MWA XVII: Hunt's Awakening

With so much happening last month, I forgot to post a Monthly Work of Art. Hopefully we are back on track with this, as we post #17: William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience, 1853. It seems appropriate to post one of the most important of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, considering my last post was a summary of the recent conference in Oxford. Few people really understand what the PRB (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) was or what the style actually means. Officially, the PRB was a group of 7 radical artists who in 1848 London gathered to create their own artistic society that would rebel against the traditions taught at the Royal Academy. In short, they believed that the primacy of art lay in masterworks before the time of Raphael or the High Renaissance.  Thus they were most interested in what was then seen as primitive art, i.e. art of the 1300s and 1400s, from Duccio and Giotto to Fra Lippo Lippi and Botticelli. But what made them also modern was that they wanted to paint modern-day subjects, or modern literary scenes, with a close eye that adhered to "truth to nature," the mantra established by the great contemporary art critic John Ruskin. The influence of photography on them was of course instrumental in their development, both as a way to borrow on the verisimilitude of photography's naturalistic capabilities, but also to surpass it as a work of art. When their art was displayed, they were both credited and jeered for their attempts to paint every blade of glass and their use of intense bright colors. They ultimately used techniques from the past to paint modern subjects.

Holman Hunt was undoubtedly the most consciously moralistic in what his paintings could teach people, and he wasn't afraid to shock middle-class values in the process. The irony of this, of course, is that although this painting was meant to startle people in its exposure of a man and his kept mistress, Holman Hunt was having an affair with the model, Annie Miller, so the painting does arguably reveal his own self-awareness and shame over the situation in which he was involved. This painting is so full of symbolism and details, and rather an exquisite gem of a painting, that I'm going to quote from the Tate's curators, who describe it so well on their collection website.

"A gentleman has installed his mistress (known to be such because of her absence of a wedding ring) in a house for their meetings. As they play and sing to Thomas Moore's Oft in the Stilly Night, she has a sudden spiritual revelation. Rising from her lover's lap, she gazes into the sunlit garden beyond, which is reflected in the mirror behind her. The mirror image represents the woman's lost innocence, but redemption, indicated by the ray of light in the foreground, is still possible. Intended to be 'read', the painting is full of such symbolic elements. The cat toying with the broken-winged bird under the table symbolises the woman's plight. A man's discarded glove warns that the likely fate of a cast-off mistress was prostitution. A tangled skein of yarn on the floor symbolises the web in which the girl is entrapped. Indeed, as Ruskin wrote to the Times on 25 May 1854, 'the very hem of the poor girl's dress, at which the painter has laboured so closely, thread by thread, has story in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her outcast feet failing in the street'. The frame, designed by Hunt, also contains various symbolic emblems; the bells and marigolds stand for warning and sorrow, the star is a sign of spiritual revelation."

UPDATE (10/6/13): Imagine my surprise when I was going back through old posts and discovered I had spoken about Holman Hunt's painting back in 2011 during a Random Musing! It's inevitable at times that I may duplicate images, but perhaps that's a subconscious reminder of certain things I actually enjoy and want to talk about even more.

