertation. The meteorologists have been predicting that today was going to be a bad day weather-wise. Everywhere from NJ up to ME we are being hit with an early Nor'easter. I didn't actually expect we would get snow in Brooklyn, but sure enough at 11:35 snowflakes started tumbling out of the sky, and it is just getting heavier by the minute. I took the picture you see here twenty minutes after it started. This is my backyard with the snow falling, already covering the fig tree you see in the foreground, and it's just getting heavier as I'm writing this. Needless to say, I never thought when I started writing about and photographing these first snowfalls each year that I'd be posting about them this early! Blizzards, a spring tornado in Brooklyn, a brutally hot summer, an earthquake, Hurricane Irene, and now an early snowfall? This has certainly been a crazy year for weather in NYC!

From Buddha to Dickens

2011-10-28T21:14:00.000-04:00

I had to do some research at my school's library today, so I thought I would use part of the day also to catch up on a few special exhibitions here in the City. I made my way first to the Asia Society on Park Ave. & 70th St. to see The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara, which I had included on my list of must-see shows for the fall. The show was fantastic, and I am so glad I went. I have a weakness for Asian art like Chinese landscape paintings, Japanese prints, Chinese/Islamic calligraphy, and Buddhist sculpture. In many ways it is so different from Western art that it allows us the opportunity to look at it with fresh eyes, unadulterated by our expectations of what we assume the artist did or what we know about the school in which he/she lived because we're used to certain things. But I am actually schooled a bit in Asian art, having taken a number of classes years ago and having taught courses on Asian art, literature, and religions in my past, but I would never consider myself a specialist. So I love to see shows like this and simply appreciate the subtle beauty of these works exactly for what they are. Take the Buddha you see here, for instance, from the Lahore Museum in Pakistan. He dates from the 2nd-3rd century and stands just under 5 feet high. The figure shows the Buddha as a teacher, raising his (missing) hand in the mudra of peace, and he wears the ushnisha (knot of knowledge) on his head and the urna (third eye of spiritual awakening) in the middle of his forehead. But what makes this figure so spectacular is the way his cloak ripples down his body, carved in a way that you can sense it is translucent and you can see the contours of his body beneath it. This "classical"-style Buddha is Gandharan, and what makes the art of this period and region so amazing is that it encapsulates a global culture from two millennia ago. Located near the silk route and conquered by the Persians and Greeks, the art of this area reflects an amalgamation of cultures coming together. From the Western perspective, this Buddha looks very Greek. If it were in white marble, one might thing an ancient Greek or Roman carved it. The entire exhibition brought together works from the Lahore Museum, a feat unto itself considering the political instability in which the U.S. and Pakistan find themselves today. The Asia Society also had an exhibition of the watercolors and paintings of Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel prize-winning writer from India, celebrating his 150th birthday. Much of his visual art resembles the work of modernists popular at the time. Paul Klee and Amadeo Modigliani come to mind. It wasn't really my taste, but it was worth seeing. They also had a single-room exhibition of a kinetic sculpture by the contemporary Korean artist U-Ram Choe. The sculpture looked like the skeletal remains of a manatee with sea oats growing out of it, their tips moving in the air like grabbing peacock feathers. There is a long conceptual narrative to the piece, but you can tell I wasn't into it, although the clockwork mechanics of it were interesting.

I ventured over to the Morgan Library today as well, which had four exhibitions that interested me. I started with the show on Islamic manuscript paintings from their permanent collection, some of which were vibrant and delightful. I then moved downstairs to see David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre. Encompassing French drawings from about 1780 to 1860, the emphasis here was on the Neoclassicists and Romantics. Many of the drawings were quite good, but without contextualization of paintings for which some were studies, it is more challenging for the general viewer person to appreciate what it is you are looking at.

I love the art of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, so it was a pleasure to see works of his not only in the exhibition from the Louvre, but also in a separate small exhibition with drawings from the Morgan's permanent collection. Ingres was a skilled draftsman, and he bridged the gap in many ways between the classical and romantic. The image you see here by him is his Odalisque and Slave, 1839, and relates directly to a painting of the same subject. Depicting a fantasy Orientalist scene that exploits the beauty of the female nude and the exoticism of the Middle East, the subject is Romantic; however, the crisp line and detailed precision and balance in the picture allow it to fall neatly into the Neoclassical style. I'm essentializing all this just to keep it simple, but normally I don't like pigeon-holing artists into categories like this because it creates an unnecessary hierarchy of excellence. Regardless, what strikes me most about this work is that when I saw it, I was convinced it was an engraving. In fact, it is a drawing in pencil, chalk, and wash, which is a testament to Ingres's incredible skills as an artist.

I also had to stop in the exhibition celebrating Charles Dickens's 200th birthday as well. There were letters, manuscripts, books, photographs, caricatures, and other related items all on display in cases and hanging on the wall. Now, I confess I've never been a big fan of Dickens. I've read Hard Times and Nicholas Nickleby, and of course read more than once A Christmas Carol, but to me Dickens seemed to focus too much on sensationalizing the poor in a way that objectified them. Then again, he was a journalist and his books did get people to start thinking about social programs for the underprivileged, so it's understandable why he was and is so popular.

Now if you've read this entire post (for which you get my applause!), you may be wondering what the heck the image at the top of this post has to do with Buddha or Dickens or anything in-between. In truth, nothing. But it does relate to the end of my day in the City, for as I was heading toward the subway, I was drawn into Banana Republic like a moth to a flame. As I walked in a shop girl said, "40% off everything!", flailing a coupon in my face. "40%," said I, "off everything?" "Yes, everything!" she exclaimed. Needless to say, I couldn't resist adding a few items for my work wardrobe for the fall/winter season...but don't you just LOVE what I bought?! By the way, they're saying we may get snow flurries tomorrow...I'm pretty sure I'm ready.

Review: Grayson Perry, Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

2011-10-14T22:10:00.003-04:00

Last month after I posted about upcoming Fall Exhibitions 2011, I discovered another show I had to see when I was in London, Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum. Readers may recall Perry first making an appearance on bklynbiblio earlier this year when I wrote about his recent election to the Royal Academy as a printmaker. Perry works in different media, but is best known as an artist who makes ceramic pots and vases. He won the highly-acclaimed Turner Prize in 2003 as well. However, he's probably most notoriously known as a transvestite named Claire, and frequently shows up for events like the annual RA dinner dressed in frocks he himself designed. To me, there is something innately British about Perry, a theatricality to his persona in and out of drag that fits into the longer trajectory of British drama, reaching as far back as Shakespeare and beyond. This may seem far-fetched to some--after all, he is a 51-year-old man wearing baby-doll frocks and bonnets--but Perry sees his art as part of history, and thus Claire is more than just a put-on character but an important part of his creative personality. Because of this, I believe Perry is a more difficult sell in the U.S., where no major museum as yet has given him an exhibition (although based on its recent history of solo contemporary artists from the U.K., the Brooklyn Museum would be a perfect venue). The fact is, Americans are uncomfortable with “trans”-anything, and in the ongoing fight for social equality in marriage and the military, even many gays and lesbians are uncomfortable with "trans" culture, preferring their own “trans”-gressive behavior not to challenge too much the easy-to-identify gay/straight sexual binary.

Perry is a queer artist. He blurs the boundaries of gender and sexuality, but then also pushes the definitions of topics like art, craft, religion, history, and the museum, and ultimately points out the foibles of personal identity as well. And yet (as my friend CC pointed out as we walked through the exhibition) unlike the White Cube commercial sensationalism that his contemporary Damien Hirst exudes, what is so striking about Perry is that you can actually understand him. He may be conceptual at times, but he works with real art objects that the masses can appreciate: ceramic pots (such as the one here, The Rosetta Vase, 2011), cast iron sculptures, prints and drawings, tapestries, and costumes. Hirst favors esoterically titled vitrines with dead sharks or large jewel-encrusted skulls. The very nature of Perry's art, with an intended focus on craft, demonstrates how real of an artist he is, even when he shows up for openings dressed as Claire.

Following the current trend in museums to host artists-as-curators, Perry was given the opportunity to rummage through the seven-million-plus holdings of the British Museum. Director Neil MacGregor has described the show as “eccentrically personal yet infinitely universal in its sense of humanity and commonality.” Rather than use his art to respond to these objects as other artists have done in the past, Perry unites them, demonstrating their commonality in the longer history of civilization. In an interview for the August 2011 issue of the British Museum Journal, he says that he sees himself as a one-man civilization, although he astutely notes that “no civilisation is an island and there’s always an interplay with other civilisations.” In this spirit, he has brought together 200 objects from the BM's collection, all representing Africa, Native America, the Pacific Islands, China, Anglo-Saxon England, and other cultures, along with 35 of his own original works, some premiering for the first time. Like all civilizations, his also has a religion and he announces to the visitor upon entering that his chief god is Alan Measles. Who is Alan Measles? Why, he's a teddy bear that Perry has had since he was a child who has come to represent Claire's alter-ego.

Now, if you're rolling your eyes and thinking this guy is a crack pot, I beg to differ. Sure, it seems a bit inane, but the fact of the matter is, you have to laugh aloud at all of this, and then you realize that Perry is laughing along with you, but in that "Britty" (i.e. British witty) sarcastic way that Americans will never be able to master. Claire/Alan Measles...this is Perry queering our understandings about civilization and religion as we (think we) know it. CC and I laughed aloud through the exhibition. We were joined by a few others in the know, people who realized not to take any of it too seriously. But it wasn't all fun and games. At the same time, we could not stop talking about his work and his ideas, how he manages to make the artifacts of past civilizations relevant to us here and now, not just as sanitized detritus of the past.

Returning to Alan Measles, however, this was really an opportunity for him to shine, for Claire is largely missing from this exhibition (probably the only disappointment with the show). Or rather it was Alan Measles himself who apparently has decided this. After all, he has his own blog where he writes that 2011 is his year to reveal himself, following the examples of Christ, Buddha, and Mohamed before him. But Alan Measles is no ordinary god: “One of my core messages is that I want people to think about what fantasies they are holding on to and to hold their beliefs lightly. If I am a God of anything, I am God of a doubt. Pretty useless for a religion I know, but I feel the world has enough zealots and people attached to being right already.” In a world where religious followers teleologically rely on texts written thousands of years ago to justify living in 2011, it is refreshing to consider that maybe doubting can be even stronger than asserting. (All hail the great Alan Measles!)

The exhibition opens with Perry telling the visitor not to think too hard. He’s not an art historian, just a craftsman, and so he introduces us to his imaginary world and invites the visitor to participate in its artifacts along with those from other world cultures. Arranged thematically, there are sections dedicated shrines, pilgrimages and badges, maps, and the spiritual dimension to sexuality. On the theme of Magick, Perry writes: “Part of my role as an artist is similar to that of a shaman or witch doctor. I dress up, I tell stories, give things meaning and make them a bit more significant. Like religion, this is not a rational process, I use my intuition. Sometimes our very human desire for meaning can get in the way of having a good experience of the world. Some people call this irrational unconscious experience spirituality. I don’t.” In wall texts such as these, we encounter over and over succinct yet intelligent explanations for how the artist-craftsman throughout time has not only participated in the making of the visual identifiers of civilizations, but in fact has superimposed his/her supremacy on them because their handiwork is all that survives. He invites us to ponder who these artist-craftsmen were. We will never know, and this is Perry’s point. The unknown craftsman of the show’s title elevates the importance of these unnamed masters and shows how anonymity has the power to create the most important features of a civilization.

From here the visitor begins to see that Perry actually is taking him/her on an actual pilgrimage. The very museum in which they have been viewing these cultural artifacts all this time now becomes a temple to the past and present. These objects that we see inside vitrines and raised on pedestals aren’t just representations of long-dead peoples but mirrors that show us who we are as well. The fact that so many have come from tombs now plays into the title of his show as well, for the BM (and all museums) are not only temples but also tombs in which we excavate an understanding of the past and how it relates to us.

Many of Perry’s individual art works are simply beautiful. His vases are undoubtedly my favorite works. The first one seen upon entering is You Are Here, a vase in which Perry envisions different types of visitors to his exhibition, suggesting in bubbles over their heads the many reasons why they may have shown up, from having a free ticket or needing to write a school report, to the social critic who declares “I need to have my negative prejudices confirmed.” Perry's Shrine to Alan Measles could pass for a Tang Dynasty tomb sculpture, except for its contemporary references, dangling pictures of Princess Diana and the Twin Towers. His cast-iron sculptures were new for me and simply exquisite with their rust-colored sheen. These included Alan Measles on Horseback, a primitivist Don Quixote-like figurine, and the pathos-driven paired figures Our Father, Our Mother, who carry the weight of all civilizations in baskets and satchels on their broken bodies. The tour de force of the exhibition itself, however, is the final piece in the last gallery, appropriately entitled The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. A new work made for this exhibition, it is rusty cast-iron funerary ship decorated with casts of numerous objects seen throughout the exhibition itself, from African figure heads to Asian shrines. At the heart of it is a piece of 250,000-year-old flint, the very first tool that allowed an unknown craftsman to make the first product of civilization.

Perry’s exhibition is simply brilliant. I can't say it enough. There is an entrance fee, which may make some people balk, but it is absolutely worth it. Despite his warning not to think about it too much, you cannot help but ponder the associations he has made and how his own beautiful work complements and relates to the long history of artifacts that surround you. But at the same time, the absurdity of Claire/Alan Measles makes you realize you truly do need to take it all in stride, and to laugh—yes, laugh in a museum!—whenever you think it is appropriate. Perry isn't so intellectual about his art that he wants you to forgo enjoying it. On the contrary, he'd rather you simply enjoy it first and perhaps never think about it at all. That of course is almost impossible for art historians like CC and me, but fortunately we were able not only to get excited about his messages, but also laugh our way through the exhibition at his intentional queering of everything you might come to expect from art and the museum.

The exhibition is on until February 19, 2012. There is an exhibition catalogue as well. Be sure to visit the exhibition website where you can see a short video about Perry's preparations for the exhibition.

London Exhibitions, Fall 2011

2011-10-12T22:05:00.000-04:00

Back in May 2010, I had written about Yinka Shonibare's sculptural piece Nelson's Ship in a Bottle outside the National Gallery in London. As it turned out, I didn't get to see it then, but on this recent trip I was pleased to discover it was still resting on the fourth plinth. I took the picture above showing the ship in a bottle just overlooking Nelson's Column at the heart of Trafalgar Square. The sculpture is 3.25 meters high and 5 meters long (10 feet 7 inches by 16 feet 4 inches) and weighs 4 tons. It was great to see it, but since it was so difficult to examine closely, I admit I was a bit disappointed.

Alas, this disappointment continued elsewhere. I had been looking forward to the NG's exhibition on Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, their first Director and a President of the Royal Academy. This exhibition was a one-room show highlighting masterpieces in Renaissance art that on his art-buying trips he brought back to London. There were some archival objects in the show, but all-in-all it was a bit uninspiring. Compounding disappointment was The House of Annie Lennox installation at the Victoria & Albert Museum. CC and I ventured over to see it after doing research in the National Art Library all day. I was looking forward to this exhibition a great deal, and admittedly two highlights were some of her costumes and the array of professional photographs taken of her over the span of her career. But the exhibition itself was actually quite boring. It looked more like someone had invaded her closet and thus apotheosized aspects of her life in a way that borders on the inane...unless of course you're dead. Case in point: a pair of shoes Annie wore sometime in the 1980s while walking in London. Really? And where's the piece of gum she spat out on May 7, 1986? The "house" of Lennox was meant to be a doll's house-like recreation of some of her personal manuscripts and scores, but even this seems rather pathetic in its selection and display. Annie Lennox is a powerhouse of a singer, entertainer, and activist. She deserves more space, more room, and more interpretation that simply a tiny interactive room where you can pull out drawers and listen to her songs.

The British Museum had a lovely surprise for CC and me when we visited. This was an exhibition of German Romantic prints and drawings. Many of these works were from a private collection, and the curators noted that very few people have been active in acquiring the work of German artists, so this was a rare opportunity to showcase some of their important works. These included Philip Otto Runge's Times of the Day series of line engravings, which were delightful to finally see in person. Carl Wilhelm Kolbe's botanical prints probably impressed me the most, as his exaggerated foliage swallows humans in their explorations of the power of nature, such as in this 1801 print, Auch ich war in Arkadien (I too was in Arcadia). The BM also gave CC and I one of the best exhibition experiences: Grayson Perry. It was so damn good, I'm writing a separate review just of that exhibition.

And finally, even though it cost me £10 (student rate) to get in, I did go to Tate Britain to see John Martin: Apocalypse. An artist who made a career out of merging the sublime landscape with moralistic narrative tales of death and destruction, Martin in his paintings and prints make you aware of how much the Romantics and Victorians cherished being thrilled and frightened by melodramatic art and literature. The tour de force of the exhibition, however, was near the end, where the curators recreated a multi-sensory experience that Victorian audiences would have encountered in the 1850s. Called The Last Judgment, audiences were surrounded by his three enormous paintings (including The Great Day of His Wrath, 1851-3, below) as well as loud, dramatic music, intense flashes of light, and actors reciting texts from the Book of Revelations in booming voices. The recreated experience made me chuckle, but you could absolutely understand how in the days long before moving pictures had even been imagined participants would have been terrified and thrilled by the sensation created by these pictures and the importance of their spiritual message. It was worth paying the £10, if even just for the cinematic experience of Martin's paintings.

A Day at the British Library

2011-10-06T05:11:00.000-04:00

I’m in London right now on a bit of a marathon research trip for my dissertation on the sculptor John Gibson (1790-1866). I thought bklynbiblio readers might be curious to know what exactly a typical day during one of these research trips actually means. I arrived at Heathrow Airport on Wednesday morning, having slept about three hours on the plane, then took the Express train to Paddington Station and a taxi to my hotel, where I dropped off my bag and freshened up. I grabbed my laptop, made the twenty-minute walk toward the British Library, stopping briefly for a large cappuccino (caffeine will be a key ingredient all day) and a sandwich at Pret a Manger. By the time I actually crossed the plaza and entered the doors of the BL (picture left from Haiku Girl's Flickr pool), it was about 11:30am. Now, I’m familiar with the BL to some extent, having secured a reader’s card and done research here in the past, not to mention seeing some of their excellent exhibitions. You can bring very little into the reading rooms of the BL, so the rest of what I’m carrying goes into a locker. I had ordered a few items days earlier, so I logged into the system and discovered most of them were ready. Off I went to the Manuscripts Reading Room.

