Book Review: The Early Reception of Manga in the West

988 Reviews density of the footnotes, the absence of an index is also regrettable. Despite these minor reservations, I found National Stereotypes in Perspective to be an accessible, engaging, and stimulating collection, which highlights the manifold misconceptions, inconsistencies, and paradoxes inherent in the 'imaging' process and which demonstrates the ways in which the observer, whether France or America, explores her own identity through commentary on the other/Other. The volume will be of interest to academics and students in several disciplines, notably French and American Studies, History, Art History, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies. University of Edinburgh Jean Duffy Luce Irigaray and the Question of theDivine. By Alison Martin. (Texts and Dissertations , 53) London: Maney for the Modern Humanities Research Association. 2000. 233 pp. ?30; ?72. Luce Irigaray is a notoriously difficultand sometimes misunderstood thinker. Like Margaret Whitford (see e.g. her Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (London: Routledge, 1991)), Alison Martin takes Irigaray seriously as a philosopher of change, and her substantial study does justice to the complexity of Irigaray's thought. Martin focuses on what she sees as the centrality ofthe divine in Irigaray's work, rather than just a single aspect of it?this is a concept of the divine which transcends individual religions and specific theological issues. The question of a female divine?or rather ofthe importance ofthe divine forwomen's subjectivity?is crucial to Irigaray's phi? losophy of sexual difference. And it is as philosophical enquiry that Martin's detailed and densely argued approach is most valuable. Her careful reading places Irigaray's thinking in the philosophical context within and against which she is working. This volume is for the specialist reader rather than functioning as an introduction to Iri? garay's work, and sometimes the detail makes for heavy going, but Martin none the less offers important new insights into Irigaray's complex concepts and illuminates both her influences and her thinking processes. In addition to the author's Introduction and Conclusion, the book is divided into four lengthy chapters. 'Irigaray and Context' teases Irigaray out of her insertion in the mistakenly homogenized category 'French feminism' and addresses her early reception in Anglo-American academia as an essentialist thinker. Arguing throughout that Irigaray's stance is both philosophical and political, Martin emphasizes the 'becoming ' that is fundamental to Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference: Irigaray's attempt 'to define woman [. . .] is more a question [. . .] of attempting to cultivate-her' (p. 26). 'The Religion of Patriarchy' (Chapter 2) is concerned with sexual difference as the primary term of analysis (in the way that, for instance, social class is for Marxism ), Irigaray's critique of patriarchy being a critique of a system founded on a single (male) universal. 'The Need for a Female Divine' explores Irigaray's argument for two?sexed?universals, to replace the existing 'sexually different' one: according to Martin, 'the trulyradical gesture of her philosophy of sexual difference' in its attempt to transform Western thinking is that 'she starts counting at two' (p. 123). The final chapter, 'The Adoption of Christianity contra Nietzsche', draws out the full subtlety of Irigaray's discussions of the figures of Christ and Mary as well as pointing to her interest in Eastern thought. Martin's study of Irigaray's concept of the divine is timely. There is currently a burgeoning interest in the place of Eastern religions and thinking in Irigaray'a work. Her Entre Orient et Occident: De la singularited la communaute (Paris: Grasset, 1999; published in Italian in 1997) was published too late to be included in Martin's analysis, although mention of it is made in a footnote (p. 215). None the less, Alison Martin's MLR, 97.4, 2002 989 philosophical approach to Irigaray's divine will undoubtedly be an invaluable refer? ence point here. It will also, more generally, interest those who appreciate Irigaray's wide-ranging and challenging vision of a radically differentcivilization based on the two of sexual difference rather than on the patriarchal system of the one and the other(s). Institute of Romance Studies, University of London Gill Rye Postcolonial Paradoxes in French Caribbean Writing: Cesaire, Glissant, Conde. By Jeannie Suk. Oxford and New York: Clarendon...

The innovative artist and smallholder Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928) spent most of his career devoted to portraying variations of his home village of Jølster. The early reception and framing of Astrup’s work as ‘national’ was, by large, a result of the budding national art institutions’ efforts towards unifying the diverse regional cultures into a single national identity. This chapter questions to what degree Nikolai Astrup’s artistic project adhered to a national agenda. Through the lens of ecocritical art history, Astrup’s art can be seen as an expression of proto-ecological sensibilities and a reaction to the environmental changes of his time. His landscape paintings often include humans working on the land, and appear to represent an opposition to the nature-culture dichotomy and the increasing separation between humans and their environment that occurred during Astrup’s lifetime. His representation of his surroundings was that of the place-specific, cyclical and particular. In this chapter, these characteristics of Astrup’s artistic project are discussed in light of Arne Næss’ notion of deep ecology.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The View from the Interior: The New Body Scholarship in Renaissance/Early Modern Studies

This article examines the early responses to Winckelmann’s 1764 ‘History of the Art of Antiquity’. Recently, scholars have become especially interested in the early reception of Winckelmann's work. This discussion makes productive use of that debate, to examine how eighteenth-century translators of Winckelmann set about inventing an image of him as the founding father of classical art history and archaeology. This essay examines how the early French and Italian translations of Winckelmann were introduced by lavish illustrations of Winckelmann’s tomb. These translators encouraged their readers to mourn for Winckelmann. The essay examines how these pictures of mourning competed to invent an image of Winckelmann as the exemplary Classical Art Historian, and how these pictures police their mournful invention. The article contributes to thinking about the institutionalisation of classical art history and archaeology as academic disciplines, by considering how 18th-century readers reified the figure of the art historian.

This book examines the sculptures created during the Early Dynastic period (2900–2350 BC) of Sumer, a region corresponding to present-day southern Iraq. Featured almost exclusively in temple complexes, some 550 Early Dynastic stone statues of human figures carved in an abstract style have survived. Chronicling the intellectual history of ancient Near Eastern art history and archaeology at the intersection of sculpture and aesthetics, this book argues that the early modern reception of Sumer still influences ideas about these sculptures. Engaging also with the archaeology of the Early Dynastic temple, the book ultimately considers what a stone statue of a human figure has signified, both in modern times and in antiquity.

The popularity of Isabel Flores de Oliva, commonly known as Saint Rose of Lima, in the Latin America iconosphere has endured since the 17th century and is still spectacular. Images of this Third Order of St. Dominic member proliferated soon after her demise (1617), not only in the New World, but also in Europe, multiplied in countless cheap copies. Nevertheless, her person also inspired renowned artists as famous as Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, sevillian Juan de Valdes Leal or cordoban Antonio Palomino. Even before canonisation (1671), the fame of the Peruvian ascetic reached the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, due to the efforts of the Order of Preachers, i.a. Tomasz Tomicki O.P., who translated into Polish the Latin biography of Isabel Flores de Oliva written by Leonard Hansen O.P. Tomicki’s book, which was printed in Cracow in 1666, contains the first known Polish image of the future saint. The year of canonisation is also a date of establishing first devotional paintings for Dominican churches in the major cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. An oil painting attributed to Tomasz Muszyński in Warsaw St. Hyacinth’s Church presents St. Rose among other Dominicans active in the New World: Martin de Porres, John Macías and Vicente Bernedo. Paintings for an altar in St. Nicholas church in Gdańsk (“Saint Rose with the Child Jesus” and “The Vision of Saint Rose”) were made by Andreas Stech, a popular artist active in this city. Apart from that, we know quite a numerous range of anonymous devotional images of St. Rose of Lima – or at least pieces passing for her images. “The Catalogues of Art Monuments in Poland” – an inventory published by the Polish Academy of Science Institute of Art – enumerate over a dozen paintings and sculptures devoted to the ascetic from Peru, which can be found in various places within the present borders of Poland: i.a. Brześć Kujawski, Hrubieszów, Klimontów, Kraków, Kraśnik, Mokobody, Markowice, Niwiski, Piaski, Sandomierz, Staszów, Turobin, Zaręby Kościelne. However, not all art historians agree with such recognition; there are arguments that in some cases we are faced with images of St. Catherine of Siena rather than St. Rose. In spite of these doubts, it is proved that Isabel Flores de Oliva gained her own place in the iconography of Polish Dominicans and played a significant role in their efforts to promote certain forms of spirituality.

