CAA News Today
CAA Publishes the March 2014 Issue of The Art Bulletin
posted by Christopher Howard — May 07, 2014
The March 2014 issue of The Art Bulletin, the leading publication of international art-historical scholarship, is the first in the editorship of Kirk Ambrose and the first copublished with Taylor & Francis. The issue opens with a new recurring feature, “Whither Art History?” The inaugural essay by Griselda Pollock critically engages interpretive and institutional trends within the discipline.
In the long-form essays that follow, Mary D. Garrard explores the effect of love on Michelangelo’s creativity by analyzing the Renaissance artist’s cryptic drawing Children’s Bacchanal (1532–33) in her essay, “Michelangelo in Love.” For his contribution, titled “Map as Tapestry,” Jesús Escobar argues that Pedro Teixera’s monumental 1656 map of Madrid is not only a remarkable scientific achievement but also a sophisticated art object. Next, in “The Fragrance of the Divine,” Nina Ergin considers the olfactory traditions underlying Ottoman incense burners and discusses their complex meanings. Finally, Edith Wolfe demonstrates in her essay, called “Paris as Periphery,” how the art of Vicente do Rego Monteiro reflects a specifically Brazilian cosmopolitanism at the core of a counternarrative of modernity in the 1920s.
In the Reviews section, an Art Bulletin Centennial review essay by Mariët Westermann assesses the two volumes of De Hollandsche schilderkunst in de zeventiende eeuw, which examine the work of Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn. Tanya Sheehan reviews two books on interdisciplinary subjects: Knowing Nature: Art and Science in Philadelphia, 1740–1840, edited by Amy R. W. Myer, and The Premise of Fidelity: Science, Visuality, and Representing the Real in Nineteenth-Century Japan, written by Maki Fukuoka. Three recent books on Mexican art—Mary K. Coffey’s How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture, Adriana Zavala’s Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition, and Shelley E. Garrigan’s Collecting Mexico—are assessed by Rick López. Josh Ellenbogen ruminates on two books on art and technology, Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacle by Erkki Huhtamo and Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art by Laura U. Marks.
CAA sends The Art Bulletin to all institutional members and to those individuals who choose to receive the print journal as a benefit of their membership. In addition, online versions of the articles in each issue are available to CAA members who log into the CAA members’ portal. The next issue of the quarterly publication, to appear in June 2014, will feature the next “Whither Art History?” essay, by Parul Dave Mukherji, and essays on Greek domestic mosaics, death masks produced in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, the architecture of the Jaipur Economic and Industrial Museum, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kalita Humphreys Theater.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 23, 2014
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Summer Survival Strategies for Adjuncts
I’ve lived through enough adjunct summers to know that things get pretty difficult financially around late July. What little money you managed to scrape together during the school year is long gone, and you’re at least two rent cycles away from the next paycheck. For adjuncts who aren’t lucky enough to score classes, the end of the summer can become a deeply stressful period of doing whatever it takes—borrowing, penny-pinching, and scouring Craigslist for odd jobs. (Read more from Vitae.)
Personal Finance in Grad School
Living on a grad student stipend is tough, but we often make it harder on ourselves if we don’t know where the money is going. By tracking our spending habits, we can get a better sense of what we value, our motivations for spending, and areas where we can save a few dollars or even a few hundred dollars. (Read more from GradHacker.)
Can an Economist’s Theory Apply to Art?
Thomas Piketty is a name on a lot of people’s lips at the moment. The French economist’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is a historic survey of wealth concentration that has quickly become a go-to text for the gathering debate on income inequality. In his book, published in English last month, Piketty argues that the rich are only going to get richer as a result of free-market capitalism. The reason, he says, is simple: returns on invested capital are greater than rates of economic growth, and this has become a “fundamental force for divergence” in society. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Detroit Pension Deals Make Sale of DIA Art Less Likely—but Still Possible
Some bankruptcy experts said that it now appears increasingly unlikely that creditors will be able to get their hands on the city-owned art collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts. But experts also said that even in the wake of tentative agreements between the city and Detroit retirees and pensioners, the bondholders, and others pushing hard for a sale of art still have viable legal arguments. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
The Importance of Being a Director-Curator
For those occupying the highest positions in art institutions, spending time with the works that fill their galleries is inevitably more limited than in their earlier curatorial roles. The chance to do the job that made their name—organizing groundbreaking exhibitions or displaying exemplary scholarship—become fewer as bureaucratic demands become greater. Two directors have arguably the most demanding administrative roles in European museums—Udo Kittelmann and Nicholas Serota—both of who continue to take on lead curator roles in major shows. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
The Lost, Surprisingly Soulful Art of Corporate Identity
Before corporations, entertainment companies, sports franchises, and political parties acquired “brand narratives,” the notion of branding was a subset of a practice called “corporate identity.” CI, as it was known, required companies and design firms to develop, refine, and maintain an integrated identity system defined by laws set down in a bible known as the graphic standards manual. (Read more from the Atlantic.)
