Art Association Research Articles

<i>Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550 Minta Collins Jean A. GivensKaren M. ReedsAlain Touwaide, eds. Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550. AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art, vol. 5. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2006. xx + 278 pp. Ill. $99.95 (ISBN-10: 0-7546-5296-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5296-0). Nine papers, derived from sessions at the 2003 International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and at the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, include a general discussion of medieval images associated with medicine; six studies of illustrations in manuscript herbals, health, and natural science books; and essays on Leonardo’s anatomical studies and on his and other artists’ application of Galen’s theory of humors in sixteenth-century painting. The approach is primarily art-historical, but the valuable, detailed, and up-to-date bibliographical notes are widely interdisciplinary. This immaculately edited assembly of recent research, reviewed and reinterpreted, leads to some unexpected and thought-provoking conclusions. Peter Murray Jones typifies this in an essay in which he “eschews anachronisitic assumptions about medical illustrations” (p. 1), pointing out that there were no [End Page 704] professional medical illustrators in the Middle Ages and that illustrations did not necessarily relate to or enhance the text. He examines the different types and roles of various medically associated images in a wide range of media. Herbals and surgical texts are those most often illustrated with practical drawings, because in both cases the archetypes of the treatises were habitually illustrated. Such continuity is highlighted in Alain Touwaide’s meticulous study of an early fourteenth-century manuscript herbal. He proves that the illustrations are based on those in two early Byzantine Dioscorides’ codices, models for an archetype which he presumes was “probably” made during the period of Western occupation of Constantinople (1204–61). Jean A. Givens’s comparison of the earliest Tractatus de herbis manuscript with the fifteenth-century French translation, Livre des simples médecines, and the first English printed version, the Grete Herball, highlights the continuity of the illustrative tradition in herbals. However, her concern here is the ways in which text, page design, and navigational tools were reworked over time to facilitate the looking up of information for a changing readership. Karen M. Reeds’s examination of nature prints as another solution to the problem of picturing plants in the late fifteenth century draws attention to Leonardo’s attitude toward contemporary methods of representing plants. Claudia Swan, in her discussion of why early modern botanical treatises were illustrated, comments on the disjunction between the continuity of texts which still “depend on classical authority,” and the modernity of the pictures, the result of the “new practices of observation and demonstration” (p. 244). She does not develop the idea that the tradition of images in manuscript herbals may have been as deeply ingrained as the perpetuating of the ancient texts and the comparatively little-changing physical aspect of the books. Herbal illustrations predominate in the “tables of health,” the Tacuinum Sanitatis, produced in Lombardy for the Visconti court circa 1380–1400. Cathleen Hoeniger analyzes the sources for other, innovative, pictorial genres in these prestigious books, created for elite patrons for gifts and display. (She claims that no models existed in the herbal repertoire for recently introduced vegetables or fruit and that they may have been drawn from first-hand knowledge. However, images of those plants—eggplants, gourds, gherkins, and melons—all feature, observed from nature, in Tractatus de herbis manuscripts of ca. 1300–30.) A patron’s intervention can be seen in the distinguished manuscript of another text held in high esteem throughout the Middle Ages, Pliny’s Natural History, made for Pico della Mirandola. According to Sarah Blake McHam the images do not follow the standardized “scientific” repertory established in previous copies but illustrate anecdotes in the text, alluding to Greek and Roman culture, which had a personal appeal for Pico. The traditional idea of Leonardo as the isolated genius conducting secretive dissections is disproved in a fascinating essay by Monica Azzolini. Establishing that public autopsy and private dissection were common features of medical practice in Italy by...

Noor-Eesti ja kunstnikud. Young Estonia’s Artists

In Estonian art history, the beginning of the 20th century is the era of the birth of nationalist art. This is the time when the first artists to study abroad, the brothers Paul and Kristjan Raud, and Ants Laikmaa return home from their studies in Düsseldorf and Munich. In the homeland, these artists’ cultural and political spirit brought them into contact with the Young Estonians, one generation younger than they were, whose overall world-view and artistic views they came to shape. The program of the Young Estonians included the furthering of cultural life as a whole; therefore they participated enthusiastically in discussions about the visual arts, and ways in which to advance art in the homeland. Through the mediation of Ants Laikmaa, they made contact with Nikolai Triik, an artist of their own generation, who in turn engaged his former fellow students from the Stieglitz School of Applied Arts in St. Petersburg – Aleksander Tassa, Jaan Koort, and Konrad Mägi. The interests and travel destinations of writers and artists were similar: they found themselves drawn primarily to Scandinavia, then Paris. Young Estonia’s almanacs and magazines were illustrated and adorned by reproductions of these same artists’ works, and artists contributed their writings on art to the publication. Nikolai Triik was artistic editor for the Young Estonia magazine, thanks to his stronger ties with the homeland and his greater authority. In the years 1909 and 1914 Young Estonia organized art exhibits, in which several artists studying abroad found their first reception among a homeland public. Young Estonia created a new standard in Estonian book design. Discussions began around the question of ”nationalism” in art. The Young Estonia period 1905–1915 was an era of great change in Estonian art, and the artists connected with the movement played a major role in subsequent developments. Together they established the art association ”Pallas” in 1918, and a year later opened a school by the same name in Tartu, which became the seedbed of Estonian national art for the following several decades.

