Des Beaux Arts Research Articles

Teaching Co-Design to Promote Students’ Community Engagement

The current landscape of architectural education has been predominantly based on studio teaching the mode of teaching that can be traced back in the age of French L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was during the Beaux Arts era that studio teaching and jury system first deve-loped, and it continues today. The approach is characterized by the use of atelier (studio) for coaching, where juniors learn from seniors and competition among students are the norm. The approach also presumes that architects are the provider of design services who think that they are more competent than their clients in solving the design problem; which is a paradox to the fact that most parts of the built environment anywhere in the world are the creation of ordinary people. In other words, ordinary people can contribute significantly to the decision making within the architectural design process. They can actually be treated as a partner of architects in designing their building, which is what Co-Design all about. This paper aims to describe the introduction of Co-Design approach in architectural design studio teaching at Universitas Islam Indonesia. The research questions this paper intends to respond: to what extent could Co-Design be adopted in architectural design teaching? What lessons have the students learned from their experience in involving people in the urban design process? The case study methods employed in this research, through which author looks at the Co- Design teaching delivery in the Architectural Design Studio 7 in the past three years. While overall result of the study shows that time limitation has constrained the students’ community engagement, most cases examined reveal that introduction of Co-Design approach has paved the way for students to understand how ordinary people contribute to the shaping of the urban built environment.

No-Man's-Land: The Battlefield Watercolors of Claggett Wilson

No-Man's-LandThe Battlefield Watercolors of Claggett Wilson Kristine Somerville Click for larger view View full resolution Symphony of Terror, Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin [End Page 97] Like many aspiring artists, Claggett Wilson, born in Washington, DC, in 1887, rejected a conventional gentleman's education at Princeton to briefly study at the Art Students League of New York before sailing to Paris. He enrolled at the progressive Académie Julian, and from 1906 to 1910 showed his work at the Paris Salon, the art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. When he returned to the United States in 1913, Modernism had fully arrived. The International Exhibition of Modern Art, known simply as the Armory Show, featured 1,250 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over three hundred avant-garde European and American artists. Historically it became a Who's Who of Modern art: Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Cézanne, to name a few. Claggett Wilson's oil painting Moorish Girl, now lost, was exhibited among the works of these now better-known artists. Modernist artists sought to create symbols representing the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the impact of cities on contemporary life. As a means of signifying their doubts about time-honored values and institutions, they rejected the traditional use of perspective, color, and composition. Critics reviled the new work as an "insane" affront to artistic sensibilities. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, with its overlapping images meant to express motion, was singled out for derision; a critic in the New York Times famously referred to it as "an explosion in a shingle factory." As an instructor at Columbia University Teachers College, Wilson was certainly interested in helping his students search for a unique, surprising kind of beauty as encouraged by the new art of the day. In 1917, when the United States entered the First World War, mobilizing more than 300,000 soldiers, thirty-one-year-old Wilson put aside his paintbrushes and left his teaching job to enlist as a combat marine. He believed that to be a fully realized artist, he needed to experience the world in all its complexity, including truly bad things. His desires, though honorable, were naive. After training as a second lieutenant, he found himself on the frontlines in France, where he experienced two of the bloodiest battles of the war: the Battle of Château-Thierry and the Battle of Belleau Wood. In the month-long Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, US marines struggled to block one of the German approaches to Paris, but they did so artlessly, advancing shoulder to shoulder, which had rarely been done since the slaughter of the British at the Somme in 1916. Wilson was wounded by poison gas and was left for three days lying in the muddy [End Page 98] no-man's-land between the American and German trenches before being recovered for medical treatment. Click for larger view View full resolution Front Line Stuff, Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin World War I was called the "chemists' war" for its large-scale use of poison gas. The gases soaked into woolen uniforms, causing skin burns and blisters, and hung in noxious clouds over the trenches, resulting in near blindness, vomiting, and long-term respiratory problems; Wilson experienced respiratory difficulties for the rest of his life. After recovering at a hospital in Dijon, he returned to the front to witness Germany's surrender. Following the armistice, Belgian, British, French, and American forces stayed behind to maintain control of the occupied territories. While many of his buddies went home, Wilson was sent to the small town of Koblenz, Germany, for the Army of Occupation [End Page 99] of the Rhineland. To deal with the haunting memories of life in the trenches, a place filled with the stench of urine, rotting flesh and excrement, rats the size of cats, and men suffering from poison gas and shell shock, Wilson knew he needed to paint; it was the only thing that would bring him solace. He acquired a set...

