CAA News Today

Alison C. Fleming reads Federico Barocci and the Oratorians: Corporate Patronage and Style in the Counter-Reformation by Ian F. Verstegen. The book “efficiently tackles the subject” of “the interior decoration of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome,” with a focus on Federico Barocci “and how his style corresponded so well to the tenets of the Oratorians that they repeatedly sought his paintings.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Claudia Swan reviews Benjamin Schmidt’s Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Merging historical and art-historical elements, this “formidable study” examines artworks and luxury goods “produced in Dutch ateliers between 1670 and 1730 under the rubric of ‘exotic geography,’” which the author views as “a new rhetorical and artistic mode.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Carol Damian discusses two books centered on the questions of what is a Latino and what is Latino art: Thirteen Way of Looking at Latino Art, by Ilan Stavans and Jorge J. E. Gracia, and Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, an exhibition catalogue from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Both books evidence how “the entire Latino issue is a construct, complicated, and imperfect” and “make valuable contributions to this ongoing discussion.” Read the full review at caa.reviews.

Caa.reviews publishes over 150 reviews each year. Founded in 1998, the site publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by the College Art Association. Publications and projects reviewed include books, articles, exhibitions, conferences, digital scholarship, and other works as appropriate. Read more reviews at caa.reviews.