Peter Stepan. Picasso's Collection of African and Oceanic Art: Masters of Metamorphosis. Translated from the German by Paul Aston and Karin Skawran (Introduction), Robert McInnes (Chronology), and John Gabriel (Preface, Catalogue). Munich: Prestel, 2007. 149 pp. Photographs. Illustrations. Index. $85.00. Cloth.

Peter Stepan. Picasso's Collection of African and Oceanic Art: Masters of Metamorphosis. Translated from the German by Paul Aston and Karin Skawran (Introduction), Robert McInnes (Chronology), and John Gabriel (Preface, Catalogue). Munich: Prestel, 2007. 149 pp. Photographs. Illustrations. Index. $85.00. Cloth. - Volume 50 Issue 2

Art History and the Digital World

On June 8–9, 2006, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles hosted a workshop, “Art History and the Digital World,” cosponsored by the GRI and the College Art Association. The workshop, organized by Murtha Baca, head of the Getty Vocabulary Program and Digital Resource Management at the GRI, and William Tronzo of the CAA Board of Directors, assembled a group of over a dozen speakers and panelists to consider a wide range of questions at the intersection of the practice of art history and the rapidly evolving digital environment. The territory thus defined was large, and one of the virtues of the workshop was that, in negotiating relevant issues, it did not follow exclusively a single track. Rather it brought together participants with different fields of expertise and points of view in order to create a dynamic and thought-provoking conversation that crossed boundaries.

In This Issue: Remediations: Re-Viewing Art

In This Issue: Remediations? Re-Viewing Art Under the direction of executive editor Lenore Malen, guest editors John G. Hanhardt and Maria Christina Villase?or dedicated the entire Winter 1995 issue of Art Journal to the topic of video art. Ushered in by a brief and volatile history of production and innovation, the artform was by the mid1990s proliferating dramatically, with artists' videos in museums and international exhibitions?a decisive coming of age for video art. Yet Hanhardt and Villase?or lamented an insufficiency of rigorous theorization and critical discourse on the medium. Following another decade of startling growth of video and multimedia projects and installations, Art Journal reexamines video's temporal, errant, and mutable character in a thematic investigation sensitively organized by Yvonne Spielmann. She has strategically assembled essays by Sean Cubitt, Jean Gagnon, Christine Ross, and herself that together examine, from an international perspective, the significant innovations and pioneering artists of this technology and medium while indirectly speculating on its future. These thoughtful essays confirm that, in spite of its initial marginal critical reception, video art has had striking and substantial consequences for contemporary art. To document multiple perspectives on the role of the university art museum, Art Journal editorial board members Anna Hammond and John Paul Ricco organized a forum at the 2006 College Art Association Annual Conference. Eight museum directors and curators offered thoughtful insights and illuminating experiences on the distinctive missions and features, the promising roles and responsibilities of pedagogically-sited art institutions. I extend sincere thanks to Hammond for proposing this timely examination and for her superb work editing the transcript of the spirited conversation. The issue begins and concludes with independent essays. With eloquent pre cision, Frazer Ward examines the paradoxical performance work of Tehching Hsieh from 1978 to 1999. Living in the United States until 1988 as an illegal alien, the artist created five one-year performances of prolonged, repetitious, restrictive, and often numbing activities that resisted ideas of personal circumstance and subjectiv ity while raising unsetding and shockingly prescient questions about the economic, juridical, political, and documentary systems of exclusion and immigration, alien ation and assimilation. With intellectual levity, Reva Wolf considers another kind of paradoxical production and its relevance for art and art history. Examining a single episode of The Simpsons with engaging intricacy and infectious pleasure, Wolf pon ders the barbecue pit as readymade, Homer's indulgence in fluid and formless installation art, and Homer and Marge's fraught and frustrating visit to the Spring sonian Museum. Questioning all categorical dependability?in art, popular culture, and life?Wolf advocates for a dialectics of conviction with doubt (and humor) as an imperative of intellectual inquiry and the interpretation of contemporary art. To echo central insights of the university-art-museum conversation?and as the other contributors to this issue demonstrate?we must vigilantly seek to embrace concurrent commitments to experience and analyze all that we can about art, and to explore, extend, and advocate for its capacity to connect us to the world. EL

The Role of the University Art Museum and Gallery

At the College Art Association's annual conference in 2006, the editorial board of Art Journal convened a round-table discussion with eight leaders of galleries and museums affiliated with institutions of higher learning. Among the topics of conversation were the challenges unique to these organizations, similarities to and differences from their civic counterparts, pros and cons of collections, and ways of involving various constituencies. The discussion was organized by Anna Hammond, Deputy Director for Education, Programs, and Public Affairs, Yale University Art Gallery, and John Ricco, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto. Hammond moderated the discussion.

Forum: Eco-tistical Art

Meaningful connections between disciplines and discourses, human values and environmental issues, and the role and relationship of art to ecological concerns describe Eco-tistical Art, a daylong series of events and conversations that took place during the 2005 Annual Conference of the College Art Association. The event was organized by author and environmentalist Linda Weintraub, who applied the principles of ecosystems to the format of the initiative. The typical convention format of discrete papers and panels was exchanged for the alchemy of multiple voices and positions with planned and fortuitous exchanges. Gathered here in Art Journal is a series of “field reports”—texts by respondents to artists' projects and presentations, background information on historical and contemporary environmental resources, and images of selected artists' projects. This collection of speculations and observations poses significant questions about the practices of art in a world poised, as the artist Beaumont suggests, between the vestiges of an industrial revolution and emergent ideas of sustainability. With Linda Weintraub and the other participants in the forum, we extend our thanks to Creative Capital for its generous support of this initiative.

Undoing the Colonial Gaze: Ambiguity in the Art of Brook Andrew

Kate MacNeill, ‘Undoing the Colonial Gaze: Ambiguity in the Art of Brook Andrew’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Vol. 6, no. 2, 2006 and Vol. 7, no. 1, 2007. This is an electronic, pre-publication version of an article published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Reproduced with permission of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. Images appearing in the final version of the article have been removed. For further information about Brook Andrew’s work see http://www.brookandrew.com.

Art History Survey: A Round-Table Discussion

At the College Art Association 2003 annual conference, the editorial board of Art Journal convened a round-table discussion on the art history survey: why it continues to exist, who teaches it and how is it taught, and what have been effective challenges and innovations to its traditional form. Participants engaged in a spirited, substantive, and inconclusive discussion. Organizer and moderator Peggy Phelan (then chair of the Art Journal editorial board) proposed that this conversation on pedagogy should continue. She convened a round-table discussion, via e-mail, on the survey course with several experienced teachers and scholars. During the course of the conversation, Kathleen Desmond noted, “The Carnegie Foundation found that 80 percent of college teaching faculty listed teaching as their primary interest. Yet we barely discuss teaching. Treating teaching in the same ways we treat research and art making can revitalize and legitimize the essential component of our jobs as college professors.” With these points in mind, we are publishing excerpts from the e-mail discussion, hoping it might provoke further consideration of and dialogue about teaching the arts and art history in the new century.

The Artist as Professional in Japan (review)

Reviewed by: The Artist as Professional in Japan Samuel C. Morse (bio) The Artist as Professional in Japan. Edited by Melinda Takeuchi. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004. xvi, 262 pages. $45.00. The Artist as Professional in Japan is an important addition to the small number of works in English that examine Japanese artistic practice. Langdon Warner initiated this type of investigation in 1936 with the publication of The Craft of the Japanese Sculptor, but since that time the topic has only infrequently received attention in Western-language studies of the art of Japan. In the past few decades, the most noteworthy work has been done on the activities of early Kano school painters by Yoshiaki Shimizu and the late Carolyn Wheelright, to whom this book is dedicated. Another important precedent for the present volume is a collection of essays, "Competition and Collaboration: Hereditary Schools in Japanese Culture," in the 1992 edition of Fenway Court. Using this type of work as a foundation, the authors of the seven chapters in this book address complex issues of the formation of art historical tradition and its reception. The impetus for the volume was a session on artistic production in Japan organized by Melinda Takeuchi of Stanford University for the annual meeting of the College Art Association in 1990. Three of the original papers (those by Donald McCallum, Christine Guth, and Jonathan Reynolds) appear in the book in altered and expanded forms, and they along with the contribution by Takeuchi were specifically written to answer questions the volume is intended to address: "How did artists go about their business? What degree of control did they exercise over their métier? How were they viewed by society? What were some of the dynamics operating in the production, consumption, and evaluation of art and artist? How was the image of the artist 'fashioned' during various periods?" (p. 2). The other chapters (by Karen Brock, Louise Cort, and Julie Davis), while significant contributions to the topic, are less fully integrated with the questions the book sets out to investigate. One of the most intriguing issues the volume raises is that of terminology. As Takeuchi tells readers in the introduction, Western concepts of art and artist did not exist in premodern Japan. Most often, makers of material [End Page 449] objects were referred to as kō, a term that can be rendered in English in a variety of ways—artist, artisan, fabricator, craftsman—and master artisans were referred to as shi. Takeuchi suggests that it was not until the nineteenth century that this situation changed as a result of exposure to Western ideas about the roles of art and the artist in society. She also points out that it was only painters and calligraphers who could "move between the worlds of artist and artisan in both China and Japan" (p. 6), but, unfortunately, none of the essays addresses this issue. Also absent from the discourse on the nature of artistic activity in Japan at least until the start of the Meiji era are extensive comments by artists themselves. Prior to the Edo period, few painters and calligraphers produced texts that discussed their activities in conceptual terms, in contrast with many of their counterparts in China. Moreover, for the artists and artisans in the broad category of kō, practically no sources record their activities in their own words. The essays in the book reflect this phenomenon in the type of sources the authors have available to them. Both Guth and Reynolds are able to take advantage of comments made during the Meiji era by artists themselves. Davis relies on texts that directly describe Kitagawa Utamaro's works and refers to other passages on his prints that very well may have been written by Utamaro himself. Cort has a diary in the hand of Morita Kyōemon, but it consists mostly of notes and contains few reflective observations. In contrast, Takeuchi and Brock are obliged to sift through family histories, temple records, and monastic diaries to learn about the activities of Tosa Mitsunobu and E'nichibō Jōnin. McCallum's task is more daunting because the relationship between his sources—inscriptions on statues and early historical records with clear...

Identity Exhibitions: From Magiciens de la terre to Documenta II

Despite a continual morphing of the large, high-profile, temporary, group-identity exhibition, the provocative case studies published in this issue of Art Journal argue that, in the fifteen years between Magiciens de la terre and Documenta 11, the genre operated in a closed-loop system. The roller-coaster image chosen by Norman Kleeblatt for the title of the 2004 College Art Association session (“Identity Roller Coaster: From Magiciens de la terre to Documenta 11”) in which the essays were first presented alludes to the end-game aspect of the ride as well as to its ups and downs, its twists and turns, its exhilarating and terrifying speeds, its performance as spectacle, and its ultimate function as entertainment—not exactly an image that connotes optimism when linked to identity exhibitions and their programs of social justice and radical reform. Kleeblatt's second formulation of identity as a free radical operating in and circulating around an exhibition nucleus in bipolar tensions rather than binary oppositions offers more possibilities, if the promises of identity exhibitions are to be realized.

Biographical Index of Artists in Canada (review)

Reviewed by: Biographical Index of Artists in Canada Anna Hudson (bio) Evelyn de Rostaing McMann. Biographical Index of Artists in Canada University of Toronto Press. xviii, 452. $85.00 A random search for the names of Canadian artists - historical and contemporary, well known and obscure - quickly confirms that Evelyn McMann's Biographical Index of Artists in Canada is comprehensive. The index (published posthumously) is a quick and cursory guide to artists with whom a researcher is otherwise unfamiliar. McMann's Biographical Index of Artists in Canada is the fourth in a series of indices she produced since the early 1980s. All but one of these publications, Canadian Who's Who. Index 1898-1984: Incorporating Canadian Men and Women of the Time, provides historical records of the fine arts in Canada. McMann's Royal Canadian Academy of Arts: Exhibitions and Members, 1880-1979 (reprinted in 1997) and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Formerly Art Association of Montreal: Spring Exhibition, 1880-1970 are staples in the Canadian curatorial world. The author's tailoring of the books to Canadian collectors, dealers, gallery staff, and - arguably less so - to art [End Page 349] historians is effective. Both volumes provide a handy compilation of the titles of exhibited works with each artist's name. McMann positions the two volumes as a comprehensive record of 'the entire field of the visual arts [as] is represented in the Membership and the exhibitions; painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, etchers, graphic artists, industrial, stained glass and theatrical designers, tapestry weavers, photographers and film makers.' Painters, nevertheless, are best represented. The volumes reconfirm the canon - the history of painting that still defines the history of art in Canada. McMann extended her representation of artists in Canada with the Biographical Index. The question is: How far? A search for the names of a random handful of artists might be the best way to demonstrate the parameters of McMann's Biographical Index. Zacharias Kunuk, Jeff Thomas, Norman McLaren, James Hill, George Lonn, H.N. McEvoy, James Hoch, Robert Clow Todd, Paraskeva Clark, and Kosso Eloul are among the artists whose work I happen to be researching. The first two artists - Kunuk and Thomas - are of Aboriginal ancestry. Kunuk, the director of the feature-length film Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) and an internationally recognized contemporary Inuit artist, does not appear in the book. Some of his predecessors do, like Kenojuak Ashevak. The names of a few well-known Inuit artists born prior to the 1950s are sparsely listed through the index with their 'E' (disc) numbers and alternate names. As such, McMann provides a compromised view of Inuit art, which she under-supports by a grossly inadequate 'Works Cited.' Standard specialized sources for information on Inuit artists (including the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Inuit Artist indices) are not included. A search for Jeff Thomas, a First Nations artist who is increasingly active in the Canadian museum world, reveals a similar problem. Thomas is not listed, but his more famous predecessor Norval Morrisseau is - if only because his name (like the Inuit artists listed by McMann) happens to have been published previously in mainstream biographical sources. The index is conspicuously skewed to non-Aboriginal artists in general and, as a result, to non-Aboriginal readers. If McMann's cultural focus is symptomatic of her dependence on a narrow range of published sources, then her Biographical Index might also limit the representation of artists working in varied media. Ostensibly, her fine arts lens (capturing painting, sculpture, and drawing) played into her selective representation of Aboriginal artists. Do Canada's non-Aboriginal filmmakers and commercial artists suffer the same fate? McMann includes the National Film Board's Norman McLaren as an animator, painter, printmaker, and sculptor. She also lists James Hill, whose commercial work ruled women's magazines of the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. He is described only as a painter, however, as is George Lonn, whose portraits illustrated newspapers, magazines, and books during the same decades. [End Page 350] McMann's publication skirts the strength of these artists' contribution to Canadian visual culture. A couple of further searches for fine artists whose contributions sit squarely within the Canadian art canon show...

Art Association Members Reveal State of the Arts

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Association NewsFull AccessArt Association Members Reveal State of the ArtsSonia Pawluczyk, M.D., Sonia PawluczykSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., presidentPublished Online:6 Aug 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.15.0390026“Give me liberty or give me death” were Patrick Henry's eloquent words pleading the cause of the people. We do not subscribe to the second alternative, death, but we do exhort our colleagues to “give liberty” to the latent artist held prisoner in the unconscious of each of us.Sonia Pawluczyk, M.D., was the first-prize winner in the color photograph category for “Skultura Comienda Gatorum.”Art lives in the heart of every person. It has survived through the ages because it is indispensable. One paints, sculpts, or writes a poem to set free the vast, new universe of imagery that is held in captivity in the dungeons of our psyche. But beware— this is a seductive world, where even the meekest of objects is emotionally charged, the place where the most trivial things are integrated into a special world. That's “art space.” The artist explores this space and translates it using brilliantly symbolic idioms.The 35th APA Art Exhibit took place in New York City in conjunction with APA's 2004 annual meeting in May. The exhibit was tenderly assembled by members of the APA Art Association, who mustered a wondrous collection of art work. These ranged from embryonic image concepts to pieces of museum quality. The exhibit was popular as evidenced by the many visitors it drew, most of whom became instant art critics and cast ballots for their favorite entries. The APA Art Association was honored that Carol Nadelson, M.D., former APA president, presented the awards.The association also elected new officers: I was elected president; Wilma Rosen, M.D., is the newsletter editor; Linda Logsdon, M.D., and William A. Alvarez, M.D., are the co-treasurers; and Victoria Kelly, M.D., is the chief exhibit coordinator.Membership in the APA Art Association is open to APA members and their spouses or significant others (“significant others” are defined as spouses or partners, not children, pets, or others). Further information on membership is available by writing to me at P.O. Box 14449, Long Beach, Calif. 90853-4449.The following are the names of the exhibit prize winners by category:PoetryFirst and Best of Show: “The Three Bs,” William A. Alvarez, M.D.Second: “A Matter of Opinion,” William A. Alvarez, M.D.Third: “Loving You,” William A. Alvarez, M.D.CraftFirst: “Basket With Voice,” Gail Barton, M.D.William Alvarez, M.D., won the Best of Show award and first, second, and third prizes for poetry.Second: “Face I,” Andrew Lauronilla, M.D.Third: “Chosen People's Box,” William A. Alvarez, M.D.GlassFirst: “Blue Bowl,” Habib Nathan, M.D.Second: “Hand,” Habib Nathan, M.D.Third: “Angel,” Habib Nathan, M.D.GraphicsFirst: “Melancholia,” Jeffrey Delisle, M.D.Second: “Life Support,” Jeffrey Delisle, M.D.Third: “Juggler,” Caroline Choo, M.D., Paula StrombergPhotography—ColorFirst: “Skultura Comienda Gatorum,” Sonia Pawluczyk, M.D.Second: “Patagonia Gaucho I,” Sonia Pawluczyk, M.D.Third: “Flowing Serenity,” Sonia Pawluczyk, M.D.Photography—Black and WhiteFirst: “Uncle Tom's Bridge,” Donald Ottenstein, M.D.Second: “Curious Pug,” Victoria Kelly, M.D.Third: “Hip Hop Dancers,” Ira Glick, M.D.Mixed MediaFirst: “When We Said Goodbye,” Caroline Choo, M.D., Paula StrombergSecond: “Granada/Alhambra,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.Third: “San Telmo,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.Painting—OilFirst: “Chicago Desert,” Cristel LempkeSecond: “The Guirson Bush,” Dolores Brachman;“ Meditation,” Priyani De Silva, M.D.; “Provena,” Dolores BrachmanThird: “Autumn,” Manije NathanPainting—WatercolorFirst: “Lighthouse,” Priyani De Silva, M.D.Second: “Fishing Boat,” Aydogan Ugur, M.D.;“ Mirror,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.; “The Centinel,” Dolores BrachmanThird: “Reflection,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.Painting—AcrylicFirst: “Ed's Barber Shop,” Jeffrey Delisle, M.D.Second: “Acrophilia,” Jeffrey Delisle, M.D.Third: “Alhambra Albaicin,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.OtherFirst: “Substance-Induced Mood Disorder” (pastel), Wilma Rosen, M.D.Second: “Beneath the Surface” (water color tissue collage), Karen Jaegerman CollinsThird: “Impetuous” (water color tissue collage), Karen Jaegerman CollinsSculptureFirst: “Tango For Ever,” Astrid Rusquellas, M.D.Second: Untitled, S.R. Bortner, M.D.Third: “Abstract in Yew,” Roy Fitzgerald, M.D.▪APA Art Association. ISSUES NewArchived

Aesthetic/Anti-Aesthetic: An Introduction

The following cluster of essays addresses the contemporary art world's renewed engagement with aesthetics, a debate that emerged in the early 1990s and, as yet, shows little sign of abating. Three of the essays, by Alexander Alberro, Anna Dezeuze, and Margaret Iversen, are revised versions of papers from the “Aesthetic/Anti-Aesthetic” session organized by James Meyer and Toni Ross for the 2003 College Art Association annual conference. The contribution by Arthur Danto was developed for this issue. The aim of this effort has been to bring anti-aesthetic and aesthetic positions into closer proximity than has typically been the case. Our working assumption or hope is that the historical split between the aesthetic's focus on visual affect or pleasure and the critical or political aims of the anti-aesthetic may not be reconciled, perhaps, but calibrated in a less polarized way. We have sought out essays that forestall an automatic equation between aesthetics and conservative taste, or vested ideological interests, as well as the often unreflective appeals to visual pleasure so prominent in the recent beauty revivalism.

College Art Association 92nd Annual Conference

Reports some of the topics covered at the 92nd Annual Conference of the College Art Association held in Seattle, February 2004, where several sessions addressed the issues involved with the iintroduction of digital technologies in the teaching of art history.

