Polychromy and Its Environments

I'm quite flattered and pleased that I've been invited to be one of the guest speakers at a conference entitled Polychromy and Its Environments: New Perspectives on Colour and the Display of Nineteenth-Century Sculpture. The conference will be held in June at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. You can read more about the conference by clicking here. (bklynbiblio readers will recall my series of posts, such as this one, from when I received a research fellowship from the HMI back in October/November 2010.) The conference addresses the fact that people are used to seeing sculpture as a monochromatic art, e.g. white marble or brown bronze. In fact, color has been a vibrant part of sculpture's history and its installation. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans painted their marble statues, an idea which still surprises people today. In an attempt to revive this practice for a modern audience, John Gibson (1790-1866) reintroduced polychromy with a number of his marble statues from the 1840s on by applying wax-based pigments to the figures. The most famous of these was the Tinted Venus, which you see here in a photograph from when the work was displayed in London at the International Exhibition of 1862 (image: Courtauld Institute of Art). I've tentatively entitled my paper "From the Studio to the Fair: Re-Viewing John Gibson's Tinted Venus," with the intention of arguing that we need to put aside our preconceived notions about this work and its reception by "re-viewing" it in the context of both his studio in Rome and at the International Exhibition, and by reconsidering the reviews published about it at the time. Wish me luck!

CAA 2013 in NYC

Although the College Art Association's 100th conference just met in Los Angeles in February (at which you will recall I presented a paper), the call for papers for the 2013 conference has gone out. The 101st conference will be back here in NYC. I'm not proposing anything this time, as I have too much going on already, but I'm rather pleased by the wide array of topics. In browsing through the panel sessions, a few piqued my interest, some because of content/subject matter, others because I know the individuals coordinating the sessions.
** For the blogger in me who writes about art and art history, 2 really interesting sessions: "Art Criticism: Taking a Pulse" (chaired by Holland Cotter from The New York Times) and "The Work of Art Criticism in the Age of E-zines and Blogging"
** "The Proof is in the Print: Avant-Garde Approaches to the Historical Materials of Photography's Avant-Garde" (1910-39 photographic techniques)
** "Local Modernisms" (altering the canonical approach that modernism was disseminated from Europe to the world, to suggest instead modernism as a synchronous global phenomenon; chaired by the always interesting Geoffrey Batchen)
** "Bad Boys, Hussies, and Villains" (placing anyone from Caligula [image: Metropolitan Museum of Art] to Silvio Berlusconi at the heart of Italian political visual culture)
** "Color Adjustment: Revisiting Identity Politics of the 1990s" (race/gender/sexuality in the '90s)
** "Parallel Lines Converging: Art, Design, and Fashion Histories" (intersections of these often marginalized disciplines; chaired by the astute Victorianist Julie Codell)
** "Myth and Modernism: New Perspectives on the 1913 Armory Show" (rethinking the famous 1913 exhibition in NYC that arguably introduced modernism to America)
** "Mad 'Men' and the Visual Culture of the Long Sixties" (Mad Men masculinity/feminism infiltrating art historical discourse)
** "Sexing Sculpture: New Approaches to Theorizing the Object" (gender/sexuality and modern/contemporary sculptural practice)
** "For and Against Homoeroticism: Artists, Authors, and the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name" (19th- & 20th-century ideas about homoerotic desire and homophobia; chaired by Jongwoo Jeremy Kim and Christopher Reed, both of whom I've presented with in the past)
** "Harems Imagined and Real" (eroticization of the harem in Orientalist art)
** "Reconsidering Murals: New Methodologies" (on mural paintings in American public buildings during the late 19th century; chaired by the always engaging Sally Webster)