How to Earn Tenure II
So now your clock is running out. In some cases, you’ll be asked to write up a personal statement to be included in your dossier. This can be a tricky thing to write. On the one hand, it will be read by experts in your field. On the other hand, it will also be read by some people who don’t know the first thing about your field. How can you possibly write one document to serve such disparate audiences? (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Confronting the Myth of the “Digital Native”
When Kaitlin Jennrich first walked into her communications seminar last fall, she had no idea that the professor already knew of her affinity for pink cars and Olive Garden breadsticks—and that she planned to share that knowledge with the class. It hadn’t taken much sleuthing on the professor’s part to uncover those inane nuggets. The eighteen-year-old freshman at Northwestern University had herself lobbed them into the public sphere, via Twitter. Her reaction, she recalls, was, “Oh, no.” (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)
Kanwal Khalid: 2014 International Travel Grant Recipient
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Apr 21, 2014
Kanwal Khalid was a participant in the 2014 CAA-Getty International Travel Grant Program. A professor of fine arts at University of the Punjab in Pakistan, she specializes in the history of South Asian art and design with a particular focus on miniature painting in nineteenth-century Lahore. Khalid is also a practicing miniature painter and former curator of paintings at the Lahore Museum. Below she describes her experiences at the 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago.
Just when you think you have seen it all, something turns up and surprises you with its novelty and magnitude. The College Art Association did just that when I attended its Annual Conference in Chicago last February. For me, it became more than attending a conference; it was the experience of a lifetime that changed many of my perspectives.
In Pakistan, art history has always been part of the academic study of fine arts, but now it has become an independent discipline in its own right. This is a relatively recent development, of which I have been a part, and art history is enjoying a high status for the first time in the history of Pakistan. But still it is a comparatively new field. When I came to the Chicago conference, it was a complete surprise to realize that thousands of people share the same passion. CAA and the Getty Foundation have caught a tiger by the tail that is growing fast and expanding everywhere.
The chill of Chicago and the layers of snow couldn’t mar the fiery passion of the scholars, students, artists, and art historians participating in the conference. Interactive sessions, exhibitions, bookstalls, art-supply booths—this was a completely magic world for me. To breathe in thoughts and objects that are the passion of my life was a real treat.
Another dimension of knowledge was listening to presentations by the other nineteen recipients of CAA’s International Travel Grant Program and realizing what wonderful work was going on in their countries regardless of all the challenges they face on daily basis, very similar to the situation in my own country.
Outside the grandeur of the Hilton Hotel, it was the world of museums and modern architecture. I really liked the friendly size of museums in Chicago, which were not as overwhelming as other institutions I have visited, where there’s always a sense of missing a lot even after seeing so much. In all the museums that I visited in Chicago, I was able to return to many of my favorite galleries more than once during the week.
And then a bad snowstorm hit just as we were departing Chicago for New York. Our destination was the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and I will not be exaggerating if I call it a researcher’s paradise. The library was a dream-come-true. The best part for me was being surrounded by mountains—the Berkshires were an enchanted land containing everything I could desire. Here, we raised questions, made suggestions, and challenged old concepts in a true scholarly approach.
The time passed too quickly, and we were saying goodbye to each other at Penn Station in New York City, with a hope that someday we will meet again. I traveled south to give a lecture in Delaware and then attend a meeting in Washington, DC. My experience at CAA turned out to be a great asset for these events, where I imparted my knowledge of South Asian art and culture with more confidence and vigor, especially during a briefing to the South Asian desk at the US State Department about the contemporary educational and cultural situation of Pakistan.
CAA’s 2014 Annual Conference was a life-changing event. Now I’m more confident about my research and teaching methodology because a comparison with other approaches helped me improve my own ways of doing things. I’m so very much looking forward to attending the conference next year.
After returning to Pakistan, I have talked with my students about the potential and scope of CAA and to encourage them to become members. This will give them an exposure to a world of dedicated art historians, enthusiastic academicians, and talented artists, with endless opportunities for those who have the judgment and ability to take advantage of them.
Image Caption
Kanwal Khalid in Chicago.
Institutional News
posted by CAA — Apr 17, 2014
Read about the latest news from institutional members.
Institutional News is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
April 2014
The Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock has received a spectacular gift of 290 watercolors and drawings by the American artist John Marin (1870–1953) from Norma B. Marin, the widow of the artist’s son.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design (photograph by William Atkins/George Washington University and © George Washington University Photography)The Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design, both in Washington, DC, have announced a merger with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, also located in the nation’s capital.
The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England, and the Iran Heritage Foundation have announced funding for a postgraduate and research-assistant post with a focus on Persian arts.
The Frick Art Reference Library and the William Randolph Hearst Archive at Long Island University (LIU) Post have completed a collaborative digitization project, Gilding the Gilded Age: Interior Decoration Tastes and Trends in New York City. With funding from the New York State Regional Bibliographic Databases Program, this project brings together a group of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century auction catalogues held by the library and the archive.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California is one of five major American museums to have received funding for the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program, which provides specialized training in the curatorial field for students across the United States with diverse backgrounds.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a gift from Daniel Brodsky, the museum’s chairman, and his wife Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian, to endow two new curatorial positions in the museum’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. The two positions will be called the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art and the Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is one of five major American museums to have received funding for the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program, which provides specialized training in the curatorial field for students across the United States with diverse backgrounds.
Ann HamiltonOhio State University in Columbus has initiated the Ann Hamilton Project Archive, which contains more than one thousand downloadable, high-resolution images from thirty-five installation by Hamilton, an internationally acclaimed artist and Distinguished University Professor in the university’s Department of Art.
The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has reopened its Study Room after completing the first phase of a major building-conservation project.
The Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted a $5 million contribution from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to create a permanent, unrestricted endowment to support the core priorities of the school, while naming in perpetuity the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean. A second gift of $900,000 will supplement three existing endowments, created by the foundation in 2010, to establish an artist’s residency, scholarships for international students, and a dean’s resource fund.
Yale University Press in New Haven, Connecticut, has accepted the 2013 Design Book of the Year Award by the editors of Designers & Books for Phyllis Lambert’s volume Building Seagram (2013). The press also received an honorable mention for another book, The Houses of Louis Kahn (2013) by George H. Marcus and William Whitaker.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 16, 2014
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
Dealing Direct: Do Artists Really Need Galleries?
When Haunch of Venison closed in 2013, the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos was left without a gallery in London or New York—the two cities where Haunch, which was bought by Christie’s in 2007, had spaces. Since her gallery closed, Vasconcelos’s career has been on an upward trajectory: she has represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale, unveiled public sculptures in Porto and Lisbon, and produced several new works for a retrospective at the Manchester Art Gallery. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Value/Labor/Arts: A Primer
“When is it okay to work for free? Is it acceptable as long as you’re working with—or for—another artist? What is an artistic service?” These are some of the questions raised by Shannon Jackson, director of the Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in her introduction to Art Practical’s latest issue, Valuing Labor. (Read more from Daily Serving.)
The Best Prospective Law Students Read Homer (and Study Art History)
Several years ago, Michael Nieswiadomy released a paper on the LSAT scores of economics majors. I thought I’d make some inquiries with LSAC for some data on this subject to follow up. Applicants to law schools who have degrees in classics placed first, and art-history majors came fourth. (Read more from Excess of Democracy.)
Low Expectations, High Stakes
More than half the nation’s most vulnerable college students are in courses taught by part-time, adjunct faculty members who lack the job security, credentials, and experience of full-time professors—as well as the campus support their full-time peers receive. Community colleges rely on part-time, “contingent” instructors to teach 58 percent of their courses, according to a new report. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)
Team-Based Learning for Art Historians
Recently two professors participated in a workshop on team-based learning at Brooklyn College, a process in which students are divided into permanent teams for the semester and work during class on activities based on readings. Team-based learning was developed by professors working with business and marketing majors in large lecture classes. While claims that students reportedly read and engage more are attractive, can this model be applied to an art-history class? (Read more from Art History Teaching Resources.)