Geocritiquing Flaubert’s Scaping of Yonville in Madame Bovary

On 4 September 1852, thirty-year-old Gustave Flaubert wrote to novelist and poet Louise Colet with an update about the manuscript of Madame Bovary: ‘j’ai fait huit pages de ma 2e partie: la description topographique d’un village’.1 The specified portrayal of Yonville-L’Abbaye, which occupies fifteen paragraphs at the beginning of the first chapter of the second part of the novel,2 is rich in environmental details that provide an insight into the geographical and sociocultural identity of the fictional town. On 6 April 1853, Flaubert wrote to Colet that ‘il faut faire des tableaux, montrer la nature telle qu’elle est’.3 This insistence on the importance of realistically representing nature amplifies the significance of Flaubert’s scaping of the locale (i.e. his crafting of the scene). The evocation of the northern surroundings of Yonville, which encompasses plentiful details of the environmental conditions framing the dealings of the small-scale populace, is ripe for analysis based on a theoretical framework that emblematizes the spatial turn4 of recent decades: geocriticism. Bertrand Westphal offers a definition of geocritical precepts: ‘la géocritique [entreprend] de sonder les espaces humains que les arts mimétiques agencent par et dans le texte, par et dans l’image, ainsi que les interactions culturelles qui se nouent sous leur patronage’.5 Flaubert’s evocation of factors contributing to a sense of place6 indicates his uncommon awareness of environmental dynamics in the region that encompassed his growth as a Norman novelist. For Anne Green, Mary Orr and Timothy Unwin, ‘Flaubert’s aesthetics are […] linked to his intrinsically modern sense of places and spaces’.7 The topological account of Yonville, which conveys Flaubert’s attunement8 to the nature of human-modified landscapes, highlights the economic and sociocultural circumstances of the town before the key protagonists appear. Éric Le Calvez proposes that ‘la description d’Yonville-L’Abbaye […] est initialement déterminée par le fait que tout […] tend à transformer le paysage en un tableau écrit’.9 Flaubert’s extensive account of the alluvial plain occupied by the town is analogous to landscape art favoured in the Salons of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris, yet the scaping of Yonville has added depth in terms of ecological markers that give a flavour of environmental conditions in rural Normandy during the first half of the nineteenth century. This article will geocritically focus on three types of human and non-human features that are key to Flaubert’s representation of the fictional town (roads; waterways; flora), with the aim of foregrounding the extent to which the narrative enriches our understanding of the non-human elements of an ecoregion in which the author was deeply enmeshed10 throughout a period during which the culture and the landscape of northern France began to feel the effects of industrial forces.