Conference on Pre-Raphaelitism

Toward the end of last week, I was in Oxford, England, where I spoke about Simeon Solomon's painting The Mother of Moses, 1860, the abstract of which I posted a few months ago here. It was my first time in Oxford, and although it has some lovely architecture and history, I have to confess that it didn't impress me with its beauty the way Cambridge does (hopefully the Oxonians won't hate me for that). Oxford turned out to be more of a bustling small city with lots of tourists; Cambridge, I must say, is more bucolic and picturesque. In any case, it was still great to be there, and to participate in the two-day conference, Pre-Raphaelitism: Past, Present and Future, held at the Ashmolean Museum and St. John's College. Planners Prof. Christiana Payne and Dr. Dinah Roe, with Dr. Alastair Wright and Colin Harrison of the Ashmolean, did a fantastic job organizing a great two days. For me the highlights among the presentations included: Jason Rosenfeld on 1960s counter-culture and fashion today, and their relationship to the Pre-Raphaelites; Claire Yearwood on the use of the mirror in Pre-Raphaelite paintings; and Amelia Yeates on narrative genre paintings of the 1850s and 1860s and how they fit (or not) within the Pre-Raphaelite style. Yeates' paper focused on the work of artist Robert Braithwaite Martineau, who was considered a peripheral Pre-Raphaelite, and whose painting The Knight's Guerdon, 1864, is the image you see here, from the Ashmolean's collection. My dear friend and colleague Carolyn Conroy (go Team Solomon!) spoke about a cache of late drawings by Solomon held by the Ashmolean and did an amazing job determining for the first time their provenance and identifying their titles through archival research. Stephen Wildman, a noted expert on John Ruskin, gave what should have been a great opening talk, but drilling noises in the room next door actually made it impossible to hear anything he had to say, so I'm disappointed that I still have no idea if Ruskin actually liked the Pre-Raphaelites or not, which was the topic of his talk.

We also had opportunities to visit the galleries of the Ashmolean and a rare opportunity to see the frescoes by some of the PR's and their associates in the Oxford Union, followed by a lovely group dinner. Many of the papers were geared toward literature scholars, who seem to have gotten much more out of the conference than the art people. I've always said that with art history if you've never seen the picture before, the speaker shows it to you during the talk; with literature, if you haven't read the work before, you're completely at a loss to know what the speaker is discussing. I also enjoyed Tate curator Alison Smith's plenary talk about the history of various Pre-Raphaelite exhibitions and their reception over the past century, leading up to the currently-traveling show Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, co-curated by her with Rosenfeld and Tim Barringer. I saw the exhibition in Washington, D.C. back in May, introducing AA to the PRB for the first time, and we both enjoyed it. That exhibition is now on in Moscow and then moves to Tokyo. The international taste for Pre-Raphaelitism has exploded, and the response from the people has been great. Art critics, on the other hand, have been a bit dismissive; their inability to move past the French trajectory of modernism leaves them short-sighted about the ways other contemporaneous art movements also were "avant garde" in their own way. Time will eventually show that there is more than one way to be modern.

Portal 3

Portal 3: Vizzola Ticino (12 July 2005)
(For others in my portal series, click here.)

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

-- Laozi, Tao Te Ching, 6th century BCE (chap. 11, trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English)

Happy 5th Birthday!

Wow, we are growing up so quickly! On August 29th, we celebrate the 5th birthday of our little blog bklynbiblio! It really is amazing how far we have come and how much has happened over the past 5 years. We are now at 427 posts. Our top 5 tags haven't changed since last year, although the order has: "New York" (107) and "19th-century art" (68) are still the top tags, but "photography" (64) has moved up, with "England" and "gay" still up there as well. My thanks as always to all my readers for your continuous support these past 5 years.

Frisco-bound

With everything the past few months a big whirlwind for me, between a new job and a new apartment, I haven't had time to blog too much. I'm sure that will change soon, however, as I'm off on another great adventure: San Francisco! You may recall I was last in California (Los Angeles specifically) in February 2012, and about this time of the year I've been known to run off to Provincetown. But this year my friends and I decided to traverse to the West coast. It will be my first time in San Francisco, so I'm thrilled to be going, and we do have plans to go to Sonoma one night and partake of wine tasting opportunities. Hopefully I will recap highlights from the trip when I return. I wonder though...will I leave my heart in San Francisco? Tony Bennett did so, and he sang that song on Judy Garland's variety show back in the 1960s. Here's the delightful video of that crooner, or you can see it on YouTube by clicking here.

Movin' on Up!