Precocious Professionalism: An Academic Epidemic?
The job crisis facing young American PhDs today has an analogue in one earlier historical period: the situation of newly minted lawyers and physicians in early-nineteenth-century France. After the French Revolution abolished the guilds, regulation of recruitment ceased in not only artisanal crafts and mercantile trades but also faculties of law and medicine. As the number of law and medical students soared, employment prospects correspondingly diminished. (Read more from Perspectives on History.)
Insurer Solicits Offers for DIA Artwork; Several Billion-Dollar Bids Received
A group of major Detroit creditors said four investors have made tentative billion-dollar bids for the Detroit Institute of Arts—or key portions of its collection—in a move aimed at undercutting the city’s competing proposal to give the museum to a nonprofit in exchange for $816 million in outside funding that would help reduce pension cuts. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
How to Avoid a Digital Boom and Bust
The Microsoft Corporation donated more than $1.5 million worth of software to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to upgrade its computer systems and help the museum put more of its collection online. Meanwhile, the Art Institute of Chicago will soon launch an app that transforms visitors’ smartphones into pocket-sized curators. Like many digital projects, the Art Institute’s app and the MFA Boston’s upgrades received a green light only because of external funding. But some experts worry about what will happen if and when grants for digital development diminish. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Grants, Awards, and Honors
posted by CAA — Apr 15, 2014
CAA recognizes its members for their professional achievements, be it a grant, fellowship, residency, book prize, honorary degree, or related award.
Grants, Awards, and Honors is published every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
April 2014
Molly Emma Aitken, associate professor of art at City College, City University of New York, has accepted a Collaborative Research Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies for her project with Allison Renée Busch, called “Aesthetic Worlds of the Indian Heroine.”
Elizabeth Athens, an independent scholar based in Providence, Rhode Island, was named a Clark Graduate Summer Fellow for July–August 2013 by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Suzanne Preston BlierSuzanne Preston Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received a Beinecke Fellowship from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for September–December 2013.
William L. Coleman, a PhD candidate in history of art at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2014 Dora Wiebenson Prize by the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture. The paper honored as the best of the year by a graduate student was “‘Both instructive and pleasant’: The Country House Garden in Vitruvius Britannicus,” given at CAA Chicago.
Romy Golan, professor of art history at and Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, won a fellowship from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for September–December 2013.
Michael Ann Holly, Starr director emeritus of research and academic programs at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been awarded a fellowship from her institution for February–June 2014.
Simon Leung, an artist and professor of art for the University of California, Irvine, has earned a fellowship from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for February–June 2014.
Judith Rodenbeck, professor of modern and contemporary art at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, was named a fellow by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for September–December 2013.
Terry Smith (photograph by John Williams)Terence Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, has received a fellowship for February–June 2014 from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Roberto Tejada, professor of art history in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, was named Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow and Clark Mellon Curatorial Fellow by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, for September–December 2013.
Books Published by CAA Members
posted by CAA — Apr 15, 2014
Publishing a book is a major milestone for artists and scholars—browse a list of recent titles below.
Books Published by CAA Members appears every two months: in February, April, June, August, October, and December. To learn more about submitting a listing, please follow the instructions on the main Member News page.
April 2014
Katharine P. Burnett. Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art Theory and Criticism (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2013).
Klara Kemp-Welch. Antipolitics in Central European Art: Reticence as Dissidence under Post-Totalitarian Rule 1956–1989 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013).
Andreas Marks. Kunisada’s Tōkaidō: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2013).
Griselda Pollock and Max Silvermann, eds. Concentrationary Memories: Totalitarian Terror and Cultural Resistance (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013).
Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich, eds. Ugliness: The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013).
D. N. Rodowick. Elegy for Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013).
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for April 2014
posted by CAA — Apr 10, 2014
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts selects the best in feminist art and scholarship. The following exhibitions and events should not be missed. Check the archive of CWA Picks at the bottom of the page, as several museum and gallery shows listed in previous months may still be on view or touring.
April 2014
Claudia DeMonte: La Forza del Destino
June Kelly Gallery
166 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012
April 10–May 13, 2014
Claudia DeMonte: La Forza del Destino presents a new series of paintings and sculptures focused on symbols of good and bad luck from around the world. For decades, Claudia DeMonte has been involved in collaborative research and art production with women artists across the globe. As curator, DeMonte is the artifice of WOMEN OF THE WORLD: A Global Collection of Art. This traveling exhibition, with accompanying comprehensive publication, includes the works and statements of women artists from 177 countries portraying their image of what means being a woman in their cultural environment. In her later project, Real Beauty, DeMonte commissioned handmade fabric dolls from artists and crafters to express local concepts of female beauty, standards that are being lost due to plastic reproductions and globalization.
From Bhutan, Laos, and Saudi Arabia to Senegal and Tibet, DeMonte has traveled the globe observing cultures, customs, and idiosyncrasies from women perspectives and often working collaboratively with local women workshops. In one of the works presented in La Forza del Destino, DeMonte uses a female form sculpted from wood and laden with pictographic configurations suggesting lucky charms of protection. Her new works make evident, once again, her continued interest in women’s multifaceted roles and impact as storytellers, historians, and mythological controllers of destiny. In DeMonte’s own words, La Forza del Destino examines from a women’s perspective the icons that represent luck, superstition, and protection from the evils of the world.
Ane Mette Hol: In the Collection
Trondheim Kunstmuseum
Bispegata 7 B, 7013 Trondheim, Norway
February 8–May 18, 2014
Trondheim Kunstmuseum presents In the Collection, a solo exhibition by the Oslo-based artist Ane Mette Hol (b. Bodø, 1979), who uses drawing as a research method that investigates the relationships between originals and reproductions. The “accurate copies” of objects and phenomena are the result of a painstaking work, questioning the very medium of drawing. By using paper and drawing tools, Hol copies things with precision down to the finest detail. She has made copies of brown paper, rolls of drawing paper, music sheets, drawing pads, and book covers, as well as printouts from the internet and botched photocopies. Through her completed works, she challenges the relationship between original and copy with an almost Borgesian approach. Furthermore, through this relationship, Hol’s works comment on our continuous recycling of what already exists and on our common knowledge about art history and theory. In this, she questions the nature of art; its premises in terms of content, politics, and institution through remarkable technical skill and through innovative frames of reference and conceptual discourse.
In the exhibition at Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Hol has based her work on a drawing of a photocopy from Charles Wood’s book How to Draw Portraits (1943). The drawing shows the book’s list of contents, and the exhibition is based on the different sections of the book. As the exhibition title suggested, the show features works from the museum’s collections and from Hol’s drawings, animations, and sound installations.
Maria Lassnig
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
March 9–May 25, 2014
Maria Lassnig (Austrian, b. 1919) is one of the most important contemporary women painters. Through what she called “body awareness,” her paintings mean an exploration of the inner world. She focused on representing the way her body feels to her from the inside, rather than attempting to depict it from outside. Lassnig’s remarkable career has spanned more than seventy years. Throughout the decades she has continued to create work that vulnerably explores the way she comes into contact with the world, emphasizing often the disjunctions between her own self-image, challenging the way she may be seen by others as a woman, as a painter, and as a person who has lived through the dramatic technological and cultural shifts that have marked the century of her lifetime. In her paintings, Lassnig exposes personal traumas, fantasies, and nightmares, offering instruction for courageous living in a time of social interaction.
From all creative periods of her career, spanning her early involvement with graphic abstraction in Paris and Art Informel, to her later shift to figural representation, Lassnig’s exhibition at PS1 is the most significant survey of the artists’ work ever presented in the United States. The show, focusing in her self-portraits, features approximately fifty paintings drawn from public and private holdings and from the artist’s own collection. A selection of watercolors and filmic works, many of which have never been previously seen in the United States, also make an appearance in the exhibition.
Mimi Smith: Constructing Art about Life
Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery
New Jersey City University Galleries, Hepburn Hall, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Room 323, Jersey City, NJ 07305
March 20–April 24, 2014
Mimi Smith: Constructing Art about Life is a concise survey of Mimi Smith’s work over the past five decades, curated by Midori Yoshimoto. A New York–based artist and a graduate of Rutgers University, Smith is best known for the clothing sculptures she begun in the mid-1960s, the most prominent being Steel Wool Peignoir (1966), a see-through dressing gown embellished with lace and steel wool that has become an icon of early feminist art. Combining banal consumer or domestic objects—such as the wrapping plastics of various consumer goods in Recycle Coat (1965), the bath mats in Girdle (1966), or the pieced-together plastics in Maternity Dress (1966)—Smith radically intervened in Pop art, producing feminist sartorial sculptures that addressed the role of fashion in women’s individual and social identities, while unmasking the complicated relationship of the public and the private in women’s lives.
In the early 1970s Smith challenged the Conceptual art of her time from the homebound perspective of a female artist and a mother, then raising her children in Ohio, with a series of works that merit further evaluation for their contribution to postwar art and their diverse politics. These include series of large-scale drawings done with measuring tape and knotted thread that replicates the rooms and furniture of her home, as well as multimedia installations that allude to the pervasiveness of new technologies and the increasing invasiveness of the news media, and also to the environment and nuclear threats.
Sculptural cloth making and clothing itself continue to play a great role in Smith’s contemporary investigation of gendered identity and politics, as seen in her recent ruminations on women’s aging through drawn representations of underwear.
Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds
Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross Street, Houston, TX 77006
January 31–May 11, 2014
Curated by Michelle White under the auspices of the Menil Drawing Institute, Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds is the first museum survey to focus on Lee Bontecou’s works on paper. It brings together over seventy works from various collections, including that of the Menil, that sample her drawing practice from 1958 to 2012. The show is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by White, Dore Ashton, and Joan Banach.
Advancing the understanding of the work of this incredible artist, Drawn Worlds explores Bontecou’s experimentation in materials and techniques, such as her early use of a welding torch to deposit velvet layers of black soot on paper, muslin, and canvas. The exhibition also contextualizes the artist’s distinctive iconography, especially her penchant for circles and voids, within the political and environmental concerns of the time of their making. Above all it provides a unique opportunity to witness the “unsettling realms of human folly and the frailty of the natural world” in which Bontecou’s “drawn words” take the viewer, while studying the forms that characterize them, whether as origins of her sculptures or independent transmutations of her haunting vocabulary.
Betye Saar: Redtime Est
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
100 Eleventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001
March 15–May 3, 2014
Betye Saar is widely known for multimedia collages, box assemblages, altars, and installations consisting of found materials that, as put by the artist, “reach across the barriers of art and life to bridge cultural diversity and forge new understandings,” in effect voicing various political, racial, spiritual and gender concerns. Redtime Est (2011), a variation of the eponymous installation for Pacific Standard Time in Los Angeles three years ago, offers a unique opportunity to indulge the affective sensibility of her highly political objects.
Redtime Est consists of red, or chameleonlike red, works that are curated by the artist in and around a room whose walls are painted red, “the color of anger, danger, violence, heat, passion, blood and fire.” A caged mannequin with a crow as head and dressed with shackles guards the entrance to Redtime Est, setting its tone, while Red Ascension, a painted red ladder, hangs diagonally across the wall that faces the viewer upon his or her entrance, cinematically commemorates the slaves’ trip from Africa to America with various symbolic objects featured in each frame, ranging from an African mask to handcrafted ships to red-painted chains and padlocks.
Unlike the miniretrospective character of the Redtime Est, this one is a mega-assemblage of recent works, the earliest dating from the early 1990s, whose subject matter, as in Justice (2011) features Aunt Jemima, is manifested with signature tropes of the feminist and antiracist underpinnings of the artist’s assemblage practice since the 1960s. Focusing on the most political aspects of her work, the artist brings together objects for Redtime Est that, while sampling the various modes of her practice from painting to assemblage and the sheer repurposing of found objects, illustrate the way in which she used “derogatory” stereotypes of blackness and recycled objects of poignant history and function, such as washboards, to make powerful and empowering critical statements about race and gender with an idiosyncratic marriage of past and present, her homage to her ancestors and her radical legacy to future.
Alexandra Bachzetzis and Claire Hooper
Bonner Kunstverein
Hochstadenring 22,
D-53119 Bonn, Germany
February 22–May 25, 2014
Bonner Kunstverein juxtaposes the deconstructive and seductive ways in which pop culture is respectively employed in the work of the performer and choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis and the filmmaker Claire Hooper, putting in dialogue the exploration of the distinct significance given by social media in the staging of personality and life today as well as the ways in which their practice challenges the exhibition format. While Bachzetsis performed with Anne Pajunen for A Piece Danced Alone (2011) during the opening, her work is mostly represented through video documentations of her choreographies. Hooper’s videos are exhibited as part of structures that function as projection surfaces and architectural ornamentation, creating links between the exhibition space, the illusionistic space of the film, and its documentary function in a manner typical of Hooper, as, for instance, by recreating a Berlin subway environment.