One of the items I had ordered was the July 1823 catalogue for the Christie’s auction of the contents of the studio of the British sculptor Joseph Nollekens. My interest in this was based on the fact that Liverpool-raised Gibson went to London in 1817 for about six months before moving on to Rome, and I had uncovered in past research that apparently a small sculpture of Gibson’s was included in this auction, suggesting Gibson may have worked with Nollekens briefly during this stint in London. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the listing; the auction catalogue at the BL only detailed the works for the first day of the sale. Days two and three are separate catalogues and presumably Gibson’s work was listed in those. So unfortunately my first bit of research for the day turned out to be a bust, but ever the optimist I am hopeful I can track this down, because the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum also has a copy of the catalogue and I’ll be there on Friday. I moved on to my second request, an enormous tome called Pictures and Drawings Selected from the Works of Edward Armitage, R.A. (1898). What does Armitage have to do with Gibson? Nothing actually. I’ve been wanting to look at this rare volume of engravings after Armitage’s works because of a long-term article I’m working on related to the Anglo-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite artist Simeon Solomon, about whom bklynbiblio readers will recall I have written about in the past. Did I find what I was looking for? No, but again it was good to be introduced to the work of this man who was another important Victorian painter, but about whom we know very little today (although readers may recall my writing about his fabulous allegorical painting Retribution at the Leeds Art Gallery).

Fighting exhaustion, I moved on to the Rare Books Reading Room, where I immersed myself in another rare item, the 1816 sale catalogues for the collections of prints, drawings, and books owned by William Roscoe. Roscoe was a Liverpool-based attorney who in the 1790s retired early to become a Renaissance historian, writing a biography of Lorenzo de’ Medici that is still considered by scholars today to be a foundational text on the Florentine patron. Roscoe made a series of bad financial investments and was forced in 1816 to auction off much of his art collection and library. Following the example of the de’ Medici, Roscoe was Gibson’s first patron in Liverpool and helped nurture him in his pursuit of becoming a sculptor. Gibson reported in his memoirs about Roscoe allowing him to study his print collection, so I was pleased to be able to look through these catalogues and was quite successful in identifying some of the works he owned, because (as I suspected) they relate to some of Gibson’s earliest works of art, making the scholar in me happy that I had just proven I was right.

Admittedly, reading through 1816 sale catalogues was exhausting, even though I risked the humiliating gawking of other researchers when more than once I got up and started jogging in place to wake up. By the time I was finished, I needed a break, so I headed to the outdoor café for a Coke and biscuit (that’s a cookie in America). Reinvigorated from more caffeine and the brisk cool air, I headed back inside, this time to the Humanities Reading Room, where I had a few books waiting for me here as well. Although Derrick Pritchard Webley’s Cast to the Winds: The Life and Work of Penry Williams (1802-1885) is a relatively recent work, hardly anyone has this book because no one knows who Penry Williams was. He was a Welsh painter who went to Rome and became Gibson’s closest friend. The two bachelors traveled extensively together and Williams was Gibson’s executor of his will and estate. If you think I may be insinuating something between the two of them, you may be right, although I will admit more to speculative thinking rather than outright factual arguing about their relationship. The book held some interesting surprises for me and did add more information about Gibson that I didn’t know, so that was definitely another success of the day.

And then the fire alarm went off! Everyone in the BL had to evacuate, so I grabbed my laptop and we left. Forty-five minutes later we finally were all allowed back inside, and if you could have watched the crowd of researchers herd back into the building, you would have thought we were either cattle blindly walking to our destiny, or perhaps more appropriately braindead zombie researchers dedicated to finding out that one fact everyone else has missed about X-topic, knowing the BL held it in its bowels of knowledge. Allow me to point out I’m actually not joking about this. The BL is ALWAYS mobbed with people. They range from college-aged students to the elderly, and it never ceases to amaze me how sometimes it’s nearly impossible to get a seat in one of the reading rooms because all 200+ are taken…that’s per reading room, and there are about a dozen or more reading rooms! But I digress…

Finally getting back inside again, I was able to look at my next item, volumes one and two of L’Ape Italiana delle Belle Arti Giornale Dedicato ai Loro Cultori ed Amatori, which began publication in Rome in 1835. This is a beautiful large-format journal with short essays in Italian and exquisitely produced line engravings after past Renaissance and modern paintings and sculptures by artists working in Rome. This journal really was for the wealthy collector. Gibson had two works engraved (remember, at this time he was a “modern” artist!) in these first two volumes, a privilege matched only by two other contemporary sculptors, the Belgian-born Matthieu Kessels and the German artist Emil Wolff. My reading knowledge of Italian got a workout (and this still on the three hours of sleep on the plane), so I decided to hold off on going through more issues of this journal for now and find out about two other works I had ordered. Turns out they were housed in one of their off-site facilities and wouldn’t be available until Thursday, so I’ll have to go back to look at those. By this point in the day (nearing 6pm), I was shattered, so I went for a lovely cuppa tea and another biscuit, and meandered back to the hotel so I could finally unpack.

Random Musings 8

2011-09-22T21:17:00.000-04:00

This week the New Orleans Museum of Art (pictured here) made the official announcement that my friend and colleague Russell Lord has been named their new Freeman Family Curator of Photographs. In their press release, they noted that in his position he "will be responsible for the care, interpretation, and presentation of NOMA's wide-ranging photography holdings. In addition to developing exhibition programming that expands scholarship in photography and actively engages audiences, Lord will continue to acquire works that enrich the museum's collection." You can read the full press release here and be very impressed by his credentials and experience, but the announcement also made it into The Art Newspaper, Houston Chronicle, Washington Examiner, and other national newspapers. bklynbiblio readers may recall SVH and I attending Russell and Dana's wedding two years ago, but he and I also have been at the Met and school together, and we've taken a few art trips together too. I'm absolutely thrilled for him, but I am seriously going to miss the two of them when they leave Brooklyn in a couple of weeks. I am comforted by the fact that SVH and I are now planning a spring trip to the Big Easy.

Speaking of SVH, recently she sent me this link to a news post and short video about what is being called America's smallest library. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week, with 150 books housed in an old phone booth, this library in upstate NY has been a great success within the community. Check out the short video about it when you're on the site. And people think no one reads printed books anymore...

Have you watched the miniseries Downton Abbey yet? If not, you have no idea what you're missing. It is one of the best things to come out of the UK since high tea and Ewan McGregor. The show takes place from 1912 to the breakout of World War I and captures the lives of the Earl of Grantham's family and his servants below stairs. The writing and acting is top-notch, with bouts of drama and humor that hook you in so much that you don't want to stop watching it. Not only has it now this past week won 6 Emmy awards, including best screenplay for Julian Fellowes and best supporting actress for the perpetually brilliant Maggie Smith (pictured here as the Dowager Countess), the miniseries also now ranks in the Guinness Book as the most critically acclaimed show in television history. The New York Times also recently had an interesting interview with Fellowes about the success of the show. Don't rent it, just buy the DVDs, it's that good. I own a set and I am looking forward to watching it again soon...because the sequel has premiered in the UK this past week and will be on TV in the US in January!

Finally, you must watch this very cool video that recently came across my Google Reader from the blog How to be a Retronaut. In 1784 German designers made an android that resembled Marie-Antoinette and presented it to the Queen of France. Working in ways akin to a music box, when wound with the key to play the android performs a musical composition by striking on the strings with hammers. It's incredible to watch the figure come to life, admittedly even creepy at times. But the talent and ingenuity it took to make this truly is a testament to the Enlightenment and the interest of men and women who wanted to explore new ideas about science and technology. The video has subtitles for those who don't understand French, but really the android "speaks" for herself.

World Alzheimer's Day 2011

2011-09-20T20:25:00.002-04:00

Wednesday is World Alzheimer's Day, commemorating those who have died and those who continue to suffer from this dreaded disease that erodes the brain, stripping away the life force that makes each one of us the people who we are. My mother died in 2006 from early onset Alzheimer's, and now my father is in the early stages of the disease. Alzheimer's is the sixth leading cause of death in the US, and the only disease in the top ten that cannot be prevented, cured, or even slowed. For the past three years, I have advocated on this blog to support the Alzheimer's Association in its vision: a world without Alzheimer's disease. The organization not only helps provide support in diagnosing and treating the disease, but their website is an incredible resource of valuable information for caregivers, who often lose themselves in their ongoing efforts to help their loved ones with the disease. In January of this year, President Obama signed into action the National Alzheimer's Project Act (NAPA) to help provide funding and support to help eradicate the disease. His brief public service message is below. Make a donation today to help support the Alzheimer's Association.

Fall Exhibitions 2011

2011-09-19T10:13:00.001-04:00

New York magazine recently published their Fall preview issue and highlighted some of their favorite upcoming art exhibitions in the City. I'm not keen on their choices, although two are on my list of shows to see. As bklynbiblio readers know, I love Autumn in New York. The past few days have been glorious, with daytime temperatures about 70 degrees. I've had my windows open for days now it's been so delightful, with a slight chill in the air at night. It's invigorating after the brutally hot and humid summer we've had. In fact, I think I hear my sweaters waking up from their slumber... Autumn is the major kick-off season for exhibitions at museums, so it's not surprising that there are a few goodies I want to see:

High on my list of late Summer exhibitions here in NYC is The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara at the Asia Society. This is a major loan show that almost didn't happen because of political relations, and showcases important ancient Buddhist art that has never been shown in the US before. They've also just opened a show commemorating the 150th birthday of Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature, focusing on his accomplishments as an artist.
Another major Asian art show, "Wonder of the Age": Master Painters of India, 1100–1900, is opening at the Met and promises to be quite an event with a number of beautiful works infrequently seen or appreciated in the US. The Islamic Art galleries are also reopening to the public after an extensive overhaul and redesign. The Met also just opened Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine, which focuses on cartoons and comics and will leave you laughing out loud.
The Brooklyn Museum has some interesting shows opening. Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk--An Introspective looks like it will break the boundaries of objective sculpture in this contemporary artist's first museum exhibition. Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties should be delightful, celebrating America's Jazz Age. At the top of this post you see the 1928 portrait of gay artist Paul Cadmus by Luigi Lucioni that is part of the show (image: Brooklyn Museum). Speaking of gay art, I'm thrilled that Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the controversial National Portrait Gallery-organized exhibition on gay and lesbian art that I went to see in Washington, D.C. with RL last December, is opening here on November 18.
MOMA's retrospective on Willem de Kooning has been getting good reviews, so I may venture over to see that, even though I'm not a big fan of his work. I always feel like a strain of über-masculine misogyny bleeds through his pictures.
Contemporary photographer and conceptual artist Hiroshi Sugimoto has a show opening at the Pace Gallery. Sugimoto is fantastic, one of my favorite contemporary artists. He merges Western and Eastern ideas together in ways that make you rethink what you understand about life, nature, and religion. His monochromatic seascape photographs are evocatively beautiful and eerie at the same time.
I'll be at the Yale Center for British Art later this Fall, where I'm looking forward to seeing their exhibition on the 18th-century painter Johan Zoffany.
I'm also heading to London soon and will be seeing a few exhibitions there too, such as Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery. Hardly anyone knows who he is today, but in his day Eastlake and his wife Lady Elizabeth Rigby defined artistic taste in mid-Victorian England. He was President of the Royal Academy and the first Director of the National Gallery. The exhibition on apocalyptic 19th-century painter John Martin at Tate Britain should be great, but at £14 to get in, I'm hesitating with that one. The V&A also has a delightful show on the career and costumes of Annie Lennox, which I confess I really cannot wait to see (love her!). So in the spirit of celebrating Ms. Lennox and the Eurythmics, we'll close with the 1983 video that started it all, "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This," a song which oddly enough my mother absolutely loved.

9/11 Memorial

2011-09-17T12:04:00.000-04:00

I've had a busy week, so it's only now that I'm able to talk about the 9/11 Memorial, which I was very fortunate to have visited with my friend JF this past Tuesday evening, two days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. When the memorial first opened this past Sunday, it was for family members of the victims, but it is now open to the public with time-reserved tickets for which one makes a donation. You can click here to reserve your ticket, but right now as I'm writing this post there are no tickets available until the evening of November 28. I won't go into details here about all the information you would want to know about the the project itself because all of that is discussed on the 9/11 Memorial website.

The memorial encompasses eight acres of the World Trade Center site and was designed by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, who were selected after an international design competition was held. You enter the site through a circuitous route that includes an airport-like security checkpoint, employees and NYPD officers continuously monitoring the activity of those waiting to enter and checking tickets frequently along the way. Once you enter the site, it strikes you as being largely an urban green space. The ground is laid with stone and there are swamp white oak trees everywhere. As of right now, they are still young trees, but as they grow they will create a beautiful canopy of leaves that will provide a lot of shade and rustle in the wind in a way that adds to the overall serenity of the plaza. Framing the two pools are bronze plaques on which appear the names of all of the victims. The names are stenciled through the bronze rather than engraved into the surface. Their names themselves commemorate their memory, but the empty space in the letters of their names also suggests their eternal spectral presence at the place where they died. As night falls the names glow from an interior light source that makes their absence more uncannily present.

The North and South Pools themselves are nearly 1 acre each in size and are situated where the actual twin towers themselves stood. They are enormous in size. Pictures such as these that I took do not begin to do the pools justice in terms of understanding how large they are. You truly do have to experience them first-hand. They are the largest man-made waterfalls in the U.S., and they are quite beautiful. We're so used to memorials being statues or monuments that occupy our space, objects at which we look up and around, that to see these as waterfalls reaching downward into the Earth is disconcerting at first. And yet the invisible presence of the towers themselves remains before you, since you cannot enter the space itself, and they still become a three-dimensional object occupying the visitor's space. Indeed, the entire 9/11 Memorial reflects presence and absence, in the names stenciled into the bronze, and in the way the waterfalls work. The waterfalls are simply beautiful. The sound of water truly has the power to soothe, and to watch the water fall is relaxing. Like with the stenciled names, as night falls the waterfalls are illuminated and they take on a new sensibility in how they are appear. The water itself pools toward the center, where an empty crater sucks in the water like a vortex. Your eye cannot help but be dragged to that central point, and it's quite painful to look at it, because you cannot see where the water goes, and you know in your mind and heart what lies there and what it represents. It is depressing, to say the least. But at the same time, I said to JF that perhaps part of what we're meant to realize as well is that the emptiness, like in the Taoist/Zen Buddhist tradition, also can be seen as the source of life and new beginnings. The air we breathe and the space between each one of us is incapable of being comprehended by our five senses, and yet without air/space, we cannot exist. It is the pith of our vitality. The craters then do represent the sense of loss and can be seen as death, but in much the same way that the towers still stand before us as invisible presence, so too are what they represent, symbols of healing and rebirth that reach heavenward like the towers of light that have been projected each year over the past decade.

Because the entire area surrounding the 9/11 Memorial is still under construction, there is a lot of noise surrounding the plaza, which unfortunately interferes with the serenity the memorial is meant to suggest. Once the construction stops, however, it will be the place of peace it is meant to be. Surrounded by office towers, including the so-called Freedom Tower that will be 1776 feet high when complete, the plaza runs the risk of turning into a picnic spot for workers at lunchtime. It seems unlikely that they will be able to monitor the memorial plaza with timed tickets forever. At some point it probably will open completely to the public, but that may be many years from now. JF and I were also concerned that the ridiculous red, white, and blue lights and the gargantuan American flag on the under-construction tower put too much emphasis on the memorial as a patriotic space and thus detract from the true meaning of the memorial, which is spiritual, not nationalistic, in nature.

The most incongruous part of the memorial, however, has to be the museum they are constructing on the site. The building itself is dynamic in its design (the picture here shows a view from the South Pool looking toward the museum), but as you get closer, looking through the glass-plate windows you can see remnants of the steel girders from the towers, calling out to the viewer like the guardians of a shrine. Even worse, a 9/11 "gift shop" (I'm not sure what else you can call it) already has opened up outside the exit. We walked in just to see what it was about, and I'm not joking when I tell you that I wanted to vomit. I'm not sure what repulsed me more: the actual commercialization of this tragedy into a money-making opportunity, or the line of people waiting to purchase t-shirts and souvenir books. While I imagine people think they're supporting the memorial itself, the entire shopping experience--and by extension the museum itself when it opens--simply cheapens the entire sense of peace and serenity that the pools and plaza are meant to convey. (Just reading about some parts of the design for the museum makes my skin crawl.) As JF and I both said, it's simply too soon for a museum. The memory of the events are too raw and too recent for everyone. They should have waited a generation before embarking on a museum.

When all is said, however, the 9/11 Memorial itself truly is a beautiful, serene place. Living in a concrete/steel/glass environment like we do here, having such a large space devoted to the memory of the victims of the attack, but also providing a place for rest and contemplation about life, is a progressive testament to the heart of NYC. Like the tree leaves that will change color in the fall, die in the winter, and return in the spring, life does go on here in NYC, but now we have a spot where we can stop every once and awhile and think not only about life but how we want to live it.

(To see more of my pictures of the 9/11 Memorial, click here. Note that I own copyright on these photos. You may use them for personal interest or educational purposes, but please credit me, Roberto C. Ferrari, as the photographer and provide a link back to bklynbiblio or the Picasa collection itself. Thanks.)

The Passing of Jeanne Pepe

2011-09-11T09:45:00.000-04:00

On September 12, 2001, the photograph you see here appeared in the St. Petersburg Times accompanying an article entitled “Show of Faith Rises Amid Fear.” The photo was taken by staff photographer James Borchuck and shows my aunt, Jeanne Marie Pepe, mourning the victims of the 9/11 attacks. According to writer Stephen Buckley, my aunt “stood at the back of a dark empty Holy Family Catholic Church in St. Petersburg Tuesday afternoon. The 68-year-old great-grandmother stared at electric candles. She had spent the morning sobbing and was relieved to hear that she didn’t have to go into the clothing store where she works. She grabbed her straw purse and went to church instead. ‘I just don’t know what’s happening in this world, to this world,’ she said. ‘I think God must be trying to tell us something with all this tragedy.’” Her story was but one of millions that would be published in the days following the tragedy, and it seems appropriate to share this story today, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But for our family this image is also bittersweet, as my aunt died 10 days ago on 9/1/11. This odd series of numbers and her death taking place so close to the 9/11 anniversary may be merely coincidental, but somehow it seems appropriate to her psyche. She was, after all, born on 3/3/33.

Her name was Jeanne (pronounced with 2 syllables), but to me she was always Aunt Gigs (pronounced with 2 hard G’s). The story goes that when I was a child I couldn’t say her name and somehow came up with Aunt Gigi (same 2 hard G’s). This was endearing to both her and me, but by the time I was a teenager “Gigi” just seemed childish so I started to modify it. “Gigster” and “Gigalicious” were possibilities, but somehow Aunt Gigs suited her well. Her creative sensibility and humor were a joy to me as a child. She wore a homemade pink bunny outfit one Halloween to complement my outfit as a panda bear. One time she wanted to read me the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I told her I knew it already. Undeterred, she decided instead to tell me the story of Silverlocks and the Three Bears, Silverlocks being Goldie’s sister, and much more feisty young lady at that! Then there was the time she decided to read me a “new” story, then proceeded to read a fairy tale backwards, which left me howling with laughter.