The picture you see here is the front facade of the building in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where I've lived for the past 8 years. It amazes me to realize that I moved here in August 2005 and how fast the time has flown by. My entire doctoral education took place on the 2nd floor of this building, as did a number of parties with good friends, and stayovers with family and friends who got a taste of Brooklyn on their visits. This is actually one of the longest residences I've ever had too. But one must move on. Or as I've been envisioning it, I'm "movin' on up!" Yes, readers, I'm moving into Manhattan. I'm moving into a studio apartment on the Upper West Side, which will make my commute to work faster. I will be able to enjoy the benefits of being near Riverside Park and Central Park as well. It's going to be a big change for me, but I'm looking forward to it. But what shall we do with bklynbiblio? The premise of this blog name was because I lived in Brooklyn. Do I change it because I'm moving out of Brooklyn? I've thought a lot about this, and I've decided the answer is NO. I've become rather proud of my blogging sobriquet, and rather than suggest by its name that I'm a current Brooklyn resident, my blog name will reflect where it was born and christened. So, although I bid adieu to 8 years of Brooklyn residency--to the BQE, to the Met grocery store, to Bocca Lupo's amazing food, and my local laundrymat and dry cleaner/seamstress (that poor Chinese woman will be devastated!)--I also say hello to Manhattan...I'm movin' on up! And to commemorate this great moment, I present to you George and Louise Jefferson, who once upon time found themselves "movin' on up" to the East Side (okay, I'm going to the West Side, but you get the idea). If you can't see the video, click here.

Portal 2

Portal 2: Richmond upon Thames (8 October 2011). This is the second in my portal series of photographic/literary works.

   There were doors all around the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.
   Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass: there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
   Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hold: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw.

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

Metal Outdoor Sculpture

Today was my first day in a week-long seminar entitled "The Care of Metal Outdoor Sculpture," sponsored by the New York Conservation Foundation. Sculpture in metal (e.g. bronze, aluminum, stainless steel, etc.) isn't something I'm as well-versed in as compared to sculpture in stone (e.g. marble), not to mention the conservation of it, particularly when exposed to outdoor elements. So this seminar seems like it's going to be a great opportunity to learn more. It supports my duties in my new position as Curator of Art Properties at Columbia, as we have a public sculpture collection on campus (more than one campus actually), and all of it is in metal. Each morning during the seminar we're visiting public sculpture sites in NYC. This morning we started near Herald Square, moved through Bryant Park, and ended near the United Nations. Tomorrow morning we're in the Financial District. The afternoon or evening parts of the seminar consist of a series of talks from conservators and curators. So far it's going pretty well. The picture you see here is a shot I took with my iPhone of our instructor John Scott talking to us about the effects of environmental conditions on this 1911 memorial statue in bronze of William Cullen Bryant by Herbert Adams in the park behind New York Public Library. If I have time later in the week, I'll recap highlights from the seminar.

MWA XVI: Rubens's Wife

Following up on the last MWA in honor of Rembrandt, it seems only fitting to turn to his famous Baroque contemporary from Flanders, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). This large painting, Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614-1673), and Their Son Frans (1633-1678), is approximately 6 1/2 ft. x 5 ft., and was painted in oil on wood ca. 1635. It is one of the highly prized paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The curators note that it is a portrait of the artist with his second wife and their first-born son strolling in an allegorical Garden of Love: "The picture is not a family portrait but an homage to Helena as wife and mother, one of whose most important attributes was providing her husband with a son. The gestures and glances of both male figures and symbols of fecundity such as the fountain and caryatid pay tribute to Helena, who has the innocence and serenity of a female saint." The painting was a gift in 1981 from the well-known art collectors Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, in honor of the famous art historian John Pope-Hennessey, who at the time was (I believe) retiring from the Met as a curator. Although this is scandalous to say, I've never been a big fan of Rubens's rather mellifluous work, but this picture is without a doubt an exquisite painting in its handling, color, and composition.