In This Issue: Aesthetic Practices

In This Issue: Aesthetic Practices Art encourages us to seek the overlooked in the frequently examined. It questions why innovation hardens into orthodoxy. And it reveals that orthodoxy often opens paths to new possibilities. This issue of Art Journal is a discursive journey. It offers different perspectives on the relationship of innovation and orthodoxy, seeing and understanding. Most of us experience moments when an emerging pattern of ideas or phenomena seems inexplicably inevitable. At other instances, different trajectories and ideas appear and opportunistically mix and mingle. With all of its independent pieces, this issue offers a series of vivid encounters with the ways that art is created and disseminated, experienced and considered. This eclectic collection of reexaminations, reflections, and interventions represents art's resiliency and capacity for perpetual re-creation. Two art-historical essays reexamine, through single works, overlooked and significant moments in two artists' careers. Janine Mileaf speculates on the structure of confession in the work of Man Ray. She explores his legendary preoccupations with sadism and masochism, oscillations of power and identity, and creative and destructive impulses in his strategically and inadvertently ambiguous self-portrait. In a single summer, Joan Mir6 created a small series of drawing-collages that combined nostalgic early twentieth-century postcards with spare, spontaneous drawing. While many critics dismiss or overlook these works as playful diversions and personal distractions from the greater responsibilities of painting, Jordana Mendelson offers an alternative critical interpretation of the significant relationship of art, mass culture, politics, and Surrealism through Mir6's affectionate, if anxious, fascination with early twentieth-century postcards and pre-World War I popular culture.. Two interviews produce other narratives of reflection and immediacy. Joseph Nechvatal's conversation with the alternative art historian Frank Popper explores his intellectual paths and how they lead to his current research on virtual art. With passionate, yet balanced eloquence, Popper traces a fruitful melding of the technological and aesthetic that raises promising questions about the roles of artists, the processes of creative invention, the agency of spectators/participants, and the transformative potential of technology in art and life. And Ana Finel Honigman explores ideas of beauty, witnessing, history, and identity with artist Kutlug Ataman, whose spectacular work examines the content, omissions, embellishments, truth, and fictions of both official histories and personal stories. Shifting from scholarly articles and timely interviews, curator Nato Thompson has gathered a series of artists' projects for this publication. Continuing with questions of agency, pedagogy, and engagement explored in Upstaging Pedagogy in the Theater of Conflict, a panel at the 2003 College Art Association Conference, Thompson invited four artists and researchers to develop projects for the pages of Art Journal. While interrogating the impact of print-based media, these artists critically question our endless negotiation of truth and fiction, experience and imagination in a hypervisual world. Like the contents of this issue, StrategicVisuality offers a discursive look at the shifting historical and individual commiserations of seeing and knowing. There is no single path. Whatever routes you may choose, I hope that you enjoy the trip.

Piranesi, Juvarra, and the Triumphal Bridge Tradition

This article was first published in The Art Bulletin, LXXXV: 2, 2003, published by the College Art Association. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher. Images originally appearing in the published article have been removed.

Reading Scott Makela: The Subversion of Dyslexic Deconstruction

Since its proliferation as a field in the nineteenth century, graphic design has constantly renegotiated its ambiguous position in the spectrum of visual culture. As Marcus Verhagen has written, art nouveau posters, for example, were met with numerous polemics surrounding the contested status of the poster infin-de-siecle Paris, which was widely criticized by an appalled conservative contingent, partially on the grounds that both its imagery and its style courted the viewer like a street-walking prostitute.2 Though the metaphor may well sound rather exaggerated, or even absurd when taken at face value, this criticism does raise a significant issue pertaining to the proactivity, or theatricality, not only of art nouveau posters, but perhaps more broadly, of graphic images in general. I borrow the term, theatricality, from art historian and critic Michael Fried, whose work since the 1970s has been influential in introducing the role of the spectator as an object of study. As I will outline below, Fried's conclusions about the relationship between the viewer and the image are markedly conservative, as if to side with the opponents of Cheret and Toulouse-Lautrec mentioned above. Fried's terms, however, represent a language useful for speaking of the relationship between an image and its viewers, and indeed I will ultimately suggest that part of the significance of the recent model of deconstructive design, particularly as exemplified by the work of Scott Makela, lies in its ability to scandalize Fried's classically inspired paradigm. Fried's model theorizes a dichotomy, which pits the absorptive against the theatrical. 3 former, epitomized by high classicism, neoclassicism, and more recently, selected examples of formalist painting, he describes as an art so self-absorbed as to be utterly unaware of and indifferent to the presence of the viewer. In figurative works, such absorption manifests itself not only in the engaged gesture and expression of the figure, but also, and for my purposes more importantly, in the seamless technique of the artist, which disguises itself in such a way that one sees only the narrative illusion and not the strokes of the brush or the chisel. In short, neither the figure nor the artist actively solicits the viewer's attention. In such works, Fried maintains that viewers would be so 1 This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the 2002 College Art Association Conference, for the panel Do I Make Myself Perfectly Clear: Readability and Legibility in Graphic Design, chaired by George Marcus. Both versions of the paper owe thanks to my colleagues Michelle Bowers and Paul Wittenbraker, who generously shared their time and resources. 2 See Marcus Verhagen, The Poster in Finde-Siecle Paris: 'That Mobile and Degenerate Art', in Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz, eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modem Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 103-129. 3 See Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980). ( Copyright 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design Issues: Volume 19, Number 2 Spring 2003 5

