Catalogue Raisonne Research Articles

Review:Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works, 1978

Jackson Pollock has been dead for 23 years (he died August 11, 1956). His importance in the history of post-World War II modernism is established, although the nature of his achievement has been long debated and continues to be debated. Here and there, something of significance in the way of critical analysis has been written-not very much and not recently. Critically, something of the nature and magnitude of Pollock's achievement emerges in the fact that always, in the more ambitious essays, there exists the attempt to identify in the mature Pollock the crisis of abstraction as experienced in the late '40s and early '50s and to see in Pollock, uniquely, the resolution of that crisis. Yet recourse, systematic or incidental, to Pollock's work itself, other than in reproduction, remains extremely limited. As Francis V. O'Connor pointed out in his brief essay accompanying the small Pollock exhibition that opened at the Yale University Art Gallery in conjunction with the publication of the Catalogue Raisonne, of the known Pollocks, only 12.5 percent are in public collections-and not always on view; 31.5 percent remain in the Estate in storage; 50 percent are in private collections. Thus the publication of a catalogue raisonne,1 especially one whose emphasis is on the functionalism and comprehensiveness, rather than tokenism, of its plates cannot but provide an important and timely resource for Pollock studies. It should be noted immediately that these four large volumes depart appreciably from the format and endeavor of the traditional catalogue raisonne precisely through the editors' decision that every work should be photographically documented (including sheets that simply retain, without further reworking, stains that had bled through from a work in progress), and that the plates should provide as fully as possible, in terms of scale and impression, an instructive sense of the original. Visually, then, the catalogue is meant analytically and dialectically to project the particularity of individual works and the complex particularity of Pollock's development. On the whole, and in the face of some probable dispute over categorical (by medium) decisions and divisions, the catalogue is valuable in this respect, as well as, of course, in its chronology and documentation of the individual works. Within the practice of art history it is unusual for a catalogue raisonne to be undertaken and published shortly after an artist's death. When taken, the advantages of such a precipitous decision are clear: closeness in point of time (and space) to when (and where) the works were made. There is the relatively contained dispersement of the work itself and pertinent records an documents. There is the accessibility, always diminished even aft r a short time, of persons personally and/or professionally related to the artist: here, most immediately, Pollock's widow, he painter Lee Krasner, who initiated the project of the ca alogue raisonne and was in many respects instrumental in its realization. There are Pollock's three dealers, sequentially, Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Parsons, and Sidney Janis; all are alive, and each one in a different fashion and with different impact play d a role, sometimes significant, in the advancement of a theory of painting, the polemic of modernism. Equally important, and again diminished in number, are family, friends, artists, and critics acquainted, circumstantially and/or consequentially, with the man and his work. Understanding of Pollock's development as a painter cannot proceed without taking into account the complex circumstance of persons and debate in New York during the '40s and '50s. Yet any descriptive acknowledgement of this circumstance is, seemingly systematically and seemingly by editorial policy, omitted from the catalogue's documentation; only the impact of Benton, Siqueiros, and Orozco are indicated. It is an omission which seriously diminishes the worth of Thaw's introductory essay to the colorplates, which stands as a summary discussion of Pollock's development and the pictorial issues that Pollock's work engaged. It is an omission of biographical and professional history that seriously compromises O'Connor's appendix, Life of Jackson Pollock 1912-1956: A Documentary Chronology. It is an omission that cannot be argued away on the grounds that O'Connor's monograph of 1967, an extensively annotated Chronology which served as the text of The Museum of Modern Art's Pollock retrospective, incorporates a great deal of critical literature and exhibition data that does contribute some

L. R. Bailly, apothicaire parisien et collectionneur de curiosités

L.-R. Bailly, Apothecary in Paris and collector of curios. ; Bailly's collection was sold by auction after his death in 1766 and a catalogue raisonne was published for the sale by the Sieurs Helle and Glomy, auctionneers. This catalogue is analysed as follows. Bailly was, as a pharmacist, interested in natural history which subject attracted distinguished people in his time. With regard to this part of his collection there are exceptional samples of shells, nearly unknown in France, which he received from his nephew, also an apothecary, in Florida. Bailly, who held public offices in the town, also had collections of medals, coins and works of art.

The Transfiguration of the Commonplace

IN THE PRESENT STATE of the artworld, it is possible that a painting be exhibited which is merely a square of primed canvas, or a sculpture shown which consists of a box, of undistinguished carpentry, coated with a banal tan chemtone applied casually with a roller. Such works may be scored as largely empty, as indeed they are when we contrast the former with The Legend of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca, or the latter with the Apollo Belvedere. Yet the painting is not in the way in which a square of primed canvas, indiscernible from our work, may be: an canvas awaiting an Annunciation, say; or the way in which a crate indiscernible from our sculpture may be, which awaits a cargo of bric-a-brac and a bill of lading. For empty as applied to our works is an aesthetic and critical judgment, presupposing that its subjects are artworks already, however inscrutable may be the differences between them and objects which, since not artworks, reject such predicates as a class. Our works are titled Untitled. This is a title of sorts rather than a mere statement of fact, as it sometimes is when an artist neglects to give his work a title and it enters the catalogue raisonne unbaptized. So are those mere objects untitled which happen not to be discernible from our works, but

Van Dyck's English Period and Cavalier Poetry

ERIK LARSEN is a professor of the history of art at the University of Kansas. This article was originally delivered as a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts, London, and was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. CXVIII, No. 5172, November, 1970. He is currently engaged in a major multi-volume study of the paintings of 'Van l)yck and a catalogue raisonne. V cades more intimately focused upon the overpowering personality of Rubens, but currently the favour of the public and of cognoscenti turns back to Van Dyck's distinction, elegance and fleeting neuroticism; which fit exceedingly well into the framework of contemporary artistic taste and popular psychology. The versatility of the painter finds expression in his evolution. Some art historians speak of constant characteristics that can be found in Van Dyck's style throughout his career. In fact, his manner changes appreciably during the various divisions, which have been separated by Gustav Gluck into the first Antwerp, the Italian, the second Antwerp and finally the English periods. It is ,quite true that the artist's style cannot be traced according to a graphic curve of development. However, from the late years of his first Antwerp period onwards, we normally encounter in his portraits elements of distinction and elegance, elongation of heads, bodies and hands, that seem to show up with sufficient repetition for us to

Identification of a Tract in an Arabic Manuscript: Eratosthenes on Two Mean Proportionals

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotes & CorrespondenceIdentification of a Tract in an Arabic Manuscript: Eratosthenes on Two Mean ProportionalsClaus JensenClaus Jensen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 61, Number 1Spring, 1970 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/350586 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1970 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A Contribution to Brancusi Chronology

If one accepts a breaking away from traditional Western ways of representation as the starting point of modern sculpture, then its formative years are undoubtedly 1905 to 1910. To establish precisely how this change occurred, one would have to determine what was available to young sculptors during those years to feed their new interests. What did they see in salons and galleries? What interaction took place between young avant-garde artists, such as Picasso, Nadelman, Brancusi, Modigliani, and Archipenko, all of whom had recently settled in Paris?1 When and how did each of them assimilate outside influences, such as African art, or fresh elements of the immediate past, such as Art Nouveau and Medardo Rosso's sculpture?2 In order to clarify a segment of this critical period, I have attempted to establish a chronological classification of Brancusi's early works, made possible by research conducted since my review of Ionel Jianou's catalogue raisonne.3 In the following catalogue, I have assigned dates to man...

A Tentative “Short-Title” Check-List of the Works of Col. John Trumbull

IN preparing a monograph on John Trumbull, I found it necessary to have at hand a convenient “short-title” check-list of the artist's work, as my ponderous catalogue, filling thirty odd large loose-leaf note books, was entirely too clumsy for ready reference and was practically untransportable. I hope that this large catalogue raisonne with its history of the individual pictures accompanied by all the heavy baggage of biography and bibliography may some day be published, but in the meantime, a short list may prove of some service to scholars and collectors.

Geology

THIS small octavo volume of some eighty pages, ten plates and forty-seven text figures is in effect a catalogue raisonne of the known fish fauna of the locality. The fauna is of interest and importance in that it is intermediate in age between the well-known Hawkesbury and Gosford formations. A considerable number of new species and genera is described, adequately figured, and the present situation of the type specimens recorded, so that the work will be of definite use to other workers in similar fields of research.

The Zoological Record

IN the third number of vol. iii. of the Niederländisches Archiv für Zoologie (Leiden: E. T. Brill), I published in German a “Catalogue Raisonné” of zoological works and papers that appeared in the Netherlands during 1875 and 1876. You noticed the appearance of this paper in your “Notes” (NATURE, vol. xvi. p. 112).