Aunt Gigs could respond to any remark with the lyrics from some appropriate song. Bring up dancing, she’s break out with “I won’t dance, don’t ask me!”—an absolute myth of course, since she loved to dance. Tell her it’s raining outside, she’d break out into a verse of either “Stormy Weather” or “It’s Raining Men.” Ever the merry widow, the latter was probably her personal favorite. Indeed, with her good friend and fellow merry widow Joanie, the duo used to go out for cocktails and dancing all the time like a couple of teenagers. Eventually they took their partying on regular trips to Freeport and soon became known as the Bahama Mamas. I always had admired the fact that she went back to school later in life and became a nurse, recognizing the importance of finding something to fulfill her. But of course there was a dark side too. Don’t mess with the Gigster, or she’d rearrange your face. The family remembers well how she almost jumped over the counter at the fast food restaurant Gino’s because the girl gave her attitude and dumped the French fries upside down in the bag of food. As her granddaughter pointed out in her lovely talk during the funeral services, one of her favorite phrases was “Freak you and twice on Sunday.” But we also will never forget her other classic line, “Kiss my grits!”—spoken by a New Yorker and not a Texan though, somehow it took on a more ferocious tone that implied “Come on…I dare you.” This explosive anger that could come out of nowhere was part of her urban Bronx upbringing. My mother had it too. But it was in truth a defense mechanism. In the long run she cared about protecting her loved ones, never wanting them to be hurt or taken advantage of.

The women on my mother’s side of the family always have been a force of nature unto themselves. Nana was the matriarch, and her daughters Florence, Jeanne, and Kathleen were a triumvirate of power. Their influence on the family was intense (for good and bad!) and resonates through all of us to this day. The picture you see here shows the triumvirate looking sweet and innocent ca. 1960, dressed in their Easter Sunday best. The fact that all 3 have died within the past 5 years is absolutely shocking. These were, after all, the women who raised us, creating our own familial village of support, and to think they are gone physically from us is like a gaping hole torn through the fabric of our lives. (Here are the links to my posts about Aunt Florence and my mother.) Florence was the strong one to whom everyone turned for guidance. Jeanne was the party girl who showed you how to enjoy your life. And Kathleen was the dreamer, always looking for the next adventure, always on the hunt for a bargain. They were in fact the only women in the world who could enter a Salvation Army thrift shop and walk out with designer dresses they would wear to a wedding or some other function looking quite fashionable, and having spent a grand total of $10 for all 3 outfits. Perhaps there is something to be said for being raised a working-class Bronx girl.

These past few years, Aunt Gigs had been suffering from the effects of Parkinson’s disease, and like my mother with her early onset Alzheimer's it eroded her vitality. As sad as it is to have lost her, we can rest assured knowing that like my mother she is no longer in pain. So as we say farewell to the last third of the triumvirate, we can take comfort in knowing that Florence has the cappuccino and shortbread ready, and that Kathleen is planning a full day of shopping. And once that is done, Joanie is mixing up the piña coladas so they can all go dancing in Paradise.

Torchwood: Miracle Day

2011-09-10T00:30:00.002-04:00

For the past 10 weeks, I've been tuned in to my computer on Friday nights in order to watch the latest episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. While I had lamented more than once that it was going to be shown on Starz, which I had never heard of before, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had access to the live channel through my Netflix account over the Internet (modern technology is cool). Tonight was the season finale, and it was most satisfactory. The premise for season four was that all of a sudden, without any warning, one day all human death stops on Earth. People think it's a miracle because no one is dying. But soon people realize the implications of what this means. The population continues to grow and within months the planet will be unable to support human life. And no one has been graced with everlasting youth, so people are still aging. Worse yet, diseases aren't fading with death as they are supposed to; instead they are beginning to spread, making more people sick, the diseases mutating and becoming immune to antibiotics. The "miracle" quickly turns into a curse. Enter immortal Capt. Jack Harkness (the ever-sexy and dashing John Barrowman) and his Welsh kick-ass partner Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles), the last surviving members of Torchwood, the institute set up by Queen Victoria to combat alien invasions (if you're lost, chalk it all up to Doctor Who mythology, which is how Jack became immortal in the first place...ya gotta love this stuff!). This time around Jack and Gwen have to deal not with aliens but the human race as they work with C.I.A. operatives Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer) and Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) to figure out how to stop the "miracle." Riding on the tails of this is convicted murderer Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) who's discovered the miracle has given him a new lease on life.

All in all, the series itself was good, but I didn't find it as thrilling or as intense as the three previous seasons of Torchwood. I still think Children of the Earth (season 3) was one of the creepiest and unnerving sci-fi shows ever. This season was too episodic, meaning it felt like it was filmed as a series of one-off shows, not a full-arc movie, which is what I was expecting since the entire season was one ongoing storyline. Jack wasn't nearly as dynamic or as charismatic as in the past, but they sure gave him ample opportunity to show him his naked butt and have some hot gay sex scenes. This is one of the great things about Torchwood: it's the only television show that has been willing to make its hero not just gay but actively gay. Gwen was an absolutely ferocious agent in this show and definitely carried the weight of the show. I have to say though that Lauren Ambrose's character Jilly Kitzinger (seen here), as a pharmaceutical company public relations representative, was superb. Ambrose deserves an Emmy nod for playing a neurotic bitch willing to do anything to get something out of the insanity of the so-called miracle. Ambrose was amazing in Six Feet Under, so it's no surprise that she was such a strong character here as well.

In general I often found myself frustrated by many of the episodes, but I stuck with it because the premise was so interesting (usually it's an epidemic wiping us out, not the end of death destroying civilization as we know it). The last episode tonight, however, did a fantastic job wrapping things up and leaving you with a few surprises. Because this is Torchwood, they're not afraid to "kill off" important characters, but they also managed to come up with a few plot twists that made this final episode very satisfactory. It also leaves the viewer wondering if another season will be coming. As for Capt. Jack, I can't help but wonder if he'll ever return to Doctor Who for another guest stint. Can you just imagine River Song and him in action together?! Lordy, the universe would never be the same.

Solomon's Shame-Free Art

2011-09-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

The September/October issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review features an article co-authored by me and my friend/colleague Carolyn Conroy entitled "Simeon Solomon's Shame-Free Art." I wrote the first part, encompassing his early life and career from 1840-1873, while Carolyn wrote the second half covering his arrest for attempted sodomy, and subsequent life and career until his death in 1905. If you have a subscription to the Review, you can read the article online; otherwise, check your local library or bookstore, or order a copy online. As bklynbiblio readers know, I've been working on the art of this Jewish Victorian painter since the 1990s and have published a few articles about him, including most recently an account of his first trip to Italy in 1866. Carolyn and I also manage the Simeon Solomon Research Archive.

The work you see here is one of my favorite paintings by him: A Deacon, 1863 (image: Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery). Solomon was fascinated by the mysticism of religion, and here he captures a beautiful youth entranced by the ritual of the Mass. One can read pictures like these as his exploration of same-sex desire as the (implied male) viewer gazes at the youth and shares in the rapture that the youth himself feels about God and/or the priest before him. The myrtle in the background is a recurring motif in his pictures and represents love in both its carnal and spiritual forms, so the picture can be seen as a paean to the sacred and sexual. Solomon arguably was one of the most innovative painters of his day. His arrest for homosexual crimes may have ended his public career, but as Carolyn and I show in our article it did not temper his interest in pursuing a life and art that celebrated alternative love and identity.

Happy 3rd Birthday!

2011-08-29T16:39:00.005-04:00

Yes, readers, our little blog turns 3 years old today! bklynbiblio just keeps growing with each passing year. With this blog entry, we've now reached 320 posts. Browsing the subject tags for all the posts, you’ll discover the top 3 tags since last year are as follows: "New York" is holding on to the #1 spot, now with 75 posts; "gay" is up a notch from last year and is now #2 with 51 posts; and at #3 we welcome "19th-century art" with 46. A close call right behind is "England" with 45 posts, which is not too surprising considering since our last birthday we've spent quite a bit of time in Merry Ole England and discussing British art. Stay tuned in the months to come for more posts on travel, exhibitions, my YCBA fellowship, and so on. In the meantime, "Happy Birthday, dear bklynbiblio, Happy Birthday to you!" (Speaking of birthdays, we'll also be celebrating the Padre's 80th birthday this coming weekend! Another milestone indeed...)

Exit Irene

2011-08-28T11:05:00.002-04:00

The name Irene comes from the ancient Greek word Eirene (pronounced in 3 syllables), which means peace. In ancient Greece, Eirene was the goddess of peace. She was represented in art holding in her arms the infant Plutos, the god of wealth, as you see here in this sculpture from the Glyptothek in Munich (image: Wikipedia). The allegory beyond this implies that peace nurtures wealth. It's an admirable ideal, but I'm not sure everyone in today's world would agree with that. Then again, I don't think the statue was meant to suggest that wealth only meant money. In any case, it seemed rather appropriate to end the Hurricane Irene saga with some peace. As I'm writing this post, the trees are blowing about in the residual gusts of wind and the rain is sprinkling down, but the sun is also gleaning through the clouds and birds just flew in the sky, sure signs that beauty can follow disaster. When all is said and done, this hurricane was really quite mild as compared to others I've been through. I never lost power (lighting the Santeria candle apparently helped!). My neighborhood seems fine with just some tree damage, and overall NYC itself seems to be rallying rather well. Suburban and beach areas in Long Island and NJ suffered more damage and will be dealing with flooding issues and loss of power for a while. Hopefully they'll be back to normal soon. This was a slow-moving storm, but it looks like we can file it under history for now. I wish I could end this post saying that the rest of this day will be peaceful, but this is NYC and the noise of traffic on the BQE and other areas has already begun.

Irene Arrives

2011-08-28T05:50:00.003-04:00

From 5 until 10am, the worst of Hurricane Irene is supposed to be hitting us. I was awakened about 4:50am with some heavy rain, so I ate a little breakfast (hard-boiled egg, whole wheat toast with tahini butter & black cherry preserves, and of course a cuppa tea) and watched more of the news. So far, I haven't lost power (but I couldn't resist lighting one of my Santeria candles last night just for some ambiance). The expected landfall for the eye is supposed to be around the border between Brooklyn/Queens and Nassau County in Long Island, but of course anything could happen still, and the storm is so wide-spread we're all feeling the affects of it. The storm surge and potential flooding is what the newscasters are most worried about, and we'll know more in a few hours as to how bad it is. The subway system probably won't be completely running again by tomorrow morning, although the one consolation is that it is supposed to be beautiful weather. (Image: The Weather Channel)

Irene on Her Way

2011-08-26T15:28:00.006-04:00

According to the National Hurricane Center's 2pm update today, Irene currently has sustained 100mph winds that are starting to affect the Carolina coastline (image: NASA). I think NYers are now starting to take this thing seriously. I went out last night to get some food and no one seemed even remotely concerned. But I went out again a little while ago to get some last-minute supplies and discovered all the flash lights and D batteries are gone, and people are buying lots of bottled water and non-perishable items. To quote one man I overheard: "There's like...no bread...it's so eerie!" Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg have ordered mandatory evacuations from all the coastal areas, and as of noon tomorrow they're shutting down the entire MTA subway and bus system until Monday morning, a first in its long history. Having been through a couple of hurricanes in FL (and at least 1 in NJ back in the '70s), I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic that this one won't be as bad as they're anticipating, only because I'm hopeful that it will weaken as it passes over NC and then move further northeast. Of course, we're still going to get hit with something no matter what, so it's always better to be safe than sorry. There may be flooding. And the electricity may be out for a while (suddenly I'm so happy I have my Why-Pad with 3G wireless Internet access!). Aside from that, I think I'm prepared with my emergency rations and my Goya-made Latino prayer candles. Whattya think?

Pharaoh Arrives

2011-08-25T19:44:00.006-04:00

Here in NYC, the other day we felt the tremors of the earthquake that hit Virginia (the floor shifted under me for about 6 seconds while I was at my desk at work), and now we're getting ready for the possibility that Hurricane Irene will strike over the weekend. Not your typical NYC week for sure! But, interestingly, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, something else rather unusual took place recently: they installed a 10-foot pharaoh in the Great Hall! The Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz has loaned the Met for the next decade a colossal statue of Pharaoh Amenemhat II. You can read all about the loan and pharaoh on the Met's website. For your entertainment, here's an official Met video showing the installation of the statue. You see some great shots of the museum and it's fascinating to see them upwrap and erect the pharaoh using a crane. Enjoy!

Is It Baroque, and Do We Fix It?

2011-08-07T12:55:00.011-04:00

A couple of days ago I had an email conversation with SFR, who lives in northern Florida. Her local museum is hosting a loan of 16th- and 17th-century Italian paintings from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milano (a lovely gem of a museum itself). This loan exhibition is being marketed as "Baroque" art, about which SFR wanted to know more. This is a good question, because when you think about it, what does Baroque actually mean? When I emailed her back, this was my quick, off-the-cuff response: "Baroque typically means it's more dramatic than Renaissance art, which is more balanced and harmonic. In Italy this was a period of intense religious fervor, so you get lots of contrasts of lighting and shadows for dramatic effect, sometimes some violent scenes. ... But then you also get these delightful still lifes ... which symbolize bounty and the wealth of the patrons." From the picture you see here of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Decapitating Holofernes (1612-21, Uffizi), you can get a sense of what I meant by the first part of my definition. This painting to me captures the spirit of the Italian Baroque because it is a Biblical (i.e. Apocryphal) subject presented in a way that’s highly melodramatic and incredibly violent, driving home the intensity of Judith’s determination to save the Jewish people from the Babylonian general. The fact that it was painted by a woman (a rare feat itself at this time) makes the picture even more fascinating because of our ongoing societal belief that women in general are less violent then men, driving home even more the determination of Judith and her maidservant in this picture. The painting also has a spotlight effect, making the figures stand out from the darkness around them. This results in thrusting the subject into the viewer’s plane more sharply, so that you cannot escape the work's visceral intent.

I could go on about this painting (which I love, in case it wasn't obvious), including talking about the influence of Caravaggio on Baroque art, but now take a look at the picture you see here, Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, or The Family of Philip IV (1656-57, Prado), which also is Baroque (and another favorite of mine). What makes this picture Baroque? It’s certainly not violent. You could say it’s dramatic, but more like a theatrical tableau. The intricacies of what’s going on in this picture have been debated by numerous art and cultural historians, including Leo Steinberg and Michel Foucault. Although people differ on the specifics, everyone seems to agree that there’s a determined level of psychology and interpersonal communication taking place, with the artist looking out at the viewer, who stands in the place of the king and queen whose portrait he is painting. The king and queen in turn are reflected in the mirror in the background, while their children and servants are positioned staring back at them, i.e. you the viewer. Are we to understand then that Baroque art also implies psychology? Not necessarily, because one could argue that the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci also have a psychological subtext to them (Freud certainly believed so!). The intricacies of light and darkness are at work in Velázquez's painting, so perhaps that is why the picture is Baroque. Does this fit in then with pictures by other so-called Baroque artists from the North, like Rembrandt and Vermeer, both of whom painted in very different styles but were known for manipulating the power light for dramatic purposes? But if it's all about light, then how does this fit in with Nicolas Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego (1637-39, Louvre), whose classical referencing clearly seems to call into question what French Baroque might mean.

My point is this: isn't it time we stopped using useless labels like Baroque? Or even the ever more popular Renaissance, for that matter? PR told me he’s teaching a course this fall on the Renaissance, and while I have no doubt Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael will appear in his course, will he go further back to include the "early" Renaissance art of Fra Angelico? And will he go forward to include the "late" manneristic Renaissance art of Parmagianino? Will he stay in Florence and Rome, or cover Venice too? And what about Netherlandish and German "Renaissance" art of the same period? In this context, I ask, what does "Renaissance" actually mean, and what does it tell you about the art itself? In truth, nothing.

I'm certainly not criticizing PR at all, just using his upcoming course as an example of the problematics of these stylistic terms. There was a point in art history when these labels made sense because in general people understood the unfolding of Western art in terms of historic appellations. You went from ancient to Greek & Roman classical, then Early Christian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, Realist, etc., until you got to the modernist 'isms' from Impressionism to Cubism and so on. Most large museums still arrange their galleries in this fashion. What made these labels work was the assumption that students/viewers were all White and Judaeo-Christian. But as every professor can tell you today, it’s not like that anymore in our ever-expanding global communities. There are students who have no idea who that guy Jesus really was, heaven forbid be able to identify the gods Mars and Venus. Complicating this is that the idea of history unfolding on a timeline also has lost its meaning, so that the Apollo Belvedere and Michelangelo's David are seen as parallel creations by some students, without any sense as to which came first and how one may have inspired the other. And yet, for some reason, academic programs are still teaching classes using these terms. Columbia University’s Fall 2011 undergraduate program has a course on "Early Italian Renaissance Art," and Princeton is offering "Neoclassicism through Impressionism." In truth, the reason why these terms are still used is because they are easy catch-all phrases that help (supposedly) get across similar ideas and concepts about art produced by a European cultural group during a particular period in time. After all, the alternative of offering classes on "Italian Art, 1400-1490" and "French Art, 1750-1886" are actually less helpful in giving students or the general public any sense of what they are actually going to see and study. And switching to using the names of artists ("Fra Angelico to Botticelli" and "Jacques-Louis David to Camille Pissarro") may make matters even worse because that assumes the student/viewer already knows who these people are and can date/contextualize them.

My art history survey textbook Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (12th ed., 2005) more-or-less says the same thing I said to SFR about what Baroque actually means. The authors also mention that the word comes from the Portuguese barroco, meaning an irregularly shaped pearl, and that it contrasts "with the rational order of classicism" (689). More noteworthy is that they acknowledge "the problematic associations of the term and because no commonalities can be ascribed to all of the art and cultures of this period," they have restricted its use to very specific cultures as it seems most appropriate. But then as you go through the chapter, you see that they use the term in each section on Italy, Spain, Flanders, The Netherlands, etc., showing that even they fall into the trap. Clearly relying on art historical terms like Baroque are now "baroquen" and need to be fixed, but it seems the only way to do this is to ensure the terms are explained as having some, but not all, defining characteristics that are appropriate to a particular time period because of current social and political events in a particular geographical area. And even with all that, it's important to note that not every artist shared the same styles and thus there are exceptions to every rule. Admittedly, it may confuse some, but need in the past to pigeon-hole everything into single broad-sweeping categories just doesn't work anymore for contemporary audiences. The new world order of art history needs a more nuanced explanation. (Images: Web Gallery of Art)

The Joy of Travel

2011-08-04T19:57:00.004-04:00

Those of you who follow the adventures of bklynbiblio know travel comes into play a lot for me, and you know how much I enjoy writing about it. In that spirit, I just caught this inspiring travel-related video on another blog and thought I'd share it too. It's called Move and it's by Rick Mereki, an independent filmmaker in Australia (hence the Sydney Opera House; image: Paul Banwart). Mereki's 1-minute film captures his (adorable!) friend Andrew Lees simply "moving" around the world. Once I went to Mereki's Vimeo site, I discovered he has made 2 other short films that are fantastic as well: Eat and Learn. Mereki writes about the films: "3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage...all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films." Beautiful and compelling they definitely are. If you love to travel, they'll remind you why. If you're afraid to travel, then hopefully this will convince you to Move.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Library Bytes: LibraryThing

2011-07-29T21:13:00.006-04:00

I haven't written anything library-oriented in quite a while, so I thought a post on LibraryThing would be fun, especially since I finished cataloging today my entire book collection. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I have 1100 books in my apartment. I have no idea how they're all fitting in here, but somehow there's still plenty of room to walk around. If you read bklynbiblio on the actual site itself rather than through an RSS feeder, you may have noticed I have a widget that shows a rotating group of random book covers from my collection. It's sometimes fun to see what will show up.

LibraryThing (LT) is actually an amazing website. Here is my profile. You catalog your book collection, searching by title, author, ISBN, whatever. But rather than just a static database of your holdings, it connects your library with everyone else's library in there to become a social networking site where you can see how many other people own the same book as you, and what people have the similar libraries to you. Not surprisingly, my friends SC and PR both turn out to have a number of similar books as me. That said, if you think my 1100 is big, you should see theirs: PR has 3433 books and SC has 4872 books! I joined LT 2 years ago after hearing about it from one of them. SC blogs about it frequently on Shermania, but since he's an expert cataloger in the library profession, it's not surprising that he would be so into it. The social networking component goes even further though, incorporating chat rooms, book store events, and so on. I don't actually utilize all those features in it, but I do like what it comes up with at times.

Once you catalog your books, you also assign multiple subject headings or tags. Using these recurring tags, you can then determine how many books you have in that particular subject. Are you surprised to discover that my top 3 tags are "British" (454 books), "art" (431), and "19th-century" (313)? "Fiction" (306) and "Victorian" (211) come next. Cataloging your collection also allows you to discover the authors whose books you own the most. Some of this doesn't really surprise me. Agatha Christie comes in high for me at 80 books (almost all paperbacks). I put the book cover image of What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! above as part of this post because I still think this was probably one of her most clever plots. (A woman on a train watches another train pass on a parallel track, and she suddenly witnesses a murder in the window of one of the cars. When she reports it afterwards, there's no trace of a murder ever taking place.) After Christie, my top fiction authors are Anne Rice (28), Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine (27), and A.S. Byatt (16). Among my art history books, Elizabeth Prettejohn came in with 6 titles, Beauty and Art: 1750-2000 being but one of her works. I was surprised who came next: Renaissance scholar Keith Christiansen and photography historian Larry Schaaf, tied with 5 books each, followed by the work of 19th-century art historian Robert Rosenblum. If you have a book collection and you've been wanting to get it organized, give LT a try. And if you do, "friend" my library!

The Why-Pad

2011-07-25T21:18:00.007-04:00

Was it only 18 months ago that I blogged about my new Dell Inspiron laptop? Was it only April 2010 that Apple introduced the 1st iPad, and we're already on the 2nd version of it? Technology moves way too fast for me sometimes. And, yes, if you're wondering why I'm going on about this, it is because during all the weeks I was sick (note: I still cannot shake the coughing & congestion 6.5 weeks later), I ended the internal "should I?/shouldn't I?" battle in my head, succumbed to peer pressure, and I bought an iPad 2. Or, as I'm now fondly calling it, my Why-Pad. "Why?" you may ask? I'll tell you why. It's because I'm still trying to figure out why the heck I actually bought the darn thing!

Don't get me wrong. It's actually quite sleek and fun. The picture above more-or-less shows you what I now own. It's white with the blue foldable cover. Mind you, I still haven't figured out how to fold the cover like you see in the picture--everytime I do it, the thing collapses on itself. And while I'm at it, why doesn't Apple sell handi-wipes to clean the screen? They sell every other imaginable attachment gizmo for it, but they provide no easy cleaning mechanism. Within the first couple of hours of playing with it, I had so many streaks and smudges on the screen, a forensic scientist could have taken fingerprints without needing that black powder. But I'm digressing, because I did say it was sleek and fun, and it really is. The technology of using your fingertips to tap and move things is ingenious (why didn't Douglas Engelbart invent this instead of the mouse, which has now given us all carpal tunnel syndrome?). OK, so if you're wondering why with this touch-screen action I'm acting like I've never heard of the iPhone before, it's simply because I don't own an iPhone and iDon'tWantOne. The screen on those things is just too small for me to appreciate what you're trying to look at, and first and foremost I just want my cell phone to make phone calls, not turn into a vocal GPS so Majel Barrett can tell me how to get to Starbucks (come on...do you really want people to know you're lost while walking?).

The iPad syncs with iTunes on my laptop (I have an iPod Shuffle), and I've now got a wide selection of digital photos on the iPad too (the slide show options make for some enjoyable viewing). My favorite app so far is Google Earth, although it freaked me out how it was able to find me in my apartment via satellite. And then of course there's iBooks. Now, I've been resisting the e-book revolution for a while, but I figured I might as well give it a shot with this thing, so I am reading my first e-book now. It's some pretty heavy-duty stuff: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911). I know that seems hokey, but there is a reason for this. Ages ago when I worked at FAU, we all got Jornadas (pseudo-Palm Pilots), and one of the free e-books that came with it was The Secret Garden, but I only read half of it, so I felt it was important to reconnect to that past experience for my first iPad e-book. So far reading it has been an interesting experience, but since I'm also reading Agatha Christie's Passenger to Frankfurt (1970) in paperback, I have to confess that even though the e-book has some cool features like zooming, an instant dictionary, and font customization, I still find myself drawn to the analog book.

So all in all, what do I think of my Why-Pad? I think it's a cool gadget, and I'm slowly getting into it. It'll be handy when traveling, and I'm sure over time I'll make more use of it. I don't have wireless Internet at home yet, so admittedly that is limiting my explorations. And every time I've tried to bring it to one of the 5 Starbucks within a 15-minute walk to my apartment to use their free Wi-Fi, there's never a seat available...because everyone else in there is playing with their Why-Pads and laptops! I guess I just may have to go to a Library to use it properly...where, curiously, I will be surrounded by paper books...

The M.Phil. Degree

2011-07-11T20:22:00.007-04:00

Which one of these things doesn't match the other? If you guessed the square on the lower left, you would be quite right. I went to school today to pick up my diploma for my M.Phil. degree (Art History), which is the newbie joining my B.A. (English) on the stand and 2 M.A. degrees (Humanities and Library & Information Science) on the wall. Too bad it's kind of plain looking compared to my other degrees with their fancy Gothic calligraphy. I actually received my M.Phil. on September 30, but it took them so long to prepare the actual diploma, I had forgotten all about it. In case you don't understand how all this works, in American universities the M.Phil. stands for Master of Philosophy and is the degree you earn when you've finished all Ph.D.-level coursework and exams. It means you're A.B.D. (colloquially, "all but dissertation"). Once I complete my dissertation and defend it, then I will earn the Ph.D. and you'll be able to call me dr. bklynbiblio. But I still have more to do to get there, and Lord knows I'm working hard at it. The dissertation is moving along slowly but surely. I have a tendency to obsess over what I need to do next in my life, to the total detriment of acknowledging what I've done so far. It was a pleasure then to set the diploma on my bookcase today, and to take a few moments to pat myself on the back and think about all that I have accomplished. It felt rewarding, and I even smiled. We all need to do that a little more often.

Gay Pride (and Marriage) 2011

2011-06-26T23:17:00.005-04:00

Readers of bklynbiblio may recall my past posts on Gay Pride in 2009 and 2010. I wish I could tell you great things about my adventures this year, but I’ve been sick for 2 weeks with sinus & upper respiratory infections. (We’re talking fever, doctor visits, antibiotics, and burst blood vessels from some violent coughing...not pretty.) So, alas, even though a group of my friends were all celebrating Gay Pride this weekend with parties and dancing, I only felt well enough to join them today for an early dinner in Chelsea. From what I hear, the parade was loads of fun, certainly better than last year’s. Everyone was jubilant, clearly celebrating the passage of the Same-Sex Marriage Act, which the State Senate approved 33 to 29, and which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law at 11:55pm on Friday, June 24, 2011. NY is now the 6th and largest state in which gays and lesbians will be able to marry starting next month. The picture above (photo: Michael Kamber, The New York Times) shows our political leaders and supporters at the parade: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (who undoubtedly will be one of the first to marry her partner next month), and Gov. Cuomo standing with his barely-visible partner Sandra Lee (of Semi-Homemade Cooking fame), who apparently was the major drive behind Cuomo spear-heading the passage of gay marriage into law. This is truly a momentous occasion, because it demonstrates that NY is a state that grants civil rights to all of its citizens. For gays and lesbians, of course, it’s a major milestone when you consider that the gay rights movement began 42 years ago after a raid on The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. After the law was signed by Cuomo, over 1000 people flocked to The Stonewall Inn to celebrate.

In looking back on my 2009 post, I discovered I had written some interesting words that in retrospect now seem prescient. Here’s what I said: “Things take time. Gay marriage and the dismissal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ won’t happen over night, or possibly even in 2009. They are simply too controversial for some people. But they will happen, in due time. You cannot change people’s minds by snapping your fingers, especially when religion is the foundation of their beliefs. And rather than be angered by these attitudes, I believe we should reflect on them and work to bring people around through education.” I cannot help but think that in the past 2 years, a great deal of educating and soul searching has taken place, and a majority of NY politicians realized that passing the gay marriage law into effect was essential.

Readers may be surprised to discover that I actually haven’t been a full supporter of "gay marriage" per se. My issue was never whether gays and lesbians could marry, that was an obvious no brainer. My issue was with "marriage." Its very outdated concept needs to change. Organized religion has monopolized marriage to the point that most people believe marriage is first a spiritual blessing and then a legally binding contract. In fact, just the opposite is true. As far as the state is concerned, people are "married" by the laws of the state in which they reside, not by the laws of God. Think about it. You legally can marry in a courthouse without the spiritual blessing of a religious leader. But you legally cannot marry in a religious ceremony without a license pre-approved by the state.

So, in short, what I’ve argued in the past is that the state needed to take back ownership of "marriage." To me, the best way of doing this was to change the name to a "civil partnership" for everyone, and thus to deny religious leaders their assumed ability to use a religious sanctification as a substitute for the actual civil partnership that would need to take place in a government office. In other words, couples legally should have a civil partnership first, and if they wanted also to have a religious one too, they could do that on their own. Their religious leader should have no legal authority to marry them. My point is that when you remove organized religion from this redefinition of marriage as a civil partnership, there is no legal reason why a state could deny that right to all of its citizens, regardless if the couple was different or same-sex partnered. But let’s face it. To argue all this at the state government level would have been nearly impossible. Coming up with a gay marriage law was just an easier, "straighter" path to take. So of course I have supported it and I am thrilled to live in a state that has passed it into law.

In the long run though, my reasoning more or less falls in line with why the Same-Sex Marriage Act did pass in the State Senate, and why 4 Republicans who previously had voted against this bill now were in favor of it. In the end, these individuals recognized that by denying same-sex partners the right to marry, they were denying NY citizens basic civil rights. Not only is that unconstitutional, it is immoral. The fact that religion was an underlying factor for the 28 Republicans who did not vote for it may seem obvious, but it is clearly demonstrated best not in their votes, but in the fact that only 1 Democrat, Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, did not vote in favor of the law either. His reason: “God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago.” Poor misguided Díaz. It’s sad really, because this reasoning demonstrates exactly how the closed-mindedness of organized religion can blind some people so badly that they lose sight of their own civic responsibility, to uphold basic human rights for all citizens in their constituency, not just the ones who pray the same way they do. Clearly, they have forgotten that we live in a country that celebrates religious freedom and is based on the division of church and state. One can only hope that they may discover the error of their ways and seek forgiveness from those they have offended. But I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Artist's Studio in Britain (Pictures!)

2011-06-14T16:25:00.010-04:00

I thought I would share a few photos from the seminar last week. My thanks to fellow "seminarian"(?!) Alexandra Courtois for letting me use these digital images she took. The one above is Mark Hallett discussing with us Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue in Love for Love by William Congreve, 1771. (You'll recognize the back of my head in the lower right.) The image to the right is a collection of some of the 18th- and 19th-century sketchbooks and portfolios we looked at in the study room. Below is a picture of Sarah Turner talking about direct stone carving with Barbara Hepworth's Biolith, 1948-9, as our object of discussion (Alex digitally altered that image a bit). The last image below shows us learning hands-on about pigments in the paintings conservation lab.

Artist's Studio in Britain (Part 3)

2011-06-13T17:27:00.008-04:00

The modernist trajectory in art typically positions the artist as a single creative genius who does only original work and works alone without assistants. While certainly there are artists who fit this mode of production (e.g. Van Gogh), by and large the history of art production has been the artist’s studio in which assistants helped make art in the master’s name. This was, in fact, a necessity, especially for sculptors. Few artists could have been as productive as they were without studio assistants. People like to believe that Auguste Rodin made all of his sculptures himself, and photographs of Rodin show him working as such, but in fact he could not carve marble and he used a foundry to make his bronzes. He relied on studio assistants to make all the works one thinks of as "by Rodin." This in no way diminishes the importance of the work in the artist's name, however, for artists frequently had the initial idea (drawing, model, etc.), and then purposely worked in derivatives and copies for the market and for patrons. Once the viewer realizes this, the modernist trajectory of the single artist working alone becomes an anomaly, not the standard of art historical practice.

Sculptors had large studios and numerous assistants, and during the seminar last week we had 3 sessions on sculptural production, led by Martina Droth and Sarah Turner (Lecturer, Univ. York). In the painting you see above by Mary Moser, the sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) is seen wearing the clothes of a gentleman, but modelling in clay a poetic subject based on antiquity (image: YCBA). This picture was painted upon his return from a 10-year sojourn in Rome. He brought back with him Italians who were experts in marble carving and thus established a commercially successful studio in London that specialized in figures after the antique and portrait busts of contemporaries that were purchased and collected like baseball cards (well, expensive baseball cards). In sculptural practice, Nollekens and others would make the clay model. Assistants would then enlarge it and use it to make a plaster mold. A plaster cast then would be made, and from this assistants would transfer the plaster into marble. The sculptor typically did the finishing touches on the finished statue. It may read straight-forward in print, but in fact it was a long, laborious task that one realizes never could have been done by the individual working alone. Direct carving in stone, however, for 20th-century sculptors like Eric Gill and Barbara Hepworth, became a purposeful transition to a modern mode of production, although it is worth noting that even Hepworth had studio assistants later in life, a fact she herself tried to deny in the modernist search for individuality. This is just talking about stone carving. Let's not even get started on bronzes, which are a whole other ball of wax ("lost wax technique" in fact!).

The above image of Nollekens, however, also touches upon another topic that we discussed during the seminar: the artist him/herself. There are a surprising number of painters and sculptors who depicted themselves as subjects or were represented by others. Some are shown at work, by direct observation or as an imaginary subject. Other times, however, these artists are shown simply as individuals, leisurely artists whose paintings and sculptures surround them as if to suggest they were geniuses who made art happen without any sense of labor whatsoever. Such is the case for many late Victorian artists such as Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Millais and so on. Chloe Portugeis (PhD Candidate, Yale) gave a session on photographic representations of these artists published in journals such as The Strand and The Magazine of Art, noting in particular the conflation between their studios and palatial homes (e.g. Leighton House, about which I’ve blogged before) and how these men came to be seen as celebrities in their own right.

On Friday, the participants gave brief presentations that related to works in the YCBA collection and/or their dissertation topics. Working in the study room, Esther Chadwick (Yale) spoke about the printmaker’s studio practice, Alexandra Courtois de Viçose (Berkeley) spoke about published editions of Lady Hamilton’s theatrical poses, Roo Gunzi (Courtauld) spoke about artists working outdoors and tied this to her dissertation on the Newlyn artist Stanhope Forbes, and Benedicte Miyamato Pavot (Paris) spoke on 18th-century artists' trade cards which were used to advertise themselves as art instructors. In the galleries, John Cooper (Yale) spoke about a bust of politician Charles James Fox by Nollekens (image: YCBA), Meredith Gamer (Yale) led a discussion on a print after a painting by Johann Zoffany on the members of the Royal Academy in a life class, and Kaylin Weber (Glasgow) talked about a portrait of Benjamin West by Thomas Lawrence. Back in the classroom, PowerPoint presentations were given by Bradley Bailey (Yale) on 19th-century Japanese prints and artists who trained in the West, and by David Pullin (Harvard) on the Stubbs and Wedgwood collaboration, tying this to his dissertation on 18th-century images that repeat in French paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and other media. I presented on John Gibson’s studio in Rome.

We wrapped up the seminar with a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday and we had a fantastic lunch in the Petrie Court Cafe. Indeed, it is worth noting that even though there was a lot of work during the week, we also had fun down time, including a great dinner hosted by Mark Aronson at his apartment (which, after a number of bottles of wine, somehow became an international hat-wearing party...you had to be there). Everyone seemed satisfied and pleased with the week of activities, and there are now plans to continue the conversation with a workshop next summer in York, England. On a personal note, I have to say that the opportunity to meet new people and reacquaint myself with others, and to learn so much more about British art production during this period, has been an incredible opportunity, and I tip my hat in thanks to the Yale Center for British Art for including me in this seminar.

DW: A Good Man Goes to War

2011-06-12T23:17:00.005-04:00

Was it already 3 months ago that I last wrote about Doctor Who? I must say, so far the first 7 episodes of the 6th season have been a roller coaster ride of an adventure. One realizes now that last season, when Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill were premiering their roles, they were just getting their feet wet. This season they have dived in headfirst and the season really has been great so far. The opening 2-part premiere with aliens all around us and the surprise opener with the Doctor's future death definitely knew how to get enthrall the viewer. But this latest episode, "A Good Man Goes to War," was simply fantastic. Steven Moffat gets major kudos for writing this episode. The Doctor, Rory, and a group of new heroes from the past and future, all of whom owe the Doctor favors, rush to save Amy Pond from the asteroid prison Demon's Run (seriously, ya gotta love this stuff!). You couldn't help but wonder about the backstories behind all of these new characters and their relationship to the Doctor (e.g. we now know how Jack the Ripper died). And then of course there is River Song. It was the plot twists that just made this episode one of the best written so far. I dare not reveal how it ended, but it packed a punch. Now, of course, we have the frustration of having to wait to see what happens next. The show has gone on hiatus and will return "late summer," whenever that will be.

Artist's Studio in Britain (Part 2)

2011-06-10T09:50:00.006-04:00

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) has been playing a starring role in the seminar this week. Two of our instructors, Mark Hallett and Matthew Hargraves (Associate Curator and Head of Collections Information and Access), are specialists in 18th-century British art, so the world of the first President of the Royal Academy and his colleagues directly relates to a discussion of the artist’s studio in Britain. It has been refreshing for me to hear much of this, since Reynolds is critical to the history of British art, and yet heretofore I’ve had little opportunity to spend this much time looking at his paintings and thinking about his artistic practice. The image you see here is an unfinished portrait of Mrs. Robinson, ca. 1784, from the YCBA collection. I chose this image because it encapsulates much of the discussion that has been taking place the past few days. As a portrait, it exemplifies but one of many of the society sittings that Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, and others all specialized in. Despite the hierarchical insistence on the primacy of history painting, in fact portraiture dominated Royal Academy exhibitions in the 1780s, from as much as 1/3 to 1/2 of all works displayed, as Marcia Pointon has shown in her book Hang the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (1993). Hallett has done further research into Reynolds’s oeuvre, showing that in his portraits of women, nearly 50% of them show them with turned heads, a new approach to portraiture that would have been recognized as innovative by contemporaries. The turned head could suggest something about introspection and absorption, but feminists also could see this as the woman with independent thought, not simply an object of desire. The work here also is useful because it is unfinished and as such shows the sketch Reynolds made and the layering of paints to create what would have been the finished portrait. Why it is unfinished we do not know. It could be because Reynolds disliked his progress, but more likely it is because the sitter changed her mind or stopped paying for the work (which was more common than one would think).

Painting was labor. Unlike with a digital camera, an image didn’t just magically appear before the viewer. It took numerous sittings, the layering of paints, and time to allow each layer to dry. And yet with the layering of colors and the application of varnish, over time magic did occur. A persona, captured in a mode of idealized beauty or heroic achievement, did appear on the canvas, captured if not for infinity then for at least as long as the canvas would survive. As we also discussed, however, Reynolds was known for experimenting with his paints, and it was not uncommon for his pictures to fade, that he had to repair them in his own day. This problem still exists with some of Reynolds’s pictures and it is up to conservators to figure out ways to slow down if not stop the damage before all color fades completely.

The role of pigments and the formation of color was part of another great session we had on painters’ materials. Tubes of paint as we know them today didn’t exist until the 19th century century, so part of being a painter was mix your own paint colors, a task which frequently fell to young studio assistants. In Reynolds’s case, however, he often mixed his own paints in a conscious attempt not to share his color secrets with anyone. Mark Aronson (Chief Conservator of Paintings) and Jessica David (Postgraduate Research Associate) gave us a fantastic overview of pigments in the paintings conservation lab and we even had an opportunity to blend colors. I confess that the chemistry and other sciences in the making of art is still a mystery to me, but I was comforted by the fact that we had discussions around the notion that even in art history the making of art is something that has passed on to conservators and restorers because most art historians today specialize in the social history of art.

In our discussion of sketchbooks, we had another enjoyable opportunity to work hands-on with a number of 18th- and 19th-century sketchbooks by amateur and professional artist, from Romney’s and Flaxman’s sketchbooks from their travels to Rome, to a naval captain named E. V. Porcher who designed a portfolio of exotic watercolor images of south and east Asia during his time there on assignment ca. 1850. We discussed and practiced using optical devices (camera obscura, the Claude glass, and the camera lucida) in order to understand how they were used by artists to capture the true-to-life landscape and craft it into the picturesque. We also had an engaging talk about painting treatises, in particular Jonathan Richardson’s Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715, reprinted 1725), which was read by every British painter of that century in an attempt to understand why being a painter was important to society and how education and good moral behavior would assist the painter in understanding the psychology of his sitter when painting portraits. There was much discussion about sculpture as well, but I’ll save that for next time.

CAA in LA

2011-06-08T20:51:00.004-04:00

Not too long ago, I had posted about the call for papers for the 2012 College ArtAssociation conference, which will be held in Los Angeles in February 2012. I just received word that my proposal was accepted, so I'll be heading to LA in about 8 months from now. The first time I went there was in 2001 for the annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America. I confess I'm not a big fan of the city (how many NYers really are?), but it was fun to see things like Hollywood and a few stars on the Walk of Fame (image above: Brian L's Picasa stream). In any case, it will be good to go back. I proposed a paper for the session "Future Directions in the History of British Art," which celebrates the 20th anniversary of the organization the Historians of British Art by looking forward to innovative modes of art historical inquiry in the field. My paper is tentatively entitled "Reconsidering John Gibson, Remolding British Sculpture," and will show how my research on Gibson offers us new and expansive models for reexamining the study of British sculpture itself. But there's time for all that. For now, it's back to readings for my YCBA seminar on the Artist's Studio in Britain.

Artist’s Studio in Britain (Part 1)

2011-06-06T22:01:00.006-04:00

I’m in New Haven for the week-long seminar "Making Art, Picturing Practice: The Artist’s Studio in Britain, ca. 1700-1900" at the Yale Center for British Art, an event about which I first posted not too long ago. The seminar began informally yesterday with a guided tour of the exhibition Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance on its last day. I’m very glad I had a chance to see this show, and the tour was useful, not as a chronological history of Lawrence’s life and career, but as a close study of a few specific works in which we considered how Lawrence was both innovative and a leader in portrait painting from the 1790s to the 1820s. One of the pictures in the show was the work you see here, his portrait of Elizabeth Farren, Later Countess of Derby, which is owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is one of my favorite British paintings in the collection there. Farren was a comedic actress and mistress of the Earl of Derby, whom she married a few years after this portrait was exhibited in 1790 at the Royal Academy. It was Lawrence’s entree into the London portrait painting business and was received well by viewers. Farren appears as if she’s walked onto a stage or garden, and positions her head and body in such a way that she smiles coquettishly and seems to be flirting with the viewer. She is slightly off-balance and asymmetrical, which adds to the charm of the work. The virtuosity of his brush stroke is delightful in his ability to capture the white satin dress, the brown leather glove, and the spot of blue ribbon decorating her fan. I’ve always loved how Lawrence has the dress float to the bottom of the canvas, forcing Farren into the viewer’s space. One of the things we discussed during the tour was that pictures like this were often hung "on the line," resting literally on a railing that ran 8 feet high in the exhibition room at Somerset House, with the top of the frame leaning outward toward the viewer. What this suggests then is that Lawrence quite consciously used features in the painting like the trailing hem of the dress and the white shimmer of fabric to draw attention to his work in a room that would have been overcrowded with hundreds of pictures on display one beside the other. Farren’s presence would have dominated the viewer’s sweeping vista of the works on the wall.

There are about 10 doctoral students participating in the seminar this week. A few are from Yale, but others are from Harvard, Berkeley, the Courtauld, and other institutions, which is giving us all an opportunity to network and learn more about what others are working on with regard to British art. Our primary instructors (I call them that liberally as this is more of a discussion-based seminar than a series of formal presentations) are Martina Droth (Head of Research and Curator of Sculpture, YCBA) and Mark Hallett (Prof., History of Art, Univ. York, England), but we have others giving lectures and leading discussions this week.

Our sessions began today with a consideration of the growth of London and how artists changed neighborhoods from the mid-1700s into the early 1900s as society moved to ever further westward. We also discussed apprenticeship in the studio, how young artists who showed talent were sent to work for masters and learn from them. They would live with the artist in exchange for payment from the family for the apprentice’s training. We also looked closely at a selection of artist training manuals and sketchbooks, showing how apprentices would learn by copying from engravings, then casts, and slowly working up to the living model. The foundation of the Royal Academy school in 1768 offered new opportunities for students to be educated in the basics of draftsmanship, although they still learned the craft of painting in studios. By the mid-19th century, however, this model of pedagogy had evolved with a new emphasis on industrial and graphic design, specifically new state-organized institutional learning centers following the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the mandate to improve British design. We wrapped up the discussion with a consideration of how these new reform movements spread to places throughout the British Empire such as India and impacted local cultures there as well. All in all, the first day has been filled with an incredible amount of information, and having had opportunities to look closely at 18th- and 19th-century books and works of art is always a treat. Topics over the next few days will include sculptural practice and the representation of the artist in the studio, so stay tuned for more...

Art Websites of Interest

2011-05-28T21:39:00.012-04:00

I've been visiting a few brand new art-related websites that I thought I would share. For instance, I was thrilled to hear that the Yale Center for British Art has relaunched their website and included, for the first time, a database with digital images for all public domain paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, etc. in their collection. The image you see here of Leighton's charming portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie (1864-5) comes from the new database. Almost every museum is now working toward this goal (e.g. see the collection databases for the Met and the V&A), as it can only increase exposure to a museum's collection. In the case of specialized museums like the YCBA, an online collection database is even more important because it allows people to discover works that people might not have ever known they had. The database launch coincides with an in-house special exhibition highlighting works from their collection. I'll be able to see that show and (finally!) the Thomas Lawrence exhibition when I'm there next weekend. Yale also recently released the incredible news that they are the first university to make available digital images from their museum, archival, and library collections free of charge for all purposes, including publication. From Yale's press release: "In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration." Works still protected by copyright will require permissions from the copyright holder of course, but this is an incredible advancement in the sharing of intellectual property, and it sets a challenging precedence for other universities to follow.

The newly launched website Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 is a database that highlights the lives and working practices of British sculptors from the period of the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951. Information on artists such as Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) includes things like exhibition history, chief works, associated studio assistants and pupils, etc., helping to create an integrated understanding of how sculptors were not individuals working in isolation but part of a large production of individuals who interacted with in one capacity or another.

My friend and fellow Solomon colleague CC is once again tapping into her creative juices, this time returning to her former career as a practicing artist. She has launched a site where she is selling prints and collages of her work. She has some beautiful work there, so check it out.

And my friend and fellow PhD Candidate PR has joined the world of bloggers (something I've been telling him to do for years now!) with his new blog Architecture/Cosmopolis. Specializing in Beaux-Arts and classical architecture in America and Europe, he has already written some great posts on things like the recent cleaning of the facade of the New York Public Library and Art Nouveau architecture in Brussels (which bklynbiblio readers will recall is very recently near and dear to my own heart).

Cindy Sherman on Top

2011-05-24T18:56:00.008-04:00

Cindy Sherman is on top! I wonder if she likes that idea? It's certainly an empowering image and goes well with the feminist-inspired message that underlies her series of untitled self-portraits, where she dresses up and reinterprets iconographic roles of women as sexualized objects. Rather than conform to the assumptions these roles suggest by their objectifications, because she turns the camera on herself Sherman equivocates and disturbs the power assumed by the (male) viewer who normally controls her with his gaze. When Sherman started this series in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was a major step forward for feminist photography, and although in some ways the ideas and repetition can seem dated today, in fact what still makes these images powerful is the way they now fit into the long trajectory that has become the evolving history of women, gender, and sexuality in Western art.

But what puts her on top these days is that on May 11 at Christie's New York, her photograph Untitled #96, 1981 (image above: Christie's), broke records for the most money paid for a photograph at auction: $3,890,500 (including buyer's premium). Just a few years ago, I remember a group of art historian friends being amazed to hear that Edward Steichen's photograph The Pond-Moonlight had sold for just under $3m, and now that record has been bumped down to #3. It's kind of amazing when you think about it, because by-and-large these are images printed on paper from negatives. In other words, they're not one-of-a-kinds like paintings. This is not to say that they are less valuable. Rather, because photography was a medium based on its reproducibility, it seems strange to think that anyone would pay millions of dollars for just 1 of these reproduced prints. You can see the running list of the most money ever paid for photographs at auction (private sales, remember, are always higher). Since the list is from Wikipedia, however, be forewarned about possible inaccuracies. For instance, according to this news article, Sherman previously held a record for a photograph sold at auction for $2.7m but that doesn't appear on the list at all. It is curious to see that almost all of these photographs sold at auction are 20th-century works. The first 19th-century work on the list is a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, and that comes in at #12, selling for just under $922,488 (£565,250) from a Christie's London sale in May 2003. By the way, if you think you've seen Girault de Prangey's name on this blog before, you have, twice in fact!

300 Posts!

2011-05-17T18:37:00.008-04:00

It took 6 months to reach 100 posts, and then 13 more months to reach 200 posts. Since then, it's taken 14 months to reach where we are now: 300 bklynbiblio posts! Huzzah! Fireworks definitely still are in order. The image you see here is a hand-colored etching of fireworks outside Whitehall Palace on the River Thames on 15 May 1749, an event for which the composer George Frideric Handel composed his famous Music for the Royal Fireworks (image: Wikipedia).

Over the past 2 years, Blogger has been keeping statistics on their blogs, and I thought you might find some of the stats about bklynbiblio to be of interest. In the past 2 years, I have had 10,321 page views. Nearly 5,000 of these views have been from US Internet addresses, followed by about 1,000 coming from the UK. Germany, Canada, and Italy make up the next 3. Very interesting to me are the top 5 most frequently visited posts over the past 2 years. I can't tell if #1 is a surprise or not, but here you go: #1. Male Enhancement [July 5, 2010; 397 views]; #2. Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE [Sep 6, 2009; 311 views]; #3. Books of 2010 [Nov 28, 2010; 178 views]; #4. The Passing of Lionel Lambourne [Feb 28, 2010; 169 views]; and #5. 50 UK Days: Week 2.5 [Oct 28, 2010; 157 views]. Among #s 6-10 are my posts on the movie Little Ashes and my thoughts on Anthropomorphizing Canines.

Thanks to my readers for your ongoing encouragement and support! Here's to the next 100 posts!

Random Musings 7

2011-05-15T16:43:00.014-04:00

Following up on the blockbuster auction surprise of last fall's $35m Victorian painting by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the 19th-century Dutch-born British artist stunned people once again at Sotheby's New York's May 5th sale of 19th-Century European art. The picture you see here, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra (1880-83) was estimated to go for $3-$5m, and wound up selling for $25,000,000 ($29.3m with buyer's premium). Victorian pictures get criticized for their sentimentality, but it's clear that some people are willing to pay money for these narrative scenes that emphasize drama (or melodrama) over the formal elements of painting as painting. Cleopatra always has been a favorite subject among artists dating to the Renaissance through now, and one cannot help but think of the potential influence of a picture like this directly influencing movie makers of films like Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor. The Art Newspaper noted the following interesting information about the picture's provenance and past sale history: "Well-received at its Grosvenor Gallery debut in 1882 and subsequently owned then forgotten by the distinguished old master collector Sir Joseph Robinson, Cleopatra resurfaced in a 1958 Royal Academy show of the Robinson collection, only to be disposed by Robinson’s daughter Princess Labia at Sotheby’s London in 1962 for the then not inconsiderable sum of £2,000. Steadily rising in price throughout the ensuing decades, the picture last appeared at auction at Christies in 1993, selling for £879,500 (estimated £280,000-£320,000; $1.3m)." In other arts-related news...

A recent study by neurobiologists at the University College London has shown that looking at art has the ability to trigger dopamine, generating feelings similar to those that make you feel like you're in love. Among the artists whose works were shown to people in the study were Botticelli, Monet, Ingres, and Constable. Upon hearing this, I wasn't exactly surprised. Of course beautiful works of art are going to trigger an emotional response! That is actually the point to art, to evoke a response. Much of 20th-century art has forcibly lost this aesthetic basis in favor of other ideas about art (Rothko being perhaps among the few exceptions). Advertisers realized this a long time ago when pictures started making an appearance in ads. Obviously though not every painting or work of art can trigger the same reaction. Some people like landscapes over people, flowers over animals, etc. Similarly, not every person you encounter makes you feel some sort of emotional response either. So I would argue that much of this has to do with one's own particular idea of beauty, preconditioned or socialized, that one brings to the program. Regardless, it is rather fun to think that art can make you feel like you're in love.

This past weekend my friend KB came to visit from California, and we went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Sam Taylor-Wood Wuthering Heights-themed photographs of the Yorkshire moors (unfortunately, more interesting in principle than in reality), and Lorna Simpson's thought-provoking exploration of African-American identities. I especially liked her collage-like piece Please remind me of who I am, 2009, appropriates discarded photo booth pictures of Blacks from the past, arranging them interspersed with small blank boxes that I believe represent identities we've already forgotten and are now lost for good. KB also stopped by the Met and saw the Alexander McQueen fashion exhibition, which she said was amazing. I absolutely have to agree. I finally saw it last week, and it is incredible, installed both like a runway event and performance art. Over 12,000 people saw the show in one day, and currently people are waiting up to 30 minutes to get in. They've already run out of the first print run of the catalogue (the holographic cover of which is pictured here).

In my last Random Musing, I had reported on some census stats regarding my Brooklyn neighborhood. Imagine my surprise to discover that the neighborhood along Columbia Street ranks as the NYC neighborhood with the most same-sex couples. Who knew!? That's the area just outside my door and across the BQE (Broolyn Queens Expressway...which I fondly call the BQE River because of its constant churning of traffic). I cross the BQE River every once and a while to venture into that area, but I never stay very long because it's pretty much a dead zone. In fact, there is nothing there that would lead you to believe it was filled with gay couples. Although, come to think of it, the B61 bus runs through there and that is the bus that takes you not just to Park Slope but also Ikea. It's also one of the cheapeast neighborhoods in NYC and still close to Manhattan.

Finally, my latest music obsession these days isn't Lady Gaga, but I do seem to be going gaga over Adele. Admittedly, so is everyone else, but you can tell why. She really does have an incredible voice, full of soul and a certain sort of anguish that strains you when you listen her croon out a ballad or pop tune. And to top it off, she's beautiful, in the very natural, unexpected way that isn't a cardboard cutout or a model. Here's the video for "Rolling in the Deep."

British Collectors

2011-05-07T22:59:00.008-04:00

There's another gem of a museum in NYC called The Frick Collection that I always recommend to visitors who want a bit of art but don't have time for the large collections at the Met or MOMA. The bequest of American industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), this museum was originally his house and thus showcases his art collection as part of a domestic Gilded Age interior, providing the visitor with an experience different from the usual encounter with paintings hanging on walls in museum galleries. The Frick Art Reference Library, established in 1920, is one of the best art research libraries in the country. Frick amassed an incredible collection of paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the early Renaissance through the late 19th century. The Fragonard Room is one of my favorite spaces in the museum, and they have a virtual tour online so you can see what the room looks like. You may recall that I had highlighted Colin Bailey's talk about these paintings at the CAA conference in February. The beautiful portrait you see here of The Hon. Frances Duncombe was painted ca. 1777 by Thomas Gainsborough, one of my favorite British painters. This work was owned by Frick, but among its previous owners was the Jewish banking magnate Lionel de Rothschild, a British collector about whom I heard a fascinating talk on Friday.

In 2007 the Frick established the Center for the History of Collecting in America. This weekend they held a two-day symposium entitled British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response (here's a PDF of the program). I wasn't able to go to the entire symposium, but I attended the Friday afternoon session of papers, which focused on British practices. Overall, the papers were interesting, but because this was done as a series of formal presentations, there were no opportunities for questions, which I found disheartening. The keynote address by James Stourton (Sotheby's London) was an overview of the history of art collecting in British history from the period of the 1600s into the 20th century. Encyclopedic in scope, his informative presentation set the stage for the rest of the papers, highlighting not only the change in patronage from the aristocracy to the nouveau riche industrial middle classes. Jordana Pomeroy (National Museum of Women in the Arts) gave a talk on the sale of the Duc d'Orléans collection in the 1790s, which brought into England for the first time many of the greatest works of art from the Renaissance. Hugh Brigstocke (Walpole Society) presented a very detailed biographical talk about the artists William Young Ottley and James Irvine acting as dealers on the European continent during the years of the French Revolution.

Arthur MacGregor (Journal of the History of Collections) presented on 18th-century collectors like Charles Townley and Henry Blundell. These collectors were interested mostly in Roman antiquity, and he argued that the acquiring of ancient sculptures and the construction of classical-style country estates were interrelated obsessions. Michael Hall (Rothschild Collection) gave a very interesting talk about the aforementioned Lionel de Rothschild (1808-1879) as an art collector, pointing to his own first tours of northern Europe at the age of 19 as a source that helped guide him in his lifelong art collecting practices, typically of works quite different from that of his contemporaries. The independent scholar Julia Armstrong-Totten also gave an informative and engaging presentation on the art dealer John Smith and how in the 1830s he sought new ways to rejuvenate his business, including publishing his multi-volume series of art books in the 1830s as a way to expand his clientele. The last paper I heard was by Jeremy Warren (Wallace Collection), who spoke about the different art collecting practices of the 4th Marquess of Hertford and his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace. Their collections eventually led to the superb Wallace Collection in London, which I first visited last Fall.

For McQueen: The Costume Institute Gala

2011-05-04T23:25:00.013-04:00

I had hoped to write about The Costume Institute Gala yesterday, the day after the actual event, but I wound up with an excruciating headache that had me in bed by 8pm last night. You'll recall I wrote a bit about the event last year. It is a major highlight of the NYC season...my invitation apparently got lost in the mail...again. This year's gala was tied to the spring/summer exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, which has now opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and closes July 31. McQueen was known for his Gothic-inspired designs, unusual materials, and seemingly borderline-painful wear (think Lady Gaga's stilettos). I haven't seen the actual show yet, but from the catalog and the fact that McQueen is a name on pop culture lips, you know the show is going to be a huge success. This is the first museum retrospective of his work. Born in Britain in 1969, Lee Alexander McQueen committed suicide in February 2010, some say at the pinnacle of his career. Of course his dying young now has immortalized him as a Romantic hero, following in the steps of other great men who died at the height of their creative youth, such as the poet John Keats, the painter Théodore Géricault, and the actor James Dean. And in case you've already forgotten, the wedding dress worn by HRH Princess Catherine (Duchess of Cambridge) last Friday was designed for the House of McQueen by Sarah Burton, creative director.

The Gala itself is a major red-carpet event with the who's who of celebrities and fashionistas in attendance. This year's event was hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour (left), who looked quite chic in this gown by Chanel (photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/FilmMagic). Her co-hosts were actor Colin Firth and designer Stella McCartney. A number of people wore McQueen-designed outfits, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Salma Hayek, and Chloe Sevigny, Vogue European editor Hamish Bowles in his tartan-inspired suit, and Daphne Guinness in her outrageous swan-themed dress. Madonna had on a lovely 1930s-inspired Stella McCartney gown. But there was some serious misses on the red carpet too. For instance, no one will ever doubt that Beyonce has breasts after seeing them practically bursting out of her skin-tight matador-meets-mermaid outfit. Christina Ricci looked like a cross between Morticia Adams and Charlotte the Spider in Zac Posen's corseted gown. Serena Williams bore a striking resemblance to a wedding cake with sparklers. And poor Barbara Walters looked like she rolled out of bed wearing her bedspread and grabbed a fringed valance for her shoulders. Fortunately hope was not lost for all. Penelope Cruz (above) was stunningly elegant in her Oscar de la Renta gown (photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images). And even though I prefer to see him shirtless, Matthew Morrison (right) looked adorable in his Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo (photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images). To see all the hits and misses for yourself, check out the articles and slideshows put together by The New York Times and New York Magazine (the latter being my image source for what you see here).

Royalty

2011-04-30T08:27:00.014-04:00

Of course I watched the Royal Wedding! How could I not? Having blogged about William & Catherine's engagement, which took place while I was in England last Fall, naturally I was going to watch it. What can I say: I am an Anglophile. The wedding did bring back memories of when I was a boy drinking early morning tea with Momma and Nana as we watched Charles & Diana get married. Can you believe that was 30 years ago? They would have loved this Royal Wedding as well. Hearing that the Queen had given the couple the titles the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge also put a smile on my lips, making me think back to my days of studying at Selwyn College at Cambridge University. It was where I first met my friend CF and we had quite a few adventures. Sure enough, CF wound up texting me during the wedding saying the same thing. Speaking of technology, I was struck also by how the Royals have integrated it into their public lives. The British Monarchy has had its own website for years, but did you know they have a Flickr pool, a Twitter page, a Facebook page, and a YouTube site? It's pretty amazing when you consider they have a reputation for being old fashioned. The picture you see here of the newlyweds is from their Flickr photostream of official wedding photos which William & Katherine selected to be disseminated.

Every Internet-based form of news media has the wedding covered, so I won't bother linking to anything, but I'll make just a few observations. As always, there was a lot of pomp & circumstance, but the Brits have been doing it for so long, and always do it so well, it's simply magical simply to watch. But let's face it, it's all about the fashion. First, her wedding dress was stunning, elegant, and timeless. Like everyone else, I immediately thought of Grace Kelly, and I loved the retro-yet-modern 1950s look the dress had. I had a suspicion there would be a connection to the house of Alexander McQueen (the Met’s exhibition on him opens next week), but I didn’t know it would be designed by Sarah Burton. Second, William looked brilliant in red, and Harry…yum! Why are men always stuck wearing dour tuxedos at weddings? Uniforms aside, a little bit of color can only enhance the look, respecting, of course, that the bride still must outshine. (My friends RL+DG were a model to emulate!) William & Kate’s two kisses on the balcony and the drive-off in the Aston Martin were smart moves on their part. They managed to pull of tradition with modern flair, showing how they are the new monarchy for the 21st century. Third, loved the Queen looking all sassy in that sunshine yellow frock and hat...85 years old too! (Her 60-year Jubilee is coming up in 2012.) Finally, the hats...insane! The Duchess of York (Fergie) mayn't have been invited to the wedding, but her daughters are learning from her about standing out in a crowd. Princess Beatrice's hat looked like a combination of a Rococo wall ornament and a Christmas-giftbox-ribbon. The hats were adventurously fabulous. American women, take note!

With the swelling of the crowds in the London streets and the estimated 2 billion people who watched the wedding worldwide, hopefully the naysayers about the monarchy realize that despite everything there is a tradition of over 1000 years that has been the backbone of the British people and made them who they are today. For sure, the monarchy has to evolve to meet the more Republican (and even Socialist) demands of the people, but nothing happens overnight. The truth is, we need people like the Queen. Part of the mystique that surrounds our world leaders is the assumed glarmorous, magical world in which they live. People want to know that the Queen and the Royals are just like them, but at the same time they also need for them to be distant, removed, even above them in some way, so that they become a model to which one can aspire. An important part of that aspiration is the glam and the pomp & circumstance. People need a little tradition, and some historically-derived bling, in order to help guide them to a higher model of excellence. This doesn't mean the Queen is a god; it means she represents the best of the nation, and the world. Besides, think of the alternative: do the Brits really want their only visual representation of leadership to be David Cameron and his wife? Trust me, Americans know: we had 8 years of George & Laura Bush, and it wasn't pretty.

As an aside, my royal watching actually had begun Thursday evening when I finally watched on DVD The King’s Speech. It’s strange that I hadn’t seen the movie before now, but the timing to watch it worked out well, and of course I loved the film. The climax of the movie, when he gives his wartime radio speech, the way they syncopated it to the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, was a marvelous moment in cinematic history. The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that this actually did happen. Here is his portrait by Meredith Frampton, painted in 1929 when he was still the Duke of York (image: National Portrait Gallery). He was King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Cambridge’s great-grandfather. He had to overcome a major obstacle in order to become a leader, and he did it with the help of a friend who was not of royalty but of the people. It’s something to think about as the present Royals drive off into the sunset on their honeymoon, and a new generation of the monarchy takes us along with them for the ride.

YCBA Visiting Scholar Award

2011-04-28T13:36:00.012-04:00

I'm a regular visitor to the Yale Center for British Art, and I haven't had a chance to report until now on some exciting news about them and me. Stay tuned for that below. Yesterday afternoon I took a train ride up to New Haven, CT with Peter Trippi (editor of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine and co-curator of the recent John William Waterhouse exhibition). We were on our way to the YCBA to hear Elizabeth Prettejohn give the last of a series of public lectures on Victorian art that she had been doing all month. I had hoped to attend more of them, but I was actually in Europe at the time. Regular bklynbiblio readers know that Prettejohn's name makes appearances here from time to time. I admit it: I'm a fan. In her talk she focused on the idea of Giorgione (ca. 1477/8-1510), specifically how his work was an influence on Victorian painters such as Edward Burne-Jones and art critics such as Walter Pater. Almost no works are safely attributed to Giorgione. For instance, the ca. 1509 work above, Le Concert champêtre (Musée du Louvre), was attributed to Giorgione but it is now said to have been by Titian. Even in the 19th-century very few works were definitively attributed to Giorgione. Prettejohn argued that this obfuscation charmed Aesthetic painters into borrowing on his Venetian style so as to create pictures about beauty without subject or moral virtue. The talk was interesting, and there was a wine reception afterwards, with opportunities for networking. I was invited to join a group for dinner as well, which was very generous of them. I always find myself feeling a bit self-conscious interacting with all the bigwigs of Victorian art criticism (including Tim Barringer, Martina Droth, and Jason Rosenfeld), but it was a pleasant evening overall and well worth the trip. By the time I got the train and subway home, it was after 1am.

Now for the news. I've been selected to participate in a 1-week seminar that will be taught by Martina Droth (Head of Research and Curator of Sculpture, YCBA) and Mark Hallett (Prof. of the History of Art, York University) at YCBA this June. The topic of the seminar is "The Artist's Studio in Britain, 1700-1900" and will be of great use to me in my dissertation research on the sculptor John Gibson. But the even BIGGER news is that the YCBA also has awarded me a 1-month Visiting Scholar Award. Much like the fellowship I received to the Henry Moore Institute last year, this award will provide me with housing, a per diem stipend, research facilities, and access to their fantastic collection and all the Yale University Libraries. I'll be there from November to December. I'm really looking forward to it.

Shakespeare's Diary

2011-04-23T22:39:00.007-04:00

Dear Diary: Ye gads! the damn bloody fool Southampton is driving me mad as Ophelia! He be a charming bloke, with delicate folds of curling hair better suited for a woman than a man, and I daresay he has the financial resources needed to stage my plays, but he breaks the straws of my patience with his poking and prodding, wanting to know every last word of my latest play. He's almost as bad as Her Majesty! I expect I'll have to dedicate yet another comedy or poem to him. He likes to have his locks stroked. Back to work... 'Whether 'tis nobler the soul...the spirit?...the mind?...to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...'

Okay, so obviously that isn't really a passage from Shakespeare's diary. Such a book probably doesn't exist. However, on Friday I went to The Morgan Library to do some dissertation research, and I took some time to walk through two of their current exhibitions that have nothing to do one another: diaries and Shakespeare. The Morgan Library is a delightful NYC museum, not typically on the tourist's radar. It is a museum with a collection of primarily works on paper: drawings, watercolors, prints, books, manuscripts, sheet music, and so on. It was established by J. P. Morgan when he turned over his father's library and collection to the City. His father was the famous J. Pierpont Morgan, the banker, whose voracious collecting amassed an incredible array of material in all media, many of which went to other institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can go to The Morgan and see his Gilded Age library and other rooms from his home and many paintings from his Renaissance art collection, while also seeing excellent exhibitions on a variety of subjects.

The exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives brings together works by people as disparate as Charlotte Brontë to Tennessee Williams. The idea of the diary here is broadly defined, from actual bound journals recording the thoughts of the famous and ordinary, to illustrated manuals, study works, calendar journals, religious treatises, etc. The exhibition is interesting conceptually, especially for anyone who is a journal writer (I've been keeping them sporadically for nearly 20 years now!). But the actual installation is a bit dreary and uninteresting, short of seeing the handwriting of these people. For all the hype of connecting diaries to the current world of blogs and social networking as the exhibition claims, it was disappointing that they didn't put a station up that allowed people to leave their own thoughts or contribute to a journal of some sort. The online version of the exhibition, however, is superb. With zoomable digital images and more narrative to learn about individuals and their diaries, it may be worth spending your time visiting that version of the exhibition than going to the museum itself.

In sharp contrast, however, the very focused exhibition The Changing Face of William Shakespeare relates to the scholarship done to authenticate the now-famous Shakespeare portrait, about which I blogged two years ago (see the image above). The exhibition argues that the now-called Cobbe portrait is perhaps the best and earliest representation of Shakespeare himself. This small exhibition of a few oil portraits, prints, books, and manuscripts shows how derivatives of this picture over time help reinforce the belief that this portrait is as close to the most accurate representation of the bard. The show itself is small, but in this case intimacy works well, especially because the actual portrait of Shakespeare is simply beautiful and you feel as if you're in the presence of someone regal. The painting practically glows, and the artist's attention to detail in areas like facial hair truly are best seen in person. The painting make you realize that even if this isn't Shakespeare it was undoubtedly someone perceived as important because of the attention paid to the subject's physical appearance and cultural standing.

Brussels, Ghent, and Bruges

2011-04-17T10:24:00.012-04:00

If you're in London and you want to travel to the Continent, take a Eurostar train. With all the aggravation these days of airline security, traveling by train to Paris or Brussels is a piece of cake. The trip is much easier and it only costs about $100 round trip. You check in about an hour before departure, scan your e-ticket at the entrance, put your bags on the security scanner then pick them up, clear customs/immigration, drink a cup of coffee until they announce your platform, and then you board, put your bags in the rack, and relax in your seat. In less than 2 hours, you're in Paris or Brussels. It really is amazing and well worth doing.

Unfortunately, when SVH and I arrived in Brussels, we were a little disappointed. DE had said to us beforehand "It's not Paris," and now I understood what he meant. Not only is it smaller, but it's lacking the pristine beauty that lies at the heart of Paris. We checked into our hotel and wandered around town. It was noisy, full of screaming youths and gals drinking lots of the ubiquitous Stella Artois beer. Tourists poured into the Grand Place, the main square surrounded by historic buildings decorated in gilt that, upon reflection, still is nothing compared to the Louvre in Paris or even the Piazza di Signoria in Firenze. The more we walked around, we couldn't understand why there was trash everywhere and why there were no flowers. London's parks are already bursting with flowers. There was nothing here. We quickly made the decision to take a guided coach tour the following day to Ghent and Bruges. It turned out to be a fantastic day.

Ghent is about 45 minutes outside of Brussels, with Bruges another hour heading northwest, just near the border of The Netherlands. Both cities are absolutely charming and reflect exactly the atmosphere we thought we'd find in Brussels. Ghent is an old university town from the medieval period, and the architecture is simply delightful. Normally I wouldn't advocate taking guided tours, but this one was relaxing and gave us plenty of free time to wander, which helped. The major highlight for me in Ghent was going to St. Bavo's Cathedral and seeing the large triptych of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (image: Web Gallery of Art). It's historically important and simply beautiful. The center panel with the representation of God the Father has been a source of inspiration for numerous artists over the centuries. Both Ghent and Bruges have man-made canal systems dating back to the 1400s, and although once used for shipping and commerce, they now serve mostly for tourism. Terraced roofs on facades is classic Flemish-style architecture, so it was lovely to see so many of these beautiful houses of the old guilds lined up one after the other on the canal (see picture at top). Bruges, unlike Ghent, is more of a tourist city. It's obvious that if Brussels is a business center, then Bruges is where people come to relax. Another artistic highlight there was Michelangelo's sculpture of the Madonna of Bruges, which had been brought by its patron to the city in the 1500s.

We were back in Brussels on my birthday, and the more we wandered the more we realized that the beauty of the city is outside the Grand Place area. We found gardens, public sculpture, and exquisite Art Nouveau-style townhouses. We went to the Musée Magritte to see the work of René Magritte, the native Belgian Surrealist. We also took the long walk to Rue Americaine to visit the Musée Horta, one of the earliest Art Nouveau-style homes designed by the architect Victor Horta for himself ca. 1900. Art Nouveau has a tendency to seem outdated when one looks at it in reproductions, but seeing it as an architectural space makes you realize how incredibly modern it was with its exposed ironwork and open floor plan. The Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts had large portions closed for renovations, so I decided I needed to come back and visit that museum on a future visit.

As for food, we definitely indulged. We ate Belgian chocolates from numerous high-end chocolatiers such as Pierre Marcolini (all simply delectable), we had dessert crepes as a birthday indulgence in Brussels, and we had a Belgian waffle with raspberry coulis in Bruges. We ate lunch in a restaurant overlooking the city from the top floor of the Museum of Musical Instruments, a fabulous ca. 1900 Art Nouveau building. We had dinner one night at Falstaff's brasserie, an historic restaurant where I drank Belgian beer and ate moules (mussels) cooked in white wine, with a side order of pommes-frites (fries). I was amazed at how delicious my meal was, as you can see from my picture below. Our trip to Belgium was relaxing and enjoyable. We're glad our initial impression of Brussels changed over the weekend, which goes to show that meandering to nowhere when on holiday sometimes can turn out to bring you some of the most delightful surprises you could ever imagine.