Between 1853 and 1876, an unparalleled corpus of prints and photographs after the works of Raphael was assembled at the instigation of Prince Albert. Such an ambitious endeavour necessitated scrupulous bibliographic research, the assistance of art historians and artists, and international collaboration on a novel scale, as well as the harnessing of nascent photographic technologies. The Raphael Collection, recently digitized, remains a significant resource for the study of the artist’s oeuvre. This article sketches the genesis and development of the collection, considering, among other sources, previously uncited evidence in Queen Victoria’s journal. It then charts the collection’s fortunes after Albert’s death in 1861, drawing on unpublished correspondence between the prince’s librarians and royal courtiers, which illuminates the purpose, physical format and intended audience for the collection and its accompanying catalogue. Finally, it offers the first assessment of the early reception of the Raphael Collection among critics and Raphael scholars.

Giorgione's art gives cause for irritation. Unlike the work of his contemporaries, the subjects of Giorgione's paintings and those of his circle repeatedly elude definitive identification. Neither can his pastoral paintings readily be associated with any specific antique or contemporary story (Figs. 1 and 2), nor can his idealized portraits of boys or women be securely identified as figures drawn from classical mythology or Christian iconography (Fig. 3). 1 Current art historical literature is not the first to address this difficulty. Even the early reception of Giorgione's painting was compelled to confront this issue as soon as it inquired after the narrative or allegorical content of his works. Perhaps the most eloquent witness to this fact can be found in the Artists' Lives of the Florentine Giorgio Vasari, who, referring to Giorgione's frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, remarked that he himself had never understood them and had never found anyone who knew precisely what they depicted. 2 Contemporary art history has offered various suggestions on how to deal with this difficulty. William R. Rearick, for example, asserted in a recent study on the pastoral that Giorgione's paintings consciously opposed traditional subjects and that they had no other content than their own aesthetic appearance: ". . . the Venetians neither knew nor seemed to care about the meanings of these famous paintings. For them it was sufficient that the works be beautiful." 3 Salvatore Settis, who has criticized such an approach as reductive and ahistorical, responded to this difficulty with his own subtle and sophisticated thesis, that of the "hidden subject." According to Settis, Giorgione's paintings do have traditional themes, whose unusual depiction however should be credited to the specific interests of his patrons. One of these paintings' fundamental functions was the entertainment provided by the interpretation [End Page 369] [Begin Page 371] of their meaning, which Giorgione had veiled by means of omitting or effacing key elements. 4 In the wake of Gombrich's convincing identification of Andrea Previtali's four narrative panels in the National Gallery, London, with the eclogues of the Ferrarese poet Antonio Tebaldeo, Rudolf Wittkower however had opposed the notion of the "hidden subject" and had argued that more careful study of Renaissance literature could reveal meanings current at the time, but lost to us: "I would like to direct attention to the fact that contemporary pastoral poetry was illustrated in Giorgione's circle and this probably happened much more often than we are aware of at present." 5 [End Page 371] This proposal certainly warrants consideration, if in a different sense than Wittkower intended. For Giorgione's paintings do not show the same narrative structures as Tebaldeo's panels. Wittkower seems to have followed a traditional understanding of iconography which recognizes only two possible modes of identifying a pictorial subject: either as allegory or as narrative. Talking of "illustration" Wittkower presumed a relation between image and text, which is decidedly too narrow and neglects a substantial literary domain: non-narrative poetry, that is lyrics. Rather than telling stories, this genre describes the internal states or qualities of the soul. It deals not only in symbols but also in metaphors and metonymies. Giorgione's art results from a lyrical permeation, or poeticization, of painting, and must be seen within a larger discursive framework: that of the discourse on love. Such a reconsideration of his art is based less upon an inquiry into the assumed narratives than into the motifs and structures of his paintings. On the other hand, it also means to consider the conceptual, which inspired Giorgione's specific pictorial inventions (invenzioni) and painting techniques. To a greater extent than the rationally determined humanistic treatises on love, contemporary "volgare" poetry described a subjectively experienced desire and a striving towards identity. These latter are psychological qualities which, in the literature on Giorgione, have frequently been remarked upon as an effect of his paintings and described enthusiastically, yet were not considered...