Bachzetsis’s works depict the controlled movements of bodies following a clear sequence in evocative situations that condense reflections of the contemporary media culture into studies of motion by means of mirroring and repetition. By isolating gestures and body language from the flow of the familiar as signs of cultural codes she deconstructs the sequence of events, while also variously analyzing the mechanics of TV soaps and hip hop video clips, classical ballet, modern dance, and performance art.
Hooper’s films, in which the British tradition of documentaries encounters Greek mythology, focus on figures in precarious social circumstances and their entanglement in restrictive systems that are converted into collective social areas through parablelike, mythological enhancement. Interchangeable elements from everyday life in documentary fashion oscillate kaleidoscopically with theatrically charged passages. While pop culture plays an equally important part in the staging of her figures, Hooper depicts the body in seemingly surreal dance performances that enable her to portray the irrational and also the compulsive forces that continue to drive our society. A dialogue about the body and its representation in the media, as well as its physical and social limitations, develops between their works. Both artists depict the body and the figure as shimmering, constantly changing projection surfaces.
News from the Art and Academic Worlds
posted by Christopher Howard — Apr 02, 2014
Each week CAA News publishes summaries of eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.
The Most Expensive Colleges in the Country Are Art Schools, not Ivies
I recently stumbled across this handy tool from the Department of Education, which generates lists of colleges by cost. The schools that usually get dinged for high tuition (and as a result, scare off low-income applicants) are the elite colleges. But many of those schools are quite rich and distribute a lot of financial aid. (Read more from the Washington Post.)
Sure, I Do Creative Work, but I’m No Artist
Who, exactly, is an artist? Many claim the title, with little to back up their assertion. We’ve all met people who define themselves as artists but have yet to actually produce any actual art. A new study finds that, surprisingly, the reverse is also true. It identifies a large group of Americans who have every right to call themselves professional artists but for some reason avoid doing so. (Read more from Pacific Standard.)
You’re Sure of a Big Surprise
Museums across the United States are hiring staff under the “public engagement” rubric, often as part of their education departments. The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle is seeking “a director of education and public engagement,” and in January the Whitney Museum in New York hired a “director of public programs and public engagement.” Both are new positions. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Without Tenure or a Home
In the classroom, Mary-Faith Cerasoli, an adjunct professor of Romance languages, usually tries to get her message across in lyrical Italian or Spanish. But during spring break, she used stencils and ink and abbreviated English to write her current message—“Homeless Prof.”—on a white ski vest she planned to wear on a solo trip to Albany two days later to protest working conditions for adjunct college professors. (Read more from the New York Times.)
Russian Oligarchs and Brazilian Millionaires Interested in DIA? Orr Was Speaking Metaphorically
OK, let’s clear up any misunderstanding: Russian oligarchs and Brazilian millionaires are not amassed in front of the Detroit Institute of Arts in the hopes of being first in line should the treasures inside go up for sale. But that doesn’t mean they, or someone like them, aren’t intensely interested. While giving a speech at the University of Michigan, Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr said that many Russian oligarchs—meaning super-wealthy Russian businessmen—and Brazilian millionaires were “calling and inquiring” about the art. However, Orr’s spokesman Bill Nowling clarified that the emergency manager spoke metaphorically. (Read more from the Detroit Free Press.)
United We Stand: How Galleries Are Working Together
From the Renaissance bottega to the art factories of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, artists have long recognized that they get by better with a little help from their friends. Institutions have been slower to catch on. As public funding dwindles, the scramble for sponsorship gets ever more rivalrous as museums vie to woo patrons with the glossiest gala dinner and most highbrow curatorial outing. (Read more from the Financial Times.)
Protesters Rain Down Thousands of Bills in Guggenheim Rotunda
At 6:45 PM on March 29, a handheld bell sounded in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, signaling the second protest action in as many months from the Global Ultra Luxury Faction (or GULF). The ringing was followed by the release of nine thousand “1%” bills of parodic currency, which fluttered downward as patrons rushed to the inner edge of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral ramp. (Read more from Hyperallergic.)
Vatican Library Goes Digital
The Vatican Apostolic Library has announced a €18 million deal with a Japanese IT company to digitize 3,000 ancient manuscripts over the next four years. In a press conference last week, the library’s prefect, Monsignor Cesare Pasini, said the partnership with NTT Data Corporation continues “a task we have been undertaking for years” to digitize the Vatican’s entire collection of 82,000 manuscripts, an estimated 40 million pages. (Read more from the Art Newspaper.)