The main reason why I've chosen this work as July's MWA, however, is because of the painting's provenance, or the history of its ownership. The Met has been among those museums who, in putting their collections online, have attempted to make more publicly available the provenance of many of the works in their collection. If you click on the title above, it will take you to the webpage for the painting, and if you scroll down to click on the tab for "Provenance," you will discover that among the illustrious past owners of this picture were the Dukes of Marlborough, and that it hung for a time in Blenheim Palace. From 1884 through 1975, the painting was in Paris at the Hôtel du Duc de Nemours, the home of the Barons de Rothschild. Indeed, if you take a look to the right, this is an image of the painting as it hung in the dining room of this Paris mansion, just before it was sold by the Rothschild estate. This image was a discovery I made when I was working with the William Keighley Collection at the Met Museum (he had been given permission to photograph the Rothschild's home). You may recall I blogged about this when the last phase of the digitization of the Keighley Collection had been released by ARTstor in December 2012. This was a multi-year project that I had overseen while working at the Met, including curating Keighley's original slides to be digitized. Much the same way I recently wrote about exhibition installation views, images such as this offer us a fascinating perspective in how paintings such as this one by Rubens--which we now only envision hanging on a wall in a museum--originally were meant to be seen, hanging among decorative arts and other works paintings and sculptures collected by wealthy owners in the past. Visual provenance helps restore the past incarnations of works of art, and thus are vitally important tools in the history of these art objects. It makes one realize that art objects are not static; rather, they have rich histories that tell a new story for each passing generation.

Exhibition Installation Views

Art history today is more than just about connoisseurship. It involves social history, criticism and theory, gender studies, and so on. Museum studies in particular has grown rapidly as a discipline, and the blending of that area with visual art comes together beautifully in the history of temporary exhibitions. Recording these visually allows scholars to see how art objects were literally viewed and arranged in the past. Although this can be especially interesting in attempting to recreate exhibitions from the 19th century and earlier, "history" can be as recent as last year too. ARTstor recently released more than 8000 digital images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art showcasing views from special exhibitions dating from 1970 through 2008. This is a fantastic addition to ARTstor's collection (it complements in part a previous collection of digitized installation views by the Museum of Modern Art). Not everyone realizes this, but installations do matter when you visit a special exhibition. Next time you visit a museum to see a show, you should of course look at the works of art on display. But also pay attention to how the works in the room "speak" to one another, and how the themes of the rooms and their overall appearance (from wall color to how visitors engage with the objects) evolve room to room. In many cases, installation is an active part of the story of the exhibition. On one level it's the packaging, much the same way a shop window entices you to buy the merchandise in the store. But on another level installation design is about the scholarly dialogue, how art works relate to one another based on the curator's intent for the exhibition itself. Sometimes these installations are tremendous successes; other times they do nothing for the art and can in fact impact the show by making it a failure. Pairing specific art works near one another in exhibitions also gives the viewer the opportunity to see works that normally cannot be seen together, typically because they are owned by different museums or private collectors. Seeing them beside one another provides a fresh context about the works that in turn generate ideas and discussions about how artists or their audiences may have seen these objects in their own time. All this said, I admit I have a vested interest in the sharing of the announcement about this collaborative project between ARTstor and the Met. When I was working in the then-Image Library (now Digital Media Dept.) at the Met, this was one of the big digitization projects I worked on with my colleagues, so I'm rather proud to see this project's successful release. Of all the possibilities in the collection to share, I chose the installation view above because it triggers a fond memory for me. Back in 1998, I was thrilled to visit the Met to see the Edward Burne-Jones centenary-of-his-death exhibition of his late Pre-Raphaelite paintings, installed in the Tisch Galleries. If you look in the image above, you can see his large painting The Sirens, 1891-98 (Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota), paired beside a portrait of Lady Windsor, 1893-95 (Collection of Viscount Windsor), among a few other works. I can't remember all the specifics as to why these works were paired together, but they both are examples of his late Symbolist-style work. In addition to these special exhibition installation views, there also are hundreds of historical views of permanent galleries at the Met in this ARTstor collection, which we also worked on, so if you have an institutional subscription through your local library, be sure to check them out.

UPDATE 7/22/13: ARTstor has published its own blog post about art installation views, highlighting different collections from museums now available and providing their own take on why viewing art in context is important. You can read their blog post by clicking here.

Random Musings 14

Last Saturday I finally had a chance to get back to Brooklyn Museum for 2 exhibitions I've been wanting to see. John Singer Sargent Watercolors celebrates 2 major collections of watercolors by Sargent (1856-1925), owned by Brooklyn and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Joined together for this exhibition, there is a clear distinction between the more finished set of pictures purchased in 1912 by Boston and the 1909 purchase by Brooklyn, which are more sketch-like. Depending on your taste and interest in how an artist thinks, each of the works will appeal to viewers differently. The show is arranged thematically, with segments on Italy and sailing, for instance. Sargent was born in Italy to American parents and lived throughout Europe (I still have a difficult time thinking of him as an "American" artist), so he was well-traveled for his day and time. One of my favorite watercolors from the show was the work you see above, Corfu: Lights & Shadows, 1909, from the MFA, in which he represents a small building on the Greek island, but captures all the sensation of sunshine using different hues to show how the branches of the trees cast shadows onto the white building. It is truly a tour de force of a work, revealing how Sargent's handling of color and lighting can convey atmospheric conditions and the emotional satisfaction of the place he's showing the viewer.
In sharp contrast to Sargent's work, I also enjoyed the exhibition showcasing the work of contemporary Nigerian artist El Anatsui. Although he has had a long career, his more recent works using found objects from garbage dumps (tin can lids, bottle caps, twist-ties, etc.) have made him internationally famous. He recreates large-scale sculptural installations that are fascinating. They appear like tapestries of gold. They are the detritus of society reimagined as beauty, and thus say much about the interactions of different classes and ethnic groups in the cultural exchange of the objects as they were imported from Europe and rebranded as "African" products. This is an installation shot I took of some of his works hanging in the main rotunda of the building.

In my last Random Musing, I posted an update about the New York Public Library's Central Library Plan. bklynbiblio followers will recall that I've been among the many criticizing them for their plans to renovate the main historic building and research center, and turn it into the modern-day equivalent of a library-like Internet Starbucks cafe. Under pressure from critics, NYPL President Tony Marx has agreed to have an independent committee evaluate the plans, according to this article in The New York Times (thanks, PR, for the lead). We will see what this next chapter will bring.

Two years ago, I blogged about my new fiction discovery, British novelist Barbara Pym (1913-1980; thanks again to TC for the introduction!). Her short novel Excellent Women (1952) has become one of my favorite books. I can see her influence on other British women writers I enjoy reading, such as A.S. Byatt and Ruth Rendell. The charm of Excellent Women is that nothing really happens. The book focuses on Mildred Lathbury, who makes tea, helps decorate the local church, unexpectedly gets involved in the drama of her neighbors, and makes observations about everyone in her life in an ever-so-judgmental Christian way that will have you laughing aloud. Her later novels are reportedly darker, but I haven't gotten to those yet. Pym is also an inspiration to writers. Her first few novels sold modestly well, and then publishers refused to publish her because she was seen as old fashioned. It took years before she was published again, and that book wound up winning her the Booker Prize. The lesson learned is never to give up. June was the centenary of her birth, so you can read up more about her life and novels in these laudatory articles in The Telegraph and The New York Times. There's even The Barbara Pym Society website to peruse as well.

Archaeology published a tidbit of fascinating news: this 400-lb. stone sculpture of a nude female torso was excavated in Brooklyn in the DUMBO area (that's "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for non-Brooklynites). There are traces of paint on it, and she's been dubbed Ginger because this area had spice warehouses in the 19th century, but no one knows much about who she is or why she was there.

And, finally, I had to wrap up this musing with something rather fun. Ever hear the joke about how to make an Italian stop talking? You tie his hands behind his back! Italians talk with their hands. I even do it, and half the time I don't even realize it. There is an article in the NYT exploring how these gestures may have a more important role in communicating and reach back to ancient Roman days. There's also a short, fun video that explores the topic some more, and this interactive feature of animated images that shows you just a small handful of the more than 250 gestures that are considered part of Italian communicating. Enjoy! (Insert hand gesture here.)

Avery Library

The Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University recently released the official announcement about my appointment as Curator of Art Properties. You can read the announcement by clicking here. After having completed 3 weeks of work, I can say for sure that I truly am thrilled by this new position. There's an unbelievable amount of work involved in this job, but I'm up for the challenge. In the last few weeks alone, I've been involved in potential donor opportunities, a sculpture conservation project, the photographic reproduction of an 1890s portrait painting, meeting a few administrators for the loan program, rethinking some policies and procedures, and looking into some exhibition ideas for areas of the collection. My staff members have been great to work with; I'm learning a lot from their years of experience. All in all, it's been an incredibly busy but rewarding 3 weeks.

I also feel rather privileged to be back in a library community, and one of the most prestigious art and architecture libraries in the world at that. Avery Library has world-class general and special collections, including the recent acquisition of the Frank Lloyd Wright archive. Avery Library was established in 1890 when architect Henry Ogden Avery (1852-1890) died unexpectedly and his parents established his book collection as the foundation of what became Avery Library. In 1912 the library was the first to be established in its own Renaissance palazzo-style building on the campus of Columbia in a building designed by McKim, Mead, and White. You can read more about the history of Avery Library by clicking here.

Portal 1

Ever since I began bklynbiblio in August 2008, I've used it primarily for the discussion of ideas and reviews associated with the arts and humanities. I've also brought in my own work, such as my scholarly presentations and writings on the 19th-century artists John Gibson and Simeon Solomon. However, it always was my intention to also use the blog as a portal for the dissemination of my own creative work, especially my photography. For the record, I make no claim to being a professional photographer, and in fact I would only ever claim to be an amateur. To be blunt, I'm not that good, and I know very little about how to take professional photos. Digital photography, not to mention software tools like Photoshop and Instagram, has made all of us photographers in one way or another, for better or for worse. So in some ways for me it's less about the ability to take photos and more the conscious thematic arrangement or composition of them that is important. Over the years, I have worked on an art project that I call Portals, and I've decided to start sharing images from the series on this blog. The work you see here has now been dubbed the first in the series, Portal 1: Firenze (8 July 2005). As I post these from time to time, each will be accompanied by texts, and to begin the series I thought I would write a statement about the project and the images. I hope you enjoy it, and please do feel free to comment on the blog. (Note that I hold copyright on these images. You are free to download them for your personal use, but please ask my permission before using an image for print or electronic publications, including on another website. You should always cite the source and photographer for your images, when known.) And now, my statement...

What is a portal? It's a doorway, a gateway, a passageway. It's the in-between space between here and there, between today and tomorrow, between life and death. It is no space and all space at the same time. Sometimes it is open, sometimes it is closed. A portal's very existence is an invitation to look through it and to pass through it, and in doing so a new world awaits you on the other side. It may be better than what you left, or it may be worse. That is the risk and thrill of a portal. We pass through portals every day of our lives and never think about them. Other portals, however, make us stop and think, perhaps because we see something exquisite on the other side and we cannot fathom how we to obtain it, or because we know something dark is there and it terrifies us and we can barely convince ourselves to turn the doorknob. To pass through a portal is to evolve. Portals may be doors, but they may be windows, gates, or simply created spaces in which to pass to another place. My photography series Portals will show you various types of passageways I have photographed through the years. I leave the aesthetic judgment of each image up to you. Each will be accompanied by excerpts from poetry, literature, essays, and/or spiritual texts, each of which will share how portals have impacted and continue to affect our lives. It is my hope from this series that you will appreciate my images as examples of the beautiful and the sublime. But ultimately I hope that the series may teach you to pause every once and a while when you come up on a portal, to think for a moment about where it is you are in life and where you are going, to relish the very life you are living and the experience you are about to begin, simply by peering through an open window or stepping through a doorway to another space beyond.