The Cherry Trees Return

2011-04-14T16:05:00.009-04:00

If you were waiting for my post on Belgium, you will have to wait another day or so. I decided for my first day back in NYC, some more leisure time was in order. After breakfast with RL and a subway ride into the City to run an errand, I made a trip this afternoon to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for Hanami, the Japanese tradition of viewing cherry blossom trees, symbols of rebirth celebrating the return of Spring. Considering the recent tragic events in Japan, it seems even more appropriate this year to remember their cultural tradition. It gives me hope that, not unlike the return of the cherry blossoms, the Japanese people will recover. It was absolutely beautiful today, with the sun shining in a clear blue sky and the weather reaching into the 60s. You will recall that I posted about a similar event two years ago and shared a couple of pictures from when I visited then. It's still early in the season for Hanami so not everything is in bloom, but these pictures show you that it was nevertheless a rewarding experience simply to meander among the blossoms and absorb the joy that is nature. In case you're wondering, the delightful little purple flowers in the one close-up shot are periwinkles and hyacinths.

Modern Sculpture and Aesthetic Beauty

2011-04-13T16:41:00.007-04:00

I’m writing this post some 36,966 feet in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, although obviously it is getting posted back on terra firma (Boston Airport, to be precise). SVH and I took a trip to England and Belgium, in part to celebrate my 41st (and next month her 50th) birthdays. We also went to see a few exhibitions that readers will recall were on my "to see" list not too long ago. Upon arriving in London last Tuesday, we dropped our bags off at the Arran House Hotel, where I was given a ground-floor room about the size of Harry Potter’s closet under the staircase. I did have a magical door, however, that opened into a beautiful garden, which helped make the room more appealing.

Despite our jet lag, we headed to the Royal Academy that afternoon to see the Modern British Sculpture exhibition, catching it in its last few days before it closed on April 7th. Even though I’m not a big fan of modern sculpture, I knew there would be works on display dating from the late 1800s and I had heard that the show was more about installations than objects, i.e. how works from the past and present interact with and juxtapose against one another. The first room dealt with the theme of life and death and had at its center a large-scale model after Edwin Lutyens’s ziggurat-like Cenotaph and Jacob Epstein’s Cycle of Life, presented here as reproductions on banners since the actual works are architectural figures. This opening set the stage for the exhibition’s intersection of figurative and abstract works in British sculpture. The second room, "Theft by Finding," had a fantastic installation. Here numerous figurative works were arranged in two rows, with display cases on the walls following the same model, all of which showed sculptures from different cultures positioned near modern works. For instance, a Hindu red sandstone sculpture was positioned beside a female figure by Eric Gill, suggesting how modern sculpture has borrowed on the past, but also implying the irony of British imperialism, how the appropriating of world cultures has influenced its own art. The works themselves were all beautiful, with many ancient figures borrowed from the British Museum, and the ability to move around the statues and view them from many angles near one another was an extraordinarily delightful experience. The number of rooms that followed, alas, did not have this same level of punch and enjoyment, as they focused more on large-scale works and that of specific artists. Victorians Frederic Leighton and Alfred Gilbert had important works shown, and Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore were given a room to themselves, which makes sense, as they represent mid-20th-century British sculpture. Americans such as Carl Andre and Jeff Koons had works in the exhibition, which confused me at times and seemed to change the course of the exhibition’s intent, but other famous names like Anthony Caro were given their due. Damien Hirst’s Let’s Eat Outdoors Today was simply repulsive, with an installation of the detritus of a barbecue invaded by living flies who feed off the remains of meat and other food products. Hirst once again managed to repulse viewers by drawing attention to our quotidian existence and forcing us to encounter the side of our lives that we want to ignore, notably garbage and disease. I still contend (and this is for my friend PR) that Hirst clearly has established himself as an important figure in the history of sculpture, but I still find his work distressing and unappealing.

Fortunately, beauty was on the horizon. The next day, CC joined us and we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum (first for a spot of tea, then) to see The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900. This movement began when painters in London experimented with new ideas that removed any sense of morality from the subject, reflecting instead on sensuality and perceiving the work of art as an object of beauty first, potentially removing subject itself from the work as a result. Some scholars have named the American painter James McNeill Whistler as the first Aesthetic painter, but as Elizabeth Prettejohn’s excellent book Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting has shown, it was a shared creative sensibility among artists such as Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, Frederic Leighton, Albert Moore, Edward Burne-Jones, and others, all of whom brought their own unique take on beauty to this artistic movement. By the 1870s Aestheticism had entered the arena of the decorative arts as well, and one sees aspects of it in all areas of Victorian cultural living. Considering the V&A is largely a decorative arts and design museum, I was expecting this show to focus on the crafts component of the Aesthetic Movement. However, I was pleased to see an incredible number of paintings, drawings, and prints hanging alongside displays of architectural plans, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and even costumes, demonstrating how the Aesthetic Movement was truly a multidisciplinary cultural trend that impacted all avenues of life. All of the painters mentioned above are on display, although CC and I agree that Solomon isn’t visible enough. Moore, however, is all over this exhibition, and I must say that these pictures are stunning. In most instances, this was the first time I had seen them in person, and doing so makes you reappreciate his work, with classically draped women lounging on sofas while Japanese-inspired fans and flowers surround them. They are truly beautiful works. The installation of Whistler’s three Symphony in White paintings from 1862, 1864, and 1867 (this last one is the one you see above), all hanging beside one another perhaps for the first time, was an absolute delight considering they are all owned by different museums. Sculptures by Leighton, Gilbert, and others make appearances throughout the show as well, which was refreshing. There is an attempt at recreating Rossetti’s bedroom from his house in Chelsea, but this actually was a bizarre installation, for they created peep-hole windows in which to see the bedroom, with no explanation as to why they had done that. Why not just show the bedroom as an installation? The peep-holes simply made it difficult to appreciate what they had done. There are other general concerns about the show. The lighting on some of the paintings made it challenging to see up close, and many of the themed vignettes, such as that on classicism and Japonisme, seemed haphazard in their arrangement. Projections of peacock feathers abound everywhere, which is a lovely touch but seriously distracting after a while. The digital recreation of Whistler’s Peacock Room (permanently installed at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C.) was a valiant attempt to experience an Aesthetic interior space, but the projections themselves were pixellated and not of the highest quality. All in all, the show is wonderful and has many appropriately beautiful things to see. The borderline excessiveness of gilded beauty makes one understand then how by World War I modernism soon stripped out all of this ornamentation and resort to geometric box-like structures and designs, simply out of rebellion for what probably was seen as ostentatious, bourgeois materialism.

The next day the 3 of us took a lovely stroll through Regent’s Park (we had fantastic warm weather the whole trip) and then DE joined us for a visit to Leighton House, which gives you a true sense of how an Aesthetic interior all came together, particularly for a wealthy bachelor artist. The house recently went through a makeover, and it’s exquisite. A token peacock is in the stairwell, but the Arab Hall, with its array of tilework from all over the Middle East, simply shimmers and makes you want to dip your feet in the pool and smoke a hookah. SVH and I left for Brussels the next morning, so stay tuned for more on that part of the trip.

The Dying Dyrad (with an update)

2011-04-04T10:15:00.009-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, I looked out the back window of my apartment and was thinking that the tree in the yard needed to be trimmed. Imagine how shocked I was this morning when I woke up to one of the most ferocious sounds in existence: that of buzz saws ripping through the air. The beautiful tree was being cut down completely, its branches falling to the ground in a heap of bare spindly limbs. Whenever I see in person a tree being cut down, I swear I feel a lump in my chest, and the same happened this morning. It feels like slaughter to me. Admittedly, I'm being melodramatic, because the tree branches were interfering with the electrical wiring and were simply overgrown, but still it hurts. Thinking back, this extends to a sad childhood memory of when my parents decided to cut down the enormous weeping willow tree in our backyard. It was like losing a friend then, and it's the same even now. I think immediately that a Dryad is dying. Dryads are the spirits of trees in Greek mythology. The image you see here is Evelyn De Morgan's late Victorian painting of The Dryad. When a tree is cut down, the Dryad who lives in it cries aloud and dies along with the tree. It was tradition in ancient cultures that the man with the axe would seek the Dryad's blessing before cutting it down for their need, not unlike the thanking of the spirit of an animal killed for sacrificing itself to sustain humankind. Seeing the tree come down limb by limb I couldn't help but think about the hawk that has visited me and the way the snow has landed on the tree's bare branches creating a beautiful cascading blanket in white. I'm very glad now that I took the pictures that accompany those posts to remember her by. I'll have to look for spring buds on some other tree this year.

UPDATE: I bumped into the landlady's daughter a little while ago and discovered that indeed the tree coming down was not by choice. Apparently one of our neighbors started complaining about it being in their yard. Ah, well, what can you do. Today is a day for surprises though. I just turned the corner of my street, and they're filming a scene for a new horror movie called Hellbenders. I think I just saw actor Clifton Collins, Jr., but I have no idea who he is, so I came home before they yelled at me to get off the set (that happened to me twice when I accidentally walked onto the set of Gossip Girl while it was filming in NYC...as if I want my cameo appearance to be on that show).

Random Musings 6

2011-04-03T10:11:00.026-04:00

The Royal Academy in London has been in existence since 1768, its first President being Sir Joshua Reynolds and including among its famous members J.M.W. Turner and Frederic, Lord Leighton. It has had the cachet of being the leading institution for British art since its foundation, although naturally over its history there have been groups who challenged its principles and teachings, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. In spite this paradigmatic position, to be elected a Royal Academician, one of the 80 "eminent practising artists" active in the United Kingdom, is an incredible honor and says much about your position in the world and history of British art. So you can imagine there was some surprise when news broke that Grayson Perry, the 2003 Turner Prize winner (the first transvestite to win that prestigious award), was elected to the RA. The image you see here shows Perry as his transvestite persona Claire in a gallery beside one of his vases (image: London Evening Standard). I'm a relative newbie to the career of Perry, only having begun following his work last fall when I was in the UK (and I must credit CC with pointing his ceramics out to me and thus leading me on my journey to know more about him). Since then I've been fascinated. His vases are beautiful amphora-like objects, but the images on them reveal very personal childlike sketches that frequently depict graphic scenes on subjects such as war and sexual violence. There's something about the images that make me think of Edward Gorey, but with less wit, more visceral realism. His work has helped reinvigorate an interest in ceramics for many, in part because of the subjectivity that appears on works that historically have been decorative or functional objects. The RA, however, doesn't elect decorative artists, so what is interesting with this story too is that they elected him as a printmaker. I'm less familiar with his prints, but the implication from the article in The Art Newspaper is that his work in printmaking was a veiled attempt to acknowledge his achievements without having to bend the rules of election to the RA. The best bit in the article has to do with Perry himself: "On 22 March he was the guest speaker at the RA Schools annual dinner, and although it was a black tie event, Perry added some colour to the night and came as his usual female altar-ego 'Claire', rather than hire a tired Moss Bros suit."

On this side of the Atlantic in NYC, I've been raving about the Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand photography exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you haven't seen it yet, you've got one week before it closes. Opening this week is Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century exhibition, which promises to be a delightful show. Inspired by Lorenz Eitner's insightful article "The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism" published in The Art Bulletin (December 1955), this exhibition showcases a number of jewel-like pictures by mostly German, Austrian, and Danish artists from the early 1800s who were infatuated with photorealistic interiors and views outside their windows.

In non-art news, The New York Times has done another incredible job using Internet technology with its latest interactive tool (thanks to PR for sending this to me). Using census data, "Mapping America: Every City, Every Block" allows you to type in a zip code or a city name, and you can see the ethnic/racial population breakdown for neighborhoods, as well as information about incomes, education, and family structures. When I did a search for my own largely Italian-American Brooklyn neighborhood, I wasn't surprised to discover it's 61-66% White, but I was surprised to discover that the Asian population was 11-12%. I was actually more surprised to discover that 3-4% of the population in my neighborhood define themselves as same-sex couples, because I was convinced until now I was the only gay in the village. (Definitely click on that link if you've never seen the hilarious BBC comedy Little Britain.)

The new season of Torchwood is set to premiere on July 8th. While I'm glad that John Barrowman and Eve Myles will be part of it, at least for some of the episodes, I'm still annoyed that it's going to be on Starz Network, which I don't think anyone I know actually gets as part of their cable system. I guess we'll have to wait for the DVD.

Speaking of DVDs, if you didn't catch Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as prison lovers in I Love You Philip Morris during its limited-run release, you absolutely must see it on DVD, which is being released in the US this week. It is a fabulous dark comedy that will make you squirm, jeer, cry, and laugh out loud. Ewan as a naive blond Southern boy...you just wanna eat him up!

And, last but certainly not least, remember that April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month, sponsored by the ASPCA. This year is the 145th anniversary of their charter, which was signed here in NYC in 1866. Click here for my past post about the group's history. Go orange and remember We Are Their Voice!

The Video: Florida House for Sale

2011-03-30T23:43:00.003-04:00

In case my previous post with pictures didn't tempt you enough, check out the fabulous video The Home Team made of my Padre's house! If you can't see the video below, then click here to watch it on YouTube.

Florida House for Sale

2011-03-27T09:12:00.010-04:00

If you or someone you know is 55+ and looking for a beautiful, quiet place to retire or use as a vacation home in a community with lots of amenities, including in-ground swimming pools and a golf course, consider my Padre's house in Pinellas Park, Florida! The house is 1600 square feet and has 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, living & dining rooms, plus an extra family room and a Florida room (that's an indoor sun room). Special features include bamboo flooring, new carpeting, fresh paint, and it comes fully furnished (Momma had good taste). We're asking only $123,900! Here are all the details for the official listing with James E. Tuten, Charles Rutenberg Realty. For those of you in Florida, there's an open house today, Sunday 3/27/11. Spread the word. Here are just a few pictures of the interior (more via the link).

Subway Shots 2

2011-03-24T22:14:00.005-04:00

Ever feel like Fate is toying with you? No sooner do I leave St. Petersburg, FL where I was cleaning up Padre's house, and I'm suddenly being teased to return. (Gee...what a thought...an actual vacation in Florida!) I took this picture at about 5:15pm while riding on the 5 train heading south between the 86th and 59th Street stops.

Sherman's comment on my last Subway Shots post has led to a bit of an addiction for New York Subway Guys. I can't help but wonder if I'll recognize anyone! Now by total coincidence I've just come across TubeCrush, a similar site with random pictures of cute guys on the London underground. Who knew subway photos could be so much fun?

DW in the USA

2011-03-20T20:37:00.012-04:00

Doctor Whoovians (such as myself) are excited that Series 6 (the second season with Doctor Matt Smith) will be premiering in the US this coming April 23rd on BBC America. Companions Amelia "Amy" Pond, Rory, and the mysterious River Song all are returning as well. Little Britain fans will be titillated to know that David Walliams will be on an episode playing an alien, which should be great fun (Walliams also is an admitted Whoovian). The big news though is that much of the season is going to take place in the United States during various points in history, including the first episode which starts in Utah and winds up in Washington, D.C. That gives a new spin on things for Brits used to the Anglocentric plots in its nearly 50-year history. But of course it isn't the first time The Doctor has visited the US. In the new series alone, Doctor David visited NYC with Martha Jones during the construction of the Empire State Building in the late 1920s, with the Daleks turning New Yorkers into pig-faced mutant alien slaves. (Come on...ya gotta love this stuff!) In related news, I'm curious to see Matt Smith playing gay writer Christopher Isherwood in Christopher and His Kind, a British movie that is going right to DVD here in the US. (For those not in the know, Isherwood wrote The Berlin Stories, which became the basis for the musical Cabaret.) For now, however, we look forward to The Doctor and Amy Pond in about 4 weeks time. Here's the trailer for the new season: http://bcove.me/6ht2w0hq.

UPDATE 3/21/11: I had drinks & dinner with my friend and fellow Whoovian CW here in St. Petersburg tonight. Imagine my surprise when she presented me with my very own Doctor Who-inspired blue bow tie and button that shouts "Geronimo!" I now have my proper attire for the April 23rd premiere.

Random Musings 5

2011-03-18T08:27:00.015-04:00

The image you see here is William Holman Hunt's 1853 painting The Awakening Conscience, part of the collection at Tate Britain. The picture is modestly sized, about 30 x 22 in. (762 x 559 mm). The linear clarity and attention to detail in the work is extraordinary. That is one of the great charms of Pre-Raphaelite painting. Holman Hunt is probably the only one in the group who maintained all the principles of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood when they formed in 1848. Among these were the ideas of truth to nature and subjects of modern life. Dante Gabriel Rossetti eventually moved into lusch Venetian-style fantasy portraits of women, and John Everett Millais went more academic in painting Victorian genre scenes and portraits (note that their work in these styles is equally admirable). Here, Holman Hunt's picture shows a kept woman in her dressing gown. She has been at play with her lover, when suddenly she has looked out the window and sees the light, here taking on its metaphorical message of morality. She has seen the error of her ways and the epiphany on her face suggests that she will now live a more righteous life. One of my favorite parts of this picture is the way Holman Hunt used a mirror to show the open window, thus showing us what she sees. By doing this, the viewer interacts with the woman, not only seeing her epiphany but experiencing it as well by looking at the light too, pointing out the viewer's potential moral failings, showing there is still hope to change.

I've started with this picture in this latest Random Musing because the Tate recently announced that there will be a new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 2012. The last major British retrospective in all media of this group was in 1984, and although that was a landmark show, it was highly criticized at the time for excluding women artists and not engaging with new theoretical ideas in art history at the time. This new show promises to change all that, and the planned title--Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde--tells you the intended modernist trajectory the curators will be suggesting. In some ways I had been thinking I would avoid London in much of 2012 because of the Olympics (e.g. overpriced hotel rooms and overcrowded streets), but that exhibition is making me rethink my plans. It opens September 2012.

Also on exhibit in 2012 (closing just before that show opens) at Tate Modern will be a major retrospective of the career of contemporary bad boy artist Damien Hirst. This is the shark-in-formaldehyde guy, as well as the diamond-encrusted-skull guy. He is one of the most successful British artists in history (if you measure success in monetary value and pop cultural references). I'm not a big fan of his work (the animal rights part of me gets riled up at times), but I cannot argue with the fact that his work has revolutionized sculpture by abstracting the figurative, altering our expectations of what we think we will see and, naturally, by shocking us at times with his experiments in form. It's no surprise also that the painting which earned the most money at auction last May ($106.5 million), Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, has gone on long-term loan to the Tate Modern, since they're going to launch a Picasso and Britain show in 2012 as well. (Note to reader: museums have figured out that if they want to draw large audiences, they should do an exhibition on either Picasso or Van Gogh or anything Impressionist.)