Lilianne Lugo: 2014 International Travel Grant Recipient
posted by Janet Landay, Program Manager, Fair Use Initiative — Apr 01, 2014
After last month’s Annual Conference, recipients of CAA’s 2014 International Travel Grants were invited to contribute short articles reflecting on their experiences in Chicago. What follows is a personal reminiscence from Lilianne Lugo, an educator, administrator, and playwright based in Havana, Cuba. Lugo studies the relationship between the history of art and the history of theater, as well as the intersections of contemporary art practice and the performing arts. She is professor and vice dean of research and postgraduate studies at the Universidad de las Artes in Havana, Cuba.
Saudade
The persistence of melancholy. The persistence of the friends I have released to oblivion. The persistence of the memories of other cities, other people that I miss. I walk in an unknown city. I can barely breathe, it’s so cold. My best friend wrote me an email. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I miss you….” But when I wrote him back I can only send him a picture of my foot on the snow … it’s my way of embracing the spirit of life, my way of saying that I am seizing and enjoying the opportunities that suddenly emerge in our lives and change it forever. Just a few moments in life can be counted like that, and this is one of them.
First time in the snow. From the plane I can see the frozen ground. Behind I have left the unbearable heat of Havana and the noise of its streets. First time in Chicago. First time in the United States. First time at CAA’s conference. So many impressions, so many new people. I can write only in first person singular. I can’t speak for the others. I can’t talk about what I haven’t seen before.
For a couple of days the Hilton Chicago is invaded by hordes of art historians, artists, professors, and recruiters. It’s a huge event, and the whole city seems to inhale a whirlwind of art. Exhibitions, talks, panels, and informal gatherings that interrupt the rhythm of daily routines and establish a different understanding of reality. In a world of white ground, how to conjure the fire of masterpieces? How can we understand and explain (if that’s possible) from a warm and carpeted hotel the always ungraspable world of art and art history?
For twenty people each year, the College Art Association and the Getty Foundation make it possible to attend this conference. That means twenty people in the world receive a gift to come to the States and share and learn what we know about the art in our countries with colleagues from all over the US. This time the group is composed of people from Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, South Africa, Portugal, Poland, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, Estonia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Croatia.
Some images of those days come to my mind: the day of the preconference, in which each of us presented a paper about our research, and the discussion afterward about so many different topics. Art Shay’s exhibition My Florence at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago that we, as a group, visited together. In the library of the college we saw the photographs and the artist himself. It was the story of his life, the little moments he shared with his wife and family, and it was so impressive to see him, with the energy and look that only years can bring. Or the exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum, The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus, about the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, and the environment of that particular area that, in the former days of Communism, was the recreational spot for Joseph Stalin. And then we walked with our graduate-student host to see the Lakeview neighborhood nearby. Or the meetings with so many bright and marvelous people….
Then, when the conference ended, another trip was waiting for us, to the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. From the plane’s window we could see Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty; at LaGuardia airport we said goodbye to our fellow travel-grant recipient Mahmuda Khnam, who was feeling sick and couldn’t travel to Williamstown. We talked on the drive north and shared our opinions, we talked about everything: Brazilian soap operas, LGBT rights, curatorial practices, communism, incomes, outcomes, food, and snow. Then, a warm welcome at the Clark, a very special place in a beautiful setting where studying takes place in real luxury. Outside it snowed all day long, but inside the Clark was joyful and cozy, as we were received in that sanctuary of knowledge like kings and queens.
Now, in the sun again, I remember with joy the city of Chicago, the museums, the extraordinary collection of the Art Institute, the people of CAA, my fellow grant recipients, and, of course, all that I have learned about not only specific issues related to my research, but also the methodologies and approaches that many colleagues are currently using. I learned, too, about how things work in the professional world of art and art history in the United States.
I began this essay talking about melancholy. It’s the feeling I get when I think about those moments during CAA’s conference. Portuguese had a beautiful word to describe it: saudade. And that would be the best word, because even in Spanish nostalgia or melancolía are not the same. I cherish those moments. While I am thinking about what lies ahead, I am eager to come back and share with my new colleagues the fruits of another year of work.
Image Caption
Lilianne Lugo.