MWA XV: Rembrandt's Trip

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the greatest art museums in the world, reopened its doors this year after a major building renovation. But for those who can't visit the museum, the organization has launched Rijksstudio, a website where you can download over 125,000 high-resolution images of works from the collection for personal or professional use. And it's all free. We're talking about masterpieces of Dutch art by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Johannes Vermeer, and so on. The New York Times lauded them for this feat, and certainly it is monumental, in particular because of the number of images that were launched upfront. Although they are the first major European museum to do this on a grand scale, others in the U.S. have done this, as I've reported on this blog about the National Gallery of Art and the Yale Center for British Art. Other museums, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, offer high-resolution JPGs for PowerPoint presentations for free and offer free publication of images for academic purposes through ARTstor's Images for Academic Publishing initiative. But the Rijksmuseum's release of high-detailed images reinforces the ever-rising interest on the part of museums to ensure that if you are going to use an image of an object from their collection, then you should use the highest-quality image available, as color-corrected and authorized by the museum itself.

In recognition of this accomplishment, our Monthly Work of Art for June (seen here) is Portrait of a Young Woman, probably Maria Trip by Rembrandt van Rijn. This oil on panel painting is signed by the artist and dated 1639. I know this is sacrilegious to admit, but I've never been a huge fan of Rembrandt's work. I know this is typically because his brushstroke in his paintings is usually looser, which is often what people most admire about his work. Certainly he is a master of dramatic chiaroscuro. But there are works by Rembrandt that I do admire, frequently his portraits, and this one is an excellent example. I'm amazed by his handling of details, such as the intricacy of the lace and pearls, and the fine strands of her hair that crown the charmingly beautiful face of this woman. She practically glows in a spotlight that highlights not only her beauty but also her socio-economic status. Here is what the Rijksmuseum's curators have to say about this picture: "Maria Trip, daughter of one of Amsterdam's wealthiest merchants, was twenty when Rembrandt painted her portrait. The artist placed Maria against a stone arch and devoted particular attention to the reflected light, the fashionable dress and jewellery. The costly garments are trimmed with strips of gold lace and Maria is wearing a profusion of pearls."

Commencement and Career News

 

Yesterday, May 23, was my graduation from the CUNY Graduate Center. During the ceremony, I had conferred upon me my hood as a holder of the Ph.D. degree and I received my diploma. The ceremony was held at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. I was so happy to have my cousins the DG-JBs there, along with my good friends AA and JM. I know Momma was beaming with pride from above, and Papà was there in spirit, as were a number of my close friends and family. It's a rather startling moment to march across that stage, hear your name called out, and receive the official notification of your degree. I admit I started getting choked up, but I kept it together, determined to hear my name called out and enjoy with pride my moment. I began the Ph.D. program in Art History in August 2005, and along the way took numerous art history classes, did foreign reading language classes in German and French, took a ridiculous number of exams along the way, then finally had the opportunity begin work on my dissertation, which you will recall happened just last month. And now it's official. I'm Roberto C. Ferrari, Ph.D. Afterwards, a group of 10 of us went out for a lovely dinner (with cocktails!) at Robert's in the Museum of Art and Design building on Columbus Circle.