MWA II: Vatican Shepherd

Following up on last month's Tulips in a Vase by Paul Cézanne, I've decided to select as the second MWA (Monthly Work of Art) the statue you see here, The Good Shepherd, from the collections at the Vatican Museums. The statue is 39 1/8 in. in height, carved from marble, and dates from the late 3rd century. Scholars refer to this period as Late Antiquity to distinguish it from the heyday of classical sculpture, such as 5th-century B.C. Athens or early 1st-century Imperialist Rome. The implication is that the quality of this work is less impressive than these early masterworks, and it borders on the beginning of the medieval period (no one says "Dark Ages" anymore). This is the time when Christianity had spread far and wide through the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312, then issued the Edict of Milan the following year, effectively ending the persecution of Christians. Hence, art from this period reflects a growing interest in Christian subjects, but it has similarities to ancient Greco-Roman precedents. For instance, this shepherd bears some resemblance to figures of the sun god Apollo, with his youthful facial features and curls of hair. Iconographically, however, the statue traditionally has been interpreted by Christians as representing Christ and his parable of the Good Shepherd, who abandons seeks out the one sheep who is lost and return him to the flock (Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7; John 10:11-16). Of course, shepherds were a relatively common appearance in Greco-Roman art, so the figure was simply adapted as a Christian icon.

It may seem as if I've chosen this work as April's MWA because tomorrow is Easter. In fact, this statue has had great meaning for me most of my life. Art historians often reflect about the work that first inspired them to pursue the study of art. For me, it was this statue, and it makes me realize how I've come full circle in many ways, specializing in sculpture as I am. In 1983 this statue and numerous other works traveled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art here in NYC for a special exhibition entitled The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art. The Pater and the Mater took me to see this show. It was my very first trip to an art museum, and I am almost positive that we went because it was my 13th birthday. I don't know why I would have known about the show, but I suspect the nuns in my school probably encouraged us to see it. I remember being completely overwhelmed by the beauty of the Met building, and I remember waiting on a long line to see the show. But in going through the rooms of Vatican art from ancient through modern periods, it was this statue that left its mark on me. One would think it might have been the Apollo Belvedere or some other magnificent ancient statue on display, but I suspect I may have been bashful about that work's provocative nudity. Instead, The Good Shepherd resonated with me as an adolescent, interested at that time in my Catholic faith, and from birth always instinctively interested in caring for animals. I simply loved how he carried over his shoulders his lamb as a pet with such genuine concern. He was a savior for both humans and animals.

Curiously, I've been to the Vatican Museums twice, and I cannot recall ever seeing this statue there. In looking up more information about it, I was surprised to discover that most of it is 18th-century restoration work, although his torso and upper body and head, and most of the lamb, are 3rd century. I didn't realize that it may have been part of a column or a segment from a high-relief sculpture either. And looking at the work now in reproduction, I cannot say that it is an exquisite work of art, certainly nowhere near as idealistically beautiful as the Apollo Belvedere. This just may be one of those moments where you can never return home again. But maybe that's okay. My memory of the statue and first encountering it led me on a path that has taken me to where I am today. It is my statue, fragmented and restored, misinterpreted and misunderstood. In short, it is human in its most natural, imperfect way.

Orange in April

For the past few years, I've been posting about going Orange in April in support of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), including my first post about the history of the organization. I've often found it rather special that my birthday falls on their anniversary. This year they're celebrating 146 years of animal rights and taking action to prevent the mistreatment of all animals throughout the US. Animals cannot speak up for themselves, so it is up to us to say We Are Their Voice. To donate to the organization, click here. Or buy some orangey gear, like I did with this snazzy cap, so that a portion of the proceeds go toward fighting animal cruelty.

Random Musings 12

What do you think when hear the names Don, Betty, Peggy, Joan, and Roger? If you're thinking Mad Men, then you're as excited as I am to see the 2-hour season 5 premiere on March 25 (image: Frank Ockenfels, AMC). I wasn't so sure about this show at first and didn't watch the first two seasons right away, but once I caught on, I was hooked. Matt Zoller Seitz has some interesting thoughts about why the show is so great in the latest issue of New York magazine. Last season had some great moments, like Don's elderly Jewish secretary, Ida "Are-ya-goin'-to-da-toilet?" Blankenship, who was so popular she got her own Facebook page. Tragically, even her death was a hoot. And of course there was episode #7 from last season, "The Suitcase," which ranks up there as one of the all-time best hours of television ever written and acted. The synergy between Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) was simply brilliant. Let's see if they can top it this season.

Last month, I posted about New York Public Library's disastrous plans to gut the main historic building and research library and make it mostly a circulating library and Internet computer zone. The project is going to cost upwards of $350 million. Meanwhile more than 80 branch libraries throughout NYC are completely falling into ruin and need to be completely overhauled. Yesterday, Leonard Lopate on WNYC radio interviewed Scott Sherman, who wrote the exposé published in The Nation this past December, and Caleb Crain, a former research fellow at NYPL. The radio program addresses both the potential positive and negative sides of this controversy, but truly drives home the nightmare of what is being planned.

In the world of art, the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has never gone out of style, so Dan Brown really had no need to try to make him more titillating than he already was. Over the past 2 months, the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) has come back into the spotlight, not in her world-famous portrait at the Louvre in Paris, but in a copy made at the same time that belongs to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid (their image). Having recently conserved and cleaned their copy of the Gioconda, the Prado's conservators have determined that it probably was painted about the same as the original. They're also claiming that the restored copy is closer to what the picture actually looked like when Leonardo painted it. Dirt, varnish, and aging have darkened the Louvre's original. I think it's rather interesting too that the copy artist probably was Andrea Salai, Leonardo's lover. You can read more about the painting in articles published in The Art Newspaper here, here, and here. And just when you thought that was big Leonardo news, yesterday it was announced that scholars believe they may have "found" his long-missing mural of The Battle of Anghiari beneath another painting.

I'm heading back to Florida this week. The Pater's mental health is degrading some more as Alzheimer's disease continues to affect him. I'll be doing a few more things to help make his life comfortable and manageable, including following up some doctor appointments. Our dear friend RM has been simply amazing in helping with so many things. I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude and, knowing she reads these posts, I'm publicly making it known how much I appreciate all of her help. With managing health problems such as Alzheimer's in our lives, I've often found the British World War II slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On" to be quite useful at times, so I'll leave you with this delightful video of the story behind the slogan, the iconic posters, and a charming bookshop in the UK that I would love to go visit one day soon. Watch the video here if you can't see it below. You'll appreciate the message.
 

Review: Cindy Sherman

Last May, I had written about Cindy Sherman hitting the all-time record for the most money paid for a photograph at auction, a record which 6 months later was surpassed by Andreas Gursky. Growing up during the 1970s feminist movement, Sherman inevitably made her career with what is now her best-known work, her untitled film series from 1977-80. The work you see here is #13 in the series from 1978 (image: SFMOMA), a less frequently reproduced image, but one which drew me among those on display at the retrospective exhibition of her work currently on at the Museum of Modern Art, which I saw on Friday with my friend JM. Sherman's series of black-and-white film stills are self-portraits posed in seemingly iconic roles from 1950s/60s films. Think Kim Novak in Vertigo or Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. (The Hitchcock reference is tacit.) You're positive you recognize the character being portrayed, but in fact there is no such character except in Sherman's mind. So ingrained in us are these character tropes that Sherman's photographs upend our expectations of how women are supposed to be and behave. In #13, a school girl blond reaches up to pull a book off the shelf, a seemingly innocent act, but her look back upward and over her shoulder, away from the book, suggests a back story. Is she in the library or bookstore alone and becomes anxious hearing someone approaching? Is that someone already behind her but out of the frame of the photograph, inciting sexual provocation or possibly even rape? Is there something about the book that makes her feel guilty, like she's doing something she shouldn't? Is she just an innocent school girl or is she really a secret undercover agent about to find the hidden plans for a weapon of mass destruction? Sherman's simple photograph speaks to us in a way that suggests much about womanhood. Indeed, what I liked about this image in particular is that the book she is pulling down is entitled The __cal Dialogue. I have no idea what book that is (I did try to look this up), but the word "dialogue" reveals what her photography is about: the communicative link between the viewer and Sherman as photographer and model.