The Oregon Art of Alexander Phimister Proctor

PeterH. Hassrick The Oregon Art of Alexander Phimister Proctor Rarely has the state of Oregon established so affec tionate and rewarding a relationship with an artist of interna tional renown as it did in the early 1900s with sculptor h? Alexander Phimister Proctor. In themid-i9ios, when Proctor's place inOregon's cultural development was most ascendant, he was re ferred to in the San Francisco Examiner as "the foremost sculptor of ani mals inAmerica."1 At the same time,while living inOregon and enthusias tically participating inwestern life,he expanded his artistic vision beyond that of an animalier sculptor to include themes from Indian history and cowboy pursuits. Scenes he observed at the Pendleton Round-Up inspired him to create his Buffalo Hunt bronze, which combined raw energy with grace and pounding action with designed elegance. His portrayal of the rodeo Buckaroo, imbued with similar aesthetic qualities, was seen as a crucial step in "putting the cowboy on the artmap."2 Proctor, Oregon, and the people who embodied its rich frontier legacy made natural partners. Proctor was born in Canada in i860. His pioneer family settled in Denver eleven years later, and itwas there and in the Colorado Rockies that he grew tomanhood. His experiences defined him as something of a dual persona. He possessed an abiding passion for art, and, encouraged by both parents, he began drawing lessons at age twelve. His father dreamed thathewould not only receiveart traininginNew YorkCitybut also in France, and Proctor ultimately fulfilled both parental expectations by studying at the National Academy ofDesign and the Art StudentsLeague inManhattan and theAcad?mie Julian in Paris. He developed an equally devoted affection for outdoor life, especially hunting and camping, while he was a young boy inColorado. As he grew up, his two obsessions wed comfortably into one career. 394 ? 2003 Oregon Historical Society A bas-relief on the base of Oregon Pioneer Mother, 1932, University ofOregon Museum ofArt, Eugene After completing his course of study in Paris, Proctor returned to America, established a studio inNew York, and quickly became America's leading animalier sculptor, mixing the French Beaux-Arts style of roman ticized naturalism with the American tenets of nobility, simplicity, and dignity espoused by his mentor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. His successes can be seen inmany eastern cities, from his huge marble Lions for Presi dentWilliam McKinley's Buffalo, New York,monument to the giant bronze Buffaloes that adorn theQ Street Bridge in Washington, D.C. When, after 1910, Proctor began making appeals of patronage towest ern cities such as Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles, itwas Portland that first opened itsdoors to him. The Portland Art Association hosted ama jor exhibition of his sculptures in 1911and purchased one of hismost strik ing early works, The Indian Warrior.3 That bronze was the first original piece of sculpture to enter the collections of the Portland Art Museum.4 Proctor expressed his affection for Portland clearly and openly: Hassrick, Proctor inOregon 395 I likePortland better than any other city.... The people are charming and the art appre ciationhere iskeener andmore discriminating than in any other Western city that I have ever visited. Of course, I like Denver... but Portland isdif ferent, ithas thebreadth and breeziness of the West and cul ture of the East, and that, as youmay well [know], isa rare combination.5 The relationship between Proctor and Portland, based on a belief in the fun damental value of public aesthetic enrichment, proved to be mutually beneficial. The capstone, Proctor's impressive bronze equestrian monu ment to Theodore Roose velt, stands today as a re markable artistic collabo rative achievement. Proctor's association with otherOregon commu nities was no less celebrated and mutually salubrious. In Pendleton, where the artist and his family lived for several years, he produced his elegant testa ment to dedication and bravery, a monument to Sheriff Til Taylor. In Salem, his homage to the spirit of frontier evangelism, The Circuit Rider, stands near the state cap?tol. And Eugene features not one but two tributes toOregon's frontier heroes, Pioneer and The Pioneer Mother. Over a period ofmore than twenty years, from the early 1910s until the early 1930s, Proctor cast his favor...

Von der Ecclesia triumphans zur Ecclesia universalis. Zum gedanklichen Wandel in Berninis Ausstattung von St. Peter: In Memoriam Valentino Martinelli (1923-1999)

An expanded version of a paper delivered at the annual conference of the College Art Association in New York in February 2000. The writer discusses Gianlorenzo Bernini's works for the interior of New-Saint Peter's in Rome. He focuses on the question of how Bernini's religious convictions helped shape his creative imagination over the 56 years that he worked on the church's interior. He notes that Bernini's deep religiosity allowed him, like almost no other artist, to overcome the contradiction between art and life.