What makes this moment even more amazing, however, is that I also have a new job. I had been getting very concerned for over 8 months that things were getting more and more difficult, and I started to panic wondering how I even would be able to pay my rent. I had applied for numerous jobs but nothing seemed to be working out. Finally, my networking, experience, and determination paid off (thanks in part to the ongoing support of a number of close friends too). In the spirit of graduation being a true "commencement" (a beginning, not an ending!), starting June 10, I am the new Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. I am essentially in charge of the university's art collection, which ranges from ancient decorative arts and Chinese sculpture to photographs and public sculpture on campus. The job is a faculty-librarian position and has a strong educational component, but I also will be involved with conservation and digitization projects and working to publicize the collection as much as possible. I am absolutely thrilled to have been given this opportunity. Stay tuned on the blog though, as I'm sure there will be numerous Columbia-related art postings in the future!

For now, however, enjoy this short video showing my graduation ceremony with me receiving my hood and official congratulations (thanks, DG, for taking this video!). If for some reason you can't see the video, click here to see it on YouTube.

Pre-Raphaelitism in Oxford

Even though giving a conference paper requires a lot of work in terms of research, writing, image & PowerPoint preparation, etc., sometimes the very fact that your paper has been accepted makes the work all worth it. Case in point: I'm going to be giving a paper at Oxford University in September. Now who wouldn't want to participate in that opportunity? Not only am I flattered to even have this experience, it will actually be my first visit to Oxford itself, so I'm definitely looking forward to this. The conference is called Pre-Raphaelitism: Past, Present and Future, and it's going to be held at the Ashmolean Museum and St. John's College at Oxford. The speakers will be presenting "new and innovative approaches" to this once-again popular Victorian art and literature movement. The organizers have released the preliminary program to the speakers, and there are some wonderful speakers planned. Even better, Dr. Carolyn Conroy, my colleague, friend, and co-coordinator of the Simeon Solomon Research Archive, will be speaking along with me about our Anglo-Jewish homosexual artist. Her paper is on Solomon's works deposited at the Ashmolean Museum. I will be speaking about the painting you see here, The Mother of Moses (image: Delaware Art Museum), focusing on the mixed-race model Fanny Eaton who posed for Solomon. (She also posed for his sister Rebecca in a painting I blogged about in a previous post.) Here is the abstract of my paper. Enjoy!

"Pre-Raphaelite Exotica: Fanny Eaton and Simeon Solomon's Mother of Moses"

by Roberto C. Ferrari, Ph.D.

At the 1860 Royal Academy exhibition, nineteen-year-old Simeon Solomon displayed his first major oil painting, The Mother of Moses.  Although praised by some critics for the use of color and the portrayal of maternal sentiment, Solomon’s painting was harshly judged for its depiction of the female Biblical figures Jochebed and Miriam.  They were described as too Egyptian, too African, too dark-skinned, or even too Jewish.  This criticism can be read as Victorian racism and misogyny, but it also suggests an inability to label or identity with the exoticism of the women themselves.  This is not surprising when one discovers that the model for both figures was the mixed-race Fanny Eaton, who was born in Jamaica to a former slave.  Eaton’s origins and features enabled her to model for a number of Pre-Raphaelite exotic subjects by Solomon and his sister Rebecca, as well as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Albert Moore, and Joanna Boyce Wells.

Scholars know well the stories of many Pre-Raphaelite models, from Annie Miller to Jane Morris, but little is known about Eaton.  This paper will rectify this by presenting new biographical information, and then contextualizing Eaton’s place in this community by drawing on a range of scholarship, from writings on race by Douglas Lorimer and Jan Marsh, to theories on exoticism by Peter Mason.  Although Eaton came be seen in different exotic roles in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, from an ancient Roman to an Indian ayah, her first appearance in Solomon’s Mother of Moses was most significant, both for the model and the painter.  As the daughter of a former slave, Eaton could empathize with the plight of the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt; and as a Jewish artist whose father was among the first generation of post-emancipation Jews in London, Solomon drew attention to his heritage by depicting Jochebed holding Moses, the emancipator of the Hebrews.  The exoticism of Eaton in Solomon’s Mother of Moses thus transforms this narrative painting into a political statement about slavery and freedom.