Feminist art historians have had much to say about how this film series was about the male gaze and the subjugation of women. She has denied that ever was on her mind. Nevertheless, the dialogue that her photographs incite allows for what one "hears" to be as valid as what is being "said." This current retrospective at MOMA explores her photographic dialogue with selections from a number of her series since the 1970s. The exhibition easily could have fallen into the same old category of historical development over time, but the curators cleverly have integrated chronology with themes and series, so that as you move from gallery to gallery you're given an opportunity to reappreciate her work based on how it's been arranged and images across the room speak to one another as a result. I was less familiar with the rest of Sherman's oeuvre, so for me and others this show is a great opportunity to see her whole body of work. Because every photograph is Sherman as some character, you would think it would get boring after a while. After all, how many "self-portraits" can one take in a career? Even JM said that he wondered if part of her work was consciously beginning to parody itself, i.e. photographs of herself posing as herself posing as a character. But her images, at least for the first few rooms, seem to be more about being a woman, about beauty, about the male gaze, about theatricality and showmanship, and so on. And then you enter the room with her large-scale photographs of post-apocalyptic detritus or pornographically arranged mannequin body parts, and you want to vomit. You suddenly realize her work has been about ugliness and the darkness of life, the backside of all the questions of beauty and womanhood that you just spent the previous 15 to 30 minutes pondering.

Her history portraits (1989-90) are grotesque but fascinating. Modeled on actual and imaginary masterworks from art history, they are arranged here in one space with rich red walls, conjuring old Salon-style hangings from before the 20th century. The artificiality of the subjects (a Virgin Mary bearing a fake breast that feeds a plastic infant Jesus) calls into question our ideas about what defines a masterwork when its subject matter (religion, parenting, breastfeeding) represents for us topics that are ripe for socio-political debates. Her clown series absolutely freaks me out, but that has to do with my own coulrophobia. Her series of high society women (2008), however, is simply divine (image: #465, MOMA). Showcasing anonymous social matriarchs posing for their portraits, their caked-on make-up, faux backdrops, and stuffed props inevitably ridicule the very idea of what high society prizes in its own standing. At the same time, these photographs are regal, larger than life, and rich in color, leaving you with a vibrancy and sense of drama more delectable than any episode of the Real Housewives of Whatever-City. They are a fitting ending to the retrospective.

You can tell from my review that I enjoyed the show. I appreciated it as an excellent opportunity to see more of Sherman's work in person and to learn more about her beyond the film stills. No one can "like" everything in the exhibition, and I don't think that's the point, although there are some gems in the show. The reproductions I've seen don't do the original works justice, so it is worth seeing them in person to better appreciate them. What struck me most about her body of work, however, is that Sherman is a photographer's photographer. She understands how photography works in its broadest sense as an extension of time-based performances such as theater and film. Her images aren't just about the photographic image on the wall, but all the work that goes into scripting the scenes, finding the costumes, creating the sets, applying the make-up and wigs, and modeling the characters. In the ever-rising debates over how digital cameras are leading to the demise of photography are thrown out here as well, because from early on Sherman has worked to figure out how technology could enhance her finished product, Photoshop just being the latest technological gadget. Indeed, the more I looked at her images, I cared less that they were chromogenic or silver gelatin prints and wanted to know more about her techniques, how she used lighting or staging or even took the pictures without any evidence of the camera in the shot. MOMA could have done a better job explicating her techniques instead of keeping the wall labels so generic. After all, every single one of her works are entitled Untitled, so was it necessary to repeat that over and over throughout the room? Still, the show was interesting and thought-provoking, and I'm glad to have seen it. I wouldn't necessarily say Sherman is my new favorite artist (sorry, Cindy, I'm still stuck on Kara Walker), but this show has helped elevate my respect for her accomplishments in the history of contemporary photography and expand my notions about what defines the self-portrait.

MWA I: Cézanne's Tulips

For a long time now, I've been wanting to introduce a segment on bklynbiblio showcasing works of art with some commentary. If I were ambitious, I would do this once a week, but I could never keep up with that. So I'm going to strive for a monthly contribution, hereby calling this the MWA: Monthly Work of Art. In keeping up with the recent (and still disturbing) news that a painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) had sold for $250 million, and in memory of my recent trip to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA with my friend MP, I thought I would start off with this gem: Tulips in a Vase, 1888-90. I was immediately struck by its minimalist beauty and its rich color tones. (MP loves this painting too!) For some viewers, still life painting can seem boring, but painters (so I've been told) find them to be challenging exercises in attempting to capture the essence of living-but-inanimate objects carefully arranged before them. There's something also to the fact that, although in English we call these paintings "still lifes," the rest of the Latinate world calls them "natura morta," literally "dead nature." This of course conjures up a completely different idea about what the paintings shows. It brings vitality to a subject that one realizes already has expired, showing a single moment in time in which an artist stood before a canvas such as this one capturing the short life of flowers and fruit. Of course, that isn't actually true, as Cézanne painted this over a two-year period. In fact, what makes this picture so fascinating isn't even its still life quality, but that  it skillfully demonstrates two of Cézanne's practices. The first was his belief that all forms could be geometrically reduced to the cylinder, sphere, and cone. In short, he was interested in abstracting nature so as to make a painting first a painting and second a representation of something. To do this, he worked up layers of color and paint to create volume and used black outlines to enhance their three-dimensionality. His second practice was his interest in demonstrating binocular vision on the canvas, i.e. showing multiple viewpoints at once. Looking here, you see the vase frontally, but then you notice the table beneath it has been elevated and that you're looking at it from about a 45-degree angle, which should mean you're looking into the vase slightly, but you're not. In considering just these two ideas and this picture, you can see why Cézanne was considered by most to be a bit eccentric in his day (even by some of the Impressionists, with whom he exhibited). However, he proved to be highly influential on Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other painters associated with Cubism because of his interest in geometric forms and the flattening of perspective. You can read more about this picture on the Norton Simon Museum's website.

CAA 2012 Recap

I arrived back in Brooklyn early Sunday morning after catching the red-eye flight, and I've been trying to get over the jet lag ever since. The College Art Association 100th annual conference was actually good, which surprises me because overall I wasn't confident that the panels were going to be that interesting. I also wasn't necessarily keen on going to Los Angeles again, but fortunately my opinion of the city has changed as well. I met up with a number of individuals, both colleagues and friends, and saw a few museums too (which I will talk about in another post). So all in all it was a productive few days in L.A.

CAA scheduled the panel session I was on ("Future Directions in British Art") for the same time as the honorary session for renown art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss, which really was rather annoying of them. Nevertheless, we had about 25 people in the audience and at least it seems they received the papers very well. You'll recall of course that my paper was on the sculptor John Gibson (image: Narcissus, 1836-38, Royal Academy). Amy Von Lintel's (West Texas A&M Univ) paper "Art within Reach: The Popular Origins of Art History in Victorian Britain" was an unexpectedly delightful coda to my own paper, in that some of the topics we covered (popular reproductive media and the world fairs of 1851 and 1862) were approached from different, though related, perspectives. She argued that the rise of popular culture helped teach the masses about the history of art in Victorian England. Corey Piper (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) gave an interesting paper on codes of behavior in sporting prints from 1750-1850. The other two papers by Cristina Martinez (Univ Toronto) on legal issues in 18th-century art, and by Irene Sunwoo (Princeton) on contemporary architectural pedagogy, were admittedly more challenging for me, but that was partly because of my lack of knowledge about the topics presented. Discussant Kim Rhodes (Drew Univ) gave an excellent wrap-up to our papers, aptly tying together the threads they shared in pursuit of "future directions" in scholarship. Peter Trippi (Fine Art Connoisseur), our chair, organized the session beautifully.

On Wednesday morning, I popped into the session on "The Materiality of Art: Evidence, Interpretation, Theory," mostly to hear Gülru Çakmak (Univ Mass, Amherst) give an insightful talk on the French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (image: The Death of Caesar, 1859-67, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). She focused on his technical skills in using paint and the canvas surface to create texture and alternative points of view in the picture plane. (Rumor has it we're both speaking at a symposium in England later this year! More on that another time...) Ann Smart Martin (Univ Wisconsin, Madison) gave an interesting talk on the effects of candle and gas lighting on furniture and wallpaper in 17th- to 19th-century England and America. This actually is a topic I frequently have wondered about, as electrical lighting today has seriously altered our understanding of how art from the past was seen in its own day.

On Thursday morning, I went to the session on early photography. Karen Hellman's (Getty Museum) paper on the daguerreotypist Antoine Claudet explored his interest in optics and binocular vision, while Melody Davis (Sage College, Albany) explored stereoscopes as a form of commerce targeted toward women, virulently challenging the scholarship of Beaumont Newhall and Jonathan Crary on these early types of photographs. Margaretta Frederick's (Delaware Art Museum) paper on Samuel Bancroft's collecting practices of Pre-Raphaelite art and photographic prints, and Deborah Hutton's (College of New Jersey) paper on the Indian photographer Raja Deen Dayal, rounded out the papers rather well. I missed the last paper on the panel because I headed to another room to hear my fellow CUNY Graduate Center colleague Tara Burk give a concise, thought-provoking overview of issues associated with the visual culture of queer activism in NYC from 1987-95. On Friday afternoon, the Historians of 18th-Century Art and Architecture held a session on installations and, as I saw it, the interactive roles of public/private spaces. Hannah Williams (Oxford) gave an excellent paper on the change in perception of two 18th-century French paintings as they went from being exhibited in the Salon to their permanent home in a nearby Church. Jocelyn Anderson (Courtauld) spoke about how English country estates and their owners molded the early experience of viewing works of art, and Heather McPherson (Univ Alabama, Birmingham) gave a thorough overview of the socio-economic politics behind Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in London. I also went to hear a few presentations sponsored by the Art Libraries Society of North America ("Collaboration, Access, Sustainability: The Future of Image Research Collections") and the Visual Resources Society ("Paint, Prints, and Pixels: Learning from the History of Teaching with Images"), but I have to admit I didn't find those to be as exciting as the art historical papers. As you can tell from my quick synopsis, there was a lot to hear, and this barely scratched the surface of other panel sessions that were given, all of which can be seen here.

CAA 2012

I'm heading to Los Angeles for the 100th annual conference of the College Art Association, which is being held at the convention center, pictured above. I haven't been to LA since 2001, when I went to the annual conference for the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). I'm definitely more a NYer rather than an LAer, but I'm looking forward to warm sunshine and meeting up with KB and other friends (and possibly even some relatives). I first found out my paper proposal had been accepted back in June. It's entitled "Reconsidering John Gibson, Remolding British Sculpture" and it's for a panel session sponsored by the Historians of British Art on "Future Directions." I'm arguing that in using John Gibson (1790-1866) as a case study of one who challenged ideas of nationalism, medium, and polychromy, we can expand our notions of what British sculpture itself actually means and thus better integrate it into the overall study of nineteenth-century art. Wish me luck!

Downton Abbey

I first wrote about Downton Abbey, that magical 1910s-themed soap opera from Julian Fellows, back in September when I noted that it was then named as the most critically acclaimed show in television history. Those who know me on Facebook also have been following my occasional posts on all the grandeur and excitement of the show. I've even used Maggie Smith's picture as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, as my profile image in honor of tonight's final episode of Season 2, which has been dubbed "Christmas at Downton Abbey." The show is fantastic and rightfully deserves all the awards it has earned. To me, the writing has been key to its success, but equally so have been the attempts at historical accuracy with the costumes, settings, social graces, etc. They cover lots of cultural issues, like women's rights and the challenges of the working classes, but then there are the love stories, and you cannot help but root for Anna (the head house maid) and the lame, married Mr. Bates (Lord Grantham's valet). It's all not perfect, of course, and the high drama that goes on with some of the characters (like finding a dead Turk in your bed) can be a bit over the top at times, but that's part of the charm. Season 2 has been a little more challenging in that the war has preoccupied much of the storyline, making character development suffer a little, but the show still had held on and has been excellent. Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, however, is simply divine. She has the best lines in the show ("Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class."). Although her character becomes comic relief she also is an excellent representation of how older Victorian social mores were being forced to change with the onset of World War I and the gradual decimation of the "upstairs/downstairs" social class hierarchy. Best of all, however, she also represents the determination of family and protection of one's loved ones. No matter what happens, we take care of our own, servants included. (Now, who is going to pour the tea?) I won't go into all the details about the show, as you can learn all about the characters and storyline simply be visiting the official US website for the show. If you're interested in knowing more about the manor house, Highclere Castle, home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, you can visit their website as well. (No doubt visitors to their estate will increase greatly and match those of Castle Howard after Brideshead Revisited was filmed there.) You can see episodes of Downton Abbey from Season 1 (which opened with the sinking of the Titanic and ended with the declaration of war) on DVD and streamed online, and the Season 2 DVD set (which covers WWI through 1919) is on sale now as well. I cannot wait until the final episode tonight airs, but I'm also devastated knowing I have to wait a year for Season 3, in which Shirley Maclaine will be joining the cast as Lady Grantham's American mother. Fortunately, New York magazine has provided us with Downton Abbey paper dolls so we can entertain ourselves until next season begins. Lady Sybil Crawley gets female empowerment symbols, but you'll notice the Dowager Countess comes with a variety of facial expressions.

UPDATE 11:08 PM: A most satisfactory season finale! And now that the two seasons have passed, one can sit back and enjoy all the Dowager's best lines and facial expressions.
 

Library Bytes: NYPL Issues

Everyone knows that the main building of the New York Public Library on 5th Ave & 42nd St is an important cultural center and architectural landmark. I blogged about the NYPL system in 2009 when I found out about a video that promoted more information about libraries and their services. To paraphrase PR, who commented about the video, it is an inspiring video. Back then I also mentioned about the financial cutbacks they were suffering from. Sadly, that has continued to happen, and things are now getting worse. NYPL has been planning a major overhaul of that incredible classical revival building and its services, by turning it into the largest circulating public library in the US. This particular branch of the library as it exists has always been a research facility. The picture you see above is a view from 1913 of what is now called the Rose Reading Room (image: NYPL Digital Library), where anyone can enter, order a book to be paged from the collection, sit down and read it. A number of my PhD friends (and I) use this library and its services regularly. There are other reading rooms as well, but this one is the most famous. The plan now, however, is for NYPL to close 3 branches, ship 2 million books to a storage unit in NJ (that will take at least 24-48 hours to page for users), gut the entire lower floor beneath the Rose Reading Room, and turn the entire facility into a circulating library, just like in towns across America. Some people might think in theory this is a good thing. Certainly their Board and Director think so. It is curious, however, that no one on the Board or even the Director is an actual librarian or holds an MLS degree. They're all business people. But I digress. Their plan also calls for the cancellation of 2 previously planned regional branches they were supposed to built. Instead, they're basically turning the main building into a giant computer center (think an Apple store, no salespeople, but seriously overworked civil servants, and lots of naughty goings-on in the stacks). Not only will this cost an unbelievable fortune to do, but it is destroying the integrity of the entire architectural structure and all of its services for researchers. This past December, Scott Sherman published a fantastic exposé in The Nation on all the secrecy and under-the-table things going on there (including the then-still startling news the new Director had been arrested for drunk driving). The New York Times now has its take on the whole thing, and I'm saddened to say that their article is really a fluff piece that does more to stroke the egos of the NYPL Board and Director. The powers that be claim they want feedback from the community, so speak your mind about this. But make sure you read at least The Nation article first, because it's shocking and eye-opening.

Random Musings 11

2012 has been a busy year so far, which is why I haven't been blogging lately. I've been working hard at my job, on my dissertation, and on my next conference presentation that is coming up in less than two weeks. So I thought I'd reconnect by posting a Random Musing about some recent things that have piqued my interest.

You know it's going to be a good day when The New York Times publishes an important news story about dogs in art here in New York City. Randy Kennedy writes about paintings and sculptures with dogs, ranging from a 5th-century ceramic coyote from Mexico to drawings of dachshunds by David Hockney. One of my favorite dog-themed pictures in NYC is the 1570s painting you see here by Veronese, Boy with a Greyhound (image: Metropolitan Museum of Art). There is something innately beautiful in the simple way the dog nuzzles the boy as he reaches back to scratch at his neck. And of course the greyhound makes me think of my canine nephew George in FL! Kennedy's article is a preview of sorts for the upcoming exhibition In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature, and Music at the Morgan, opening March 2 at The Morgan Library. 


The art world has been going a bit crazy over the recent news that the government of Qatar (i.e. their royal family) have purchased Paul Cézanne's painting The Card Players, ca. 1900, for the world record price of $250 million. Yes, you read that correctly. It is the highest price ever reported for the private sale of a painting. In comparison, Pablo Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust holds the record price for the sale of a painting at auction for $106 million. Alexandra Peers has an exclusive story in Vanity Fair about the purchase, which took place last year but only now has gone public. NPR has an interview with Peers about the story as well. My friend PR has some interesting links about this on his blog, including a startling tidbit I hadn't realized, that 7 of the top 10 highest priced paintings sold privately all have happened just since 2004. Clearly the failing economy isn't affecting everyone in the world. At least the royal family is planning to display the work in their new national museum. I may revisit this whole story again if I have time, as there's a lot more that can be said about this, including just how important this guy Cézanne really is. (Hint: He is important, but this painting certainly isn't his best work.)

I was startled to hear today that art historian John House had passed away at the age of 66. He worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, retiring in 2010. A specialist in 19th-century French art, he was one of the few art historians out there whose writing was not only intelligent but palatable. I always tell people that his book Impressionism: Paint and Politics (2004) is one of the best books I've read on Impressionist painting. Both a formalist and social historian in his methodology, his book engages lucidly with how the radical nature of the brush strokes of Monet, Renoir, and the rest of them reflected the changing socio-political and cultural environment in their daily lives. The book also utilizes digital imaging beautifully, publishing high-resolution details of Impressionist paintings that show first-hand how they handled paint, something you can never see as clearly looking at the pictures themselves. 


Speaking of books, I've been trying to keep my big budget under control these days, but I've added a few great new titles to my library over the past few months. In art history, I've been doing some research on 19th-century women sculptors and purchased Kate Culkin's Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography (2010) and Kirsten Pai Buick's Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History's Black and Indian Subject (2010). I also had to get the Brooklyn Museum's Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties (2011) since I loved the exhibition. For Christmas my cousin MB and her family gave me Robert K. Massie's biography Catherine the Great (2011), which was on my Books of 2011 list (thanks, MB!). In fiction, I picked up Barbara Pym's Jane and Prudence (1953) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), and my artist friend MT just gave me  as a thank you gift George Eliot's Middlemarch (1874) because she was horrified to discover I had not read it yet (thanks, MT!). I'm currently reading Timothy Parsons's The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914 (1999), which is surprisingly good, but it could use some pictures. Speaking of imperialism...

This month is Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. Having now reigned 60 years, she is just on the tail of her ancestor King George III, who has held 2nd place for the longest running British monarch (r. 1760-1820). She's still just behind Queen Victoria, who reigned 64 years (r. 1837-1901). I've always thought it was interesting how people feel comfortable referring to Victoria's reign as the "Victorian" age, but no one would ever dare think of the past 60 years as the "Elizabethan" age. The image you see here is a fantastic portrait painting done by Pietro Annigoni in 1954-55, which The Art Newspaper talks about in more detail. It's a powerfully Romantic picture, isolating her against a barren landscape that epitomizes how youthful innocence can also show great power, especially for a nation rebuilding a decade after World War II.

Winter Exhibitions 2012

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!

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

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

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!