Verne at Lyon's Fete des Lumieres: New Media, Old Dystopia

Verne at Lyon's Fete des Lumieres:New Media, Old Dystopia Ana Oancea The city of Lyon has hosted the Fête des Lumières starting on December 8 every year since 1852, with the exception of 2015, when it was cancelled due to the Paris terror attacks of the previous month. The festival commemorates the spontaneous lighting of candles across the city to celebrate the longawaited inauguration of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the Fourvière hill. In 1852, the inauguration had been postponed from September 8 to the Day of the Immaculate Conception, because the high levels of the Saône river threatened the procession.1 Though the Lyonnais still adorn their windows with small candles, the city now also organizes electric light shows orchestrated to music to decorate a variety of sites, which has become a major tourist event.2 In addition to abstract installations, some also reflect on the past and its relation to the present, as for example in 2016's illumination of the Cathédrale de St. Jean façade. It sought to digitally recreate the building in various materials of significance to Lyon, ranging from the original stone to paper, silk and metaphorically, light. Installations can also reflect on issues of current significance, as did Joseph Couturier's illumination of the Hôtel de Ville and the Musée des Beaux Arts buildings in the Place des Terreaux, entitled "Sans Dessus Dessous," after the Jules Verne novel.3 Billed as describing climate change, the official website of the Fête des Lumières promised the show would sweep spectators away: [End Page 497] à la découverte d'un voyage imaginaire sur les traces d'un dérèglement climatique conté, alliant lumière et projections. Un savant fou, responsable du climat et des océans, vous entraîne à la poursuite d'une chouette ayant déréglé la machinerie . . . Ensemble, vous parcourez le monde, du centre de la Terre au pôle Nord, pour constater l'étendue des dégâts. Une féérie d'effets confronte la terre, l'eau et l'air, pour en saisir toute la complémentarité et l'interdépendance . . .4 A great success thanks to its appealing, detailed visuals, the performance attracted an estimated 720 000 spectators over 3 evenings.5 However, it is my contention that the mass appeal conceals a dissonance between the show's cheery cartoon aesthetics and its dark Vernian framing realized through the title, the use of Verne's image for the main character, and an ominous motto drawn from his work: "Ce ne sont pas de nouveaux continents qu'il faut à la Terre, mais de nouveaux hommes" (Vingt mille lieues 141). Likewise, given the subject, the playfully rendered mad scientist protagonist appears at odds with the seriousness of the devastation wrought on the environment through rampant industrialization. In addition to the "cuteness" of this fictional Earth, it is one devoid of population:6 the scientist and his owl appear alone in the world they are rendering urban and industrial, and the motivation behind their work is not revealed. I argue that Couturier's streamlining of expected narrative content allows a clear message of human-caused climate change to emerge, while the Vernian frame is used to comment on its history, motivation, and consequences. Verne's novel is a dystopian tale of climate change brought on as a side-effect of the greedy pursuit of capitalistic desires. Human viciousness, greed, and lack of regard for the suffering of others or the destruction of the environment are among its key themes. Referencing Verne without faithfully adapting his novel allows Couturier to maintain a lighthearted tone for the show, with the evident gap between it and its motto prompting the audience to investigate the 19th century source. More traditional adaptations, as for example from novel to film, would entail transferring elements such as plot, characters, or themes into another medium, but in the case of new media, Moore has shown that "adaptation" gains the sense of an acknowledged reworking of a source without concern for fidelity on the part of the media producer. As Henry Jenkins suggests, this type of...

The Art of Decolonization: The Battle for Algeria’s French Art, 1962–70

In May 1962 French museum administrators removed over 300 works of art from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and transported them, under military escort, to the Louvre in Paris. The artwork, however, no longer belonged to France. Under the terms of the Evian Accords it had become the official property of the Algerian state-to-be and the incoming nationalist government wanted it back. This article will examine not only the French decision to act in contravention of the Evian Accords and the ensuing negotiations that took place between France and Algeria, but also the cultural complexities of post-colonial restitution. What does it mean for artwork produced by some of France’s most iconic artists – Monet, Delacroix, Courbet – to become the cultural property of a former colony? Moreover, what is at stake when a former colony demands the repatriation of artwork emblematic of the former colonizer, deeming it a valuable part of the nation’s cultural heritage? The negotiations undertaken to repatriate French art to Algeria expose the kinds of awkward cultural refashioning precipitated by the process of decolonization and epitomizes the lingering connections of colonial disentanglement that do not fit neatly into the common narrative of the ‘end of empire'.

Transformative Poetry. A Case Study of W. H. Auