Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies

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Joanna Woods-Marsden
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 285 pp.; 57 color ills.; 109 b/w ills. Cloth $60.00 (0300075960)
This book takes on the challenging topic of Italian (despite its title) Renaissance portraiture and self-fashioning, but with a particular focus, that of artists' self-portraits. The author's premise is that the increasing number of such self-portraits over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marks the changing status of the artist within the culture from craftsman to intellect. Such an evolutionary claim is certainly supported by historical evidence familiar to students of the period, most notably the application of the epithet of "divino" to artists like Michelangelo and Titian toward the end of the period Woods-Marsden discusses and by Castiglione's assertion in… Full Review
January 1, 2000
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Lisa N. Peters
Hudson Hills Press, 1999. 192 pp.; 0 color ills.; 61 b/w ills. Cloth $50.00 (1555951783)
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999-January 2, 2000; Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6-September 5, 1999.
Lisa Peters begins her beautifully illustrated book John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist with strong language: "A painter of intimate landscapes rendered in an original and expressive style, John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) was the epitome of the modern American artist in the late nineteenth century" (13). This position is antithetical to the usual understanding of Twachtman within the canon of American art. In Wayne Craven's textbook American Art: History and Culture (1994), we learn that Twachtman "never received the critical acclaim he hoped for, and he died at age forty-nine" (353). In Milton Brown et al.'s text American Art: Painting,… Full Review
December 30, 1999
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Catherine Gordon
Witt Library, Cortauld Institute of Art, 1998. 570 ills. CD-ROM $68.00
This CD-ROM opens with a visual witticism too canny not to have been intentional. When the disk is installed (easily done), the first screen reproduces part of Pieter Bruegel's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, one of the real treasures of the Courtauld's collection. In the detail, taken from the painting's right-hand side, the user encounters a micro-crowd of onlookers, who bend forward, all eyes, all focus, all attention. These figures gaze toward a point at the screen's lower left, while the foremost among them gapes in astonishment and tips a long-fingered hand downward, emphasizing the trajectory of… Full Review
December 29, 1999
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Alexandra R. Murphy
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 192 pp.; 65 color ills.; 65 b/w ills. Cloth $45.00 (0300079257)
Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam, June 20-September 6, 1999; Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, February 10-mid-April, 2000.
The American public has not given works by Barbizon artists star billing in a little over a century. Where once Americans were proud of themselves for having recognized Millet's talents early, they are now harder to please. Since Impressionist art has risen to blockbuster fame, it takes a monumental effort to call attention to the considerable but subtle charm of what Millet referred to as "rustic art." The subtitle of this exhibition, "Drawn into the Light," implies that Millet could be considered an artist who anticipated the goals of the Impressionists. It is unfortunate, in my view, to remove this… Full Review
December 29, 1999
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Julien Chapuis
Yale University Press, 1999. 352 pp.; 150 color ills.; 70 b/w ills. Cloth $65.00 (0300081626)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 3, 1999-January 9, 2000; Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 10-May 14, 2000.
Most Americans will know about Tilman Riemenschneider from the wonderful 1980 publication, Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, by Michael Baxandall, one of the rare discussions of German wood sculpture in English, or perhaps from the scattered fragments of the artist's works in American museums, such as Cleveland or Raleigh (an essay by William Wixom in the present catalogue chronicles "Riemenschneider in America" and offers a useful checklist). Now viewers have the opportunity to visit an unprecedented exhibition of the artist's works, first in Washington and then in New York, thanks to the remarkable organizational, curatorial, and editorial skills of Julien… Full Review
December 28, 1999
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Mary Newcome
Turin: Artema, 1998. 257 pp.; 34 color ills.; 320 b/w ills. Cloth (8880520083)
Most art historians seem to consider Genoa a quiet, provincial backwater that has little to offer to an inquisitive mind. One reason for this misconception may be that the Genoese purportedly guard their privacy and are said to keep their artistic treasures to themselves rather than sharing them with a wider public. However, as any visitor to this city can attest, there is more than just a glimpse to catch of the rich trove of artworks, many of which are readily accessible in churches, museums, and palaces--with many more still in private, often welcoming hands. But things may be changing… Full Review
December 21, 1999
Otto Karl Werckmeister
University of Chicago Press, 1999. 188 pp.; 5 b/w ills. Cloth $45.00 (0226893553)
The prevailing tone of Icons of the Left: Benjamin and Eisenstein, Picasso and Kafka After the Fall of Communism is exasperation. "The predicament of leftist intellectuals working in capitalist society, like myself," says Otto Karl Werckmeister, "has been that their principled critique of capitalism has nearly always been advanced in a hypothetical mode" (p. 5). Arguing for a solution to this problem, which--consistent with his Marxism--he believes to have been caused by the separation of theory from practice, he describes hypothesis flowering as delusion. Marx was right about how capitalism works, and his version of it, therefore, continues to be… Full Review
December 1, 1999
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Ethan Matt Kavaler
Cambridge University Press, 1999. 403 pp.; 139 b/w ills. Cloth $80.00 (0521622670)
With A. E. Popham's publication in 1932 of Abraham Ortelius's epitaph on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the traditional figure of Droll Bruegel, of Peasant Bruegel, was soon replaced by Bruegel the peintre philosophe, as Charles de Tolnay characterized him in his monograph of 1935. It is thus understandable that scholars have sought to locate Bruegel's "audience" among the intellectual circles of Antwerp, especially Ortelius and his colleagues, the classical scholars around Christophe Plantin, and the poets and dramatists associated with the rederijkers. Yet rather scant attention has been devoted to one of the most important groups of… Full Review
November 29, 1999
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Judson J. Emerick
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. 446 pp.; 208 b/w ills. Cloth $105.00 (0271017287)
In his long-awaited monograph on the Tempietto del Clitunno, Judson Emerick seeks to dispel the myths surrounding this enigmatic building. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists who discovered the building saw it as a Roman temple converted to Christian purpose. Thus, Leon Battista Alberti observed, "I myself have seen in Umbria a small ancient temple..." (book 1, chapter 8). Modern scholars however, have concluded that the structure was built in the medieval period, principally because the carved tympana bear cross monograms unknown before the early fourth century. Subsequent debate has centered on the dating of the monument--with proposals from… Full Review
November 29, 1999
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Daniel Weiss
Cambridge University Press, 1998. 279 pp.; 8 color ills.; 96 b/w ills. Cloth $85.00 (0521621305)
The reverberations of Saint Louis's oath to embark on his first crusade to the Holy Land were acutely felt throughout the royal domain. In examining this period, Daniel Weiss draws a connection between the iconographic program of the Ste-Chapelle in Paris (1244–48) and the Old Testament manuscript produced in Acre shortly after 1250, now in the Bibliothèque d'Arsenal in Paris (MS 5211) (8). This bold confederacy of monuments is based on the common themes of sacred kingship, holy war, wisdom, and piety that are underscored in both iconographic programs. The preeminence of David and Solomon, the importance of God's intervention… Full Review
November 29, 1999
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