In other art news, Leo Steinberg has died at the age of 90. This art historian's writing was always interesting to read. He made you look back at works of art not just once but over and over, seeing new things each time. You have to love anyone who had the balls to write a book entitled The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion (who knew there were so many images of Christ showing pronounced bulges!). His obituary by Ken Johnson in The New York Times is quite fascinating and definitely worth reading, giving you insights into how life experiences make an art historian.

In Queens, NY, there's a movement both to sell off and to save a public monument called The Triumph of Civic Virtue by the American sculptor Frederic MacMonnies. The non-art people find it offensive because the nude male is crushing two women. The art people recognize it as a major NYC public commission that in allegorical terms represents civic virtue crushing vice and corruption. Maybe the problem is that politicians don't like being reminded of their civic responsibility to oppose the evils of society...or they're offended by the nudity.

The polemical gay-themed art exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is apparently going to travel, including making a stop at the Brooklyn Museum later in 2011. I saw this exhibition in DC with RL just over 3 months ago, and it led to some great conversations between him and me about "gay" art and its social implications for the gay/lesbian community, not to mention basic principles in exhibition design. The Brooklyn Museum doesn't have information on its site yet about the exhibition, but the news was reported here in the NYT blog.

I'm writing this post from a hotel room in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida. I'm getting the Padre's house ready to go on the market next week. Work, work, work...but what can you do? At least there's art to think about and appease one's mind.

Japan

2011-03-15T07:12:00.006-04:00

Earthquake. Tsunami. Radiation. Any one of these things on their own is a serious tragedy, but to have all three happen in one geographical region within a few days of each another is incomprehensible. The notion that the earthquake in Japan was so massive that it actually shifted the country 8 feet to the west simply boggles the mind. These interactive before and after images from The New York Times are disturbing, although, tragedy aside, I have to admit that they also are an incredible use of digital image technology (thanks to PR for the link). Like many, I have been going through periods of information gathering to know more about how the people of Japan are doing through this catastrophe. As of my writing this, 2400 people are dead, more than 3000 are missing, and they are still talking up to 10,000 deaths from this tragedy. Anderson Cooper was reporting on CNN that he was amazed at the dignity of the Japanese who waited patiently in line for water, only to be told there was no more, and not a single person complained. Another CNN reporter responded to him by noting that is part of the legacy of the Japanese people, their need and respect for order.

In honor of that spirit, I thought I would share a little piece of Japanese cultural history. The image above is of a beautiful summer kimono made of silk gauze with carp, water lilies, and morning glories, made during the Meiji period about 1876, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is just one of the many cultural items that the Japanese can call their own. Haiku. Samurai. Sushi. Ukiyo-e. Zen.

To help Japan during this crisis, consider donating to the Red Cross, because they seem to have taken the lead in helping them. The Japan Society here in NYC is also accepting donations for an earthquake relief fund.

AHNCA and CAA

2011-03-10T20:51:00.006-05:00

Last Friday I went to the afternoon half of the 8th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in 19th-Century Art, organized by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA). I enjoy going to this symposium because I like to hear some of the projects that other graduate students and PhD candidates are working on. I wrote about this conference in 2010 and 2009 (when I gave a paper on the Ottoman Turks at the Great Exhibition of 1851). I do regret having missed one paper in the morning session on representations of King Louis-Philippe of France during the July Monarchy (1830-1848), but the papers I did hear later on were interesting.

Jennifer Chuong (MIT) gave a theoretical talk about the late 18th-century botanical and animal prints of William Bartram and their connections with the social-politics of the day. Barbara Caen (Universität Zürich) gave a museum-style talk on French and German weavers who had emigrated to the US to work in 3 different tapestry manufacturing firms in NY and NJ in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hélène Valance (Université Paris 7 Diderot) gave a thought-provoking presentation on night and darkness in late 19th-century American painting. Two of my co-students at the CUNY Graduate Center presented as well. Mary Zawadzki spoke about travel imagery in the American children's periodical St. Nicholas Magazine, and Leslie Anderson gave an insightful talk about how early 19th-century Danish artists painting themselves at leisure can be seen as a form of freedom away from their academic training. Finally, Christina Ferando (Columbia)--a fellow sculpture historian whom I've met up with in New Haven, Rome, Washington, D.C., and now NY!--presented a great talk on Antonio Canova's Penitent Magdalene (image above, from Web Gallery of Art) and how French critics evolved in their appreciation of it from a despised object to a symbol of nationalism. Her PowerPoint presentation was excellent too, reminding me of the importance of showing multiple viewpoints when looking at figurative sculpture in the round.

Even though the College Art Association just ended its NYC conference, they've already released the call for papers (CFP) for the 2012 conference, which will be held in Los Angeles next February. I had gotten confused, thinking NYC was the 100th conference, but in fact the organization turned 100 last year and 2012 will be the centenary conference (got that?). Interestingly, the CFP seems to confirm the "crisis in art history," that new students only want to study contemporary art now. More than 50% of the sessions in the CFP relate to 20th-century and contemporary art. I find that disheartening, but it does reflect the dominant mood of the art market and museums/galleries around the world. Nevertheless, there are a few promising sessions on the CFP, one of which is seriously tempting me to submit a proposal (can you guess which one?)...
** "Other Histories of Photography: The First One Hundred Years" (hm...sounds like the influence of Geoffrey Batchen!)
** "Where the Bodies Lie: Landscapes of Mourning, Memory, and Concealment" (cemeteries, funerary monuments)
** "Impressionisms: From the Forest of Fontainebleau to the American West" (French and other 'Impressionist' art movements)
** "Classicizing the Other" (rubric of classical antiquity on racial/ethnic others)
** "Future Directions in the History of British Art" (celebrating 20 years of the Historians of British Art)

PUPS Act

2011-03-07T13:58:00.004-05:00

The ASPCA is asking registered voters to help push for the passage of H.R. 835—Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety Act, colloquially known as the PUPS Act. Not only is this an important move to help eradicate the mistreatment of dogs, but it is a bi-partisan bill sponsored by Representatives Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Sam Farr (D-CA), Lois Capps (D-CA), and Don Young (R-AK), showing that Democrats and Republicans can work together to make a difference when it comes to something they believe in.

The PUPS Act was introduced into the House on March 1st and, according to the ASPCA, seeks "to bring all commercial dog breeders in the United States under federal oversight. Currently, only breeders who sell their dogs to puppy brokers or pet stores are required to be licensed and inspected by the USDA. If passed, the PUPS Act would require any breeder who sells or offers to sell more than 50 dogs annually directly to the public—including over the Internet—to also be licensed and inspected. The PUPS Act would also require all dog breeders licensed under the federal Animal Welfare Act to exercise every dog every day, including allowing the dogs to reach a running stride without the use of treadmills or similar devices. Commercial breeders often keep their dogs in tiny cages for their entire lives. Requiring exercise could dramatically improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of dogs suffering from endless confinement at the hands of the commercial breeding industry."

To email your Congressman/woman and show your support for the bill, go to the ASPCA's Advocacy Center and fill out the online form. An automatic email showing your support will be sent to your Representative. It will take you, quite literally, less than 1 minute to do it, so don't hesitate and do it now.

By the way, the picture of the adorable pup above is an ASPCA-rescue dog named Scooby, part of their "Cute Photo of the Day" series for March 4th.

Subway Shots

2011-03-06T07:18:00.009-05:00

Looking back at my 2nd "Week-in-my-Life" series which ended last night, it was a pretty mundane, run-of-the-mill week for me. Nothing as nearly exciting as last time when I was almost run over by the Jesus-stickered livery cab. The good news is that the decaying odor in the hallway is gone finally.

Last night, just after 8:00pm, as I was standing in the subway station at 14th Street, having alighted from the 3 train and waiting for the 1 train to take me one stop further north, I looked up and saw the picture you see here with my camera phone. Now, anyone who has ridden the NYC subway system knows never to look up, because you're horrified by the sooty, mucky, gunky, stalactitey refuse that hangs down from the ceiling, threatening to crash down upon you at any moment and smother you with some unknown chemical compound that inevitably would either kill you, or turn you into a mutant superhero. But on this rare occasion, I looked up and was pleased to discover that the MTA has been increasing the number of digital screens telling you how long until the next train arrives. I don't know why it's taken NYC so long to put these into place. The London underground has been doing this for ages, and if memory serves me correctly they have it in Paris and Rome as well. It's a common courtesy, notifying passengers how long they have to wait. Somehow, having this knowledge makes you more patient. The unknown frustrates you more. Knowledge is power, as they say.

About 12:30am this morning, waiting for the F train at the 23rd Street station, I decided to snap the next two pictures, and decided on the spot that this will be the beginning of my new blog photography series Subway Shots. The first one shows the platform and the tracks. Pretty disgusting, huh? Wait until I get a great a shot of one the rats.
This next one is a poster encouraging people to visit Miami. I thought that was kind of ironic that I was standing in NYC looking at a poster encouraging one to go to Florida, something I do quite a bit, although not necessarily for the reasons they're suggesting. Yes, of course the poster is even greater because of the two hot guys on it, with one of them smooching the other. And, yes, this is gay Chelsea! The funny thing is that these two guys look familiar to me...just not sure why...

Week-in-my-Life: Feb/Mar 2011 (Pt. 3)

2011-03-05T19:15:00.004-05:00

THURSDAY 03/03/11

2:15am = insomnia! decaf tea and chocolate biscotti; watch episode of House that turns out to be more emotional than I expected.

7:15am = officially awake now. breakfast: scrambled eggs, English muffin, fruit, coffee. weather: ridiculously cold (yuck!).

8:00am = commence writing of section of dissertation chapter.

11:00am = break. go downstairs to get the mail, almost choke from worst smell ever in hallway, spray Febreze, but doesn't seem to help, wonder if something died in the wall. back to writing.

1:00pm = lunch: tuna sandwich.

4:00pm = phone call from RM about the Padre's health status past few days.

6:00pm = finish writing for day, shocked to discover 10 pages written. (yay!)

8:00pm = dinner: roasted pork chops with vegetables and stuffing; Netflix movie: The Social Network (good movie, but creeped me out about getting back on Facebook for a while).

FRIDAY 03/04/11

8:15am = wake up startled to discover I slept 9 hours and never moved. breakfast: oatmeal and last of the English muffins (finally!). weather: mild but cool, 40s.

10:30am = subway read: more of Potts (cover above). arrive at gym, cardio for hour+, realizing halfway through routine on elliptical I forgot to program it so have no idea how much I burned off, pretend it was a magical number like 444 calories.

12:15pm = lunch at Moonstruck: California wrap (chicken, avocado, etc.) with Greek salad.

1:00pm = at school for the afternoon half of the AHNCA Graduate Student Symposium (more on that later), I meet up with RL and other people I haven't seen in a while; Prof. Judy Sund tells Prof. Elizabeth Mansfield about my blog, pointing out that they purposely tortured me during my Oral Exam just to see what I would write about them (scandalous!).

4:30pm = post-symposium wine & cheese reception and networking (always important).

6:00pm = RL and I make a quick stop to Macy's so I can show him the suit I fell in love with, but alas they still don't have my size; oddly, RL keeps trying to get me to spend more money on clothes, but I resist. for now.

7:30pm = arrive home, odor in hallway is still atrocious, now convinced something died in the wall. dinner: chicken noodle soup and leftover pizza; Netflix movie: Paranormal 2 (not as good as the first one).

SATURDAY 03/05/11

6:45am = breakfast: scrambled egg & tomato sandwich on multi-grain bagel with lovely cuppa tea; back to bed for a quick catnap. weather: cool and cloudy, low 50s.

9:00am = catnap turns into longer delightful snooze. pay bills. food shopping, once again shocked how one comes home $60 poorer with only 2 bags of groceries to show for it.

10:00am = start editing dissertation text from Thu, realizing within a few short hours I'm surrounded by falling towers of books.

11:15am = break to get mail, discover odor in hallway has almost dissipated, but now smells like patchouli, so obviously something died.

1:00pm = lunch: tuna & Swiss cheese sandwich.

2:45pm = break, look down at calendar, realize sheepishly I've forgotten everyone's birthdays this week!

4:00pm = finish writing, feeling pretty good about it, discovered I added another page & 1/2 of text (yay!).

4:30pm = texting with AR about evening, jealous he's getting a pedicure.

5:00pm = pleasant 30-minute catnap on the couch, followed by snack.

7:00pm = heading out to Chelsea for dinner & movie (The Adjustment Bureau) with AR. looking forward to brunch with the RL+DGs on Sunday!

Week-in-my-Life: Feb/Mar 2011 (Pt. 2)

2011-03-02T20:37:00.012-05:00

MONDAY 02/28/11

4:00am = wake up at ungodly hour but decide to have breakfast: English muffin. fall back to sleep. weather: horrible rainy day, extremely grateful bought Tote umbrella day before.

8:00am = subway reading: Potts, chapter five, "Ideal Bodies."

9:00am = arrive at work, starving so snack on mini bran muffin and large cuppa tea.

12:30pm = lunch with MLS intern CW, who's working on a project for me; roast beef & cheddar sandwich on multigrain bread with Sun Chips.

3:45pm = surprise phone call from RL who's back from Costa Rica.

7:00pm = dinner: turkey pot pie and salad, watch episode of CSI: Miami about corrupt psychics.

8:00pm = read Padiyar, chapter two, "Inheriting Greek Eros: Anacreontism and Homosexual Desire."

TUESDAY 03/01/11

6:30am = breakfast: Golden Grahams cereal and 1/2 English muffin with cashew nut butter & blackberry preserves. weather: sunny, upper 40s (yay!).

9:00am = amazed at work on time for second day in row.

10:00am = email co-workers for advice: how should we catalog for our visual history database a digital image of a negative photographed in 1942 by American artist Charles Scheeler (1883-1965) of the facade of the museum (see above!), when it turns out the image also is a 1982 photographic print that is an accessioned object owned by the Photographs Department?

11:00am = meeting...followed by another meeting.

12:30pm = lunch: 1/2 chicken sandwich and small salad.

2:00pm = wearing my brand-spankin'-new navy blazer and a tie, give presentation with my co-worker CD and boss AG to a select group of V.I.P.s about our new Visual History Project (roaring success! crowd goes wild!).

5:45pm = on way to subway, surprise phone call from Padre, lots of bantering back and forth in Italian and English.

6:15pm = pick up interlibrary loan book from school: Grant F. Scott, Joseph Severn: Letters and Memoirs (2005); review at home for Gibson references.

8:00pm = dinner: eggs and English muffin with fruit salad and Greek yogurt; watch first 2 episodes from Season 3 of Upstairs, Downstairs, including shocking twist involving Lady Marjorie and the Titanic!

WEDNESDAY 03/02/11

8:00am = slept through alarm ("accidentally"); breakfast: 1/2 English muffin and blueberry yogurt. weather: cool but sunny, reaching mid-40s.

9:00am = subway reading: Potts, chapter six, "Freedom and Desire."

11:00am = meeting (for 2 hours! ugh!).

1:00pm = lunch: baked tilapia, potatoes, green beans.

2:00pm = meeting, during which we resolve the Scheeler image dilemma (who knew he worked for the museum in the early 1940s?).

4:00pm = desperate for cuppa tea, have a lovely Earl Grey and sneak in a pudding parfait too.

6:00pm = subway reading: call for papers for the 2012 College Art Association conference in Los Angeles.

7:30pm = dinner: pizza and salad; watch more of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Week-in-my-Life: Feb/Mar 2011 (Pt. 1)

2011-02-27T18:07:00.010-05:00

About a week ago, my cousin MB sent me an email that said, "Hope all is well. You have been quiet!!" She's right. I've been super busy lately, and even though I had a few things I wanted to blog about, I never did get around to doing it (yet?). All this made me think that maybe it was time for another random Week-in-my-Life. You'll recall I did this last year (in parts one, two, and three). It was interesting how people commented about my eating habits, and that I was bragging about the number of push-ups I did (a feat I don't think I'll be doing again anytime soon). So here goes...a week of selected incidents in the life of this NYC-based queer doctoral student-slash-writer-slash-art historian-slash-librarian (gees, I'm exhausted just thinking I do all that!).

SUNDAY 02/27/11

8:30am = after getting in late last night and falling asleep about 2:30ish, shocked to discover I'm wide awake and hungry at this early hour. breakfast: scrambled egg & (low-fat, low-sodium) cheddar cheese on a toasted multi-grain bagel with French Vanilla coffee. weather report: sunny, near 50° (yay!).

9:30am = back in bed, trying either to organize my day or fall back to sleep; caffeine wins and have to begin the day. wash dishes.

10:30am = snack: last of the coffee with a chocolate almond biscotti. read first chapter of Satish Padiyar's Chains: David, Canova, and the Fall of the Public Hero in Postrevolutionary France (2007, book cover above), with its insightful socio-(homo)erotic-political interpretations of Jacques-Louis David's 1799-1814 painting Leonidas at Thermopylae.

12:00pm = food shop. on return home, pack up bag to do work at library and go to gym. subway reading: chapter four, "Beauty and Sublimity," in Alex Potts's Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994).

2:00pm = find myself wandering through Macy's, suddenly glad I had the forethought(!) to bring those coupons I got in the mail. discover a gorgeous Michael Kors suit--on sale!--but even the jacket I have them take off the mannequin doesn't fit me right...damn! more browsing, find instead a beautiful navy Michael Kors blazer that fits like a glove...and it's also on sale...ka-ching! $230 later, walk out with said blazer, 1 pair of Calvin Klein jeans, 3 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of underwear, and a golf-size Tote umbrella to replace the one that blew apart during a windstorm last fall in Leeds. feel no guilt whatsoever.

3:00pm = hungry! head to Pret a Manger for late lunch, devastated to discover they're closed, so settle for Pax (i.e. chain bodega). lunch: salad with mixed greens, chicken, and bunch of other stuff, ranch dressing...attempt to be healthy probably not so much.

3:30pm = realize just want to go home, library and gym ain't happening.

4:20pm = settle on the sofa with a nice cuppa tea and a LU petit écolier (chocolate biscuit), start watching episode of House; two hours later, still watching House.

7:15pm = start on dinner: turkey burger and sweet potato fries. Netflix movie indecision: scary Paranormal Activity 2 or silly Something's Gotta Give?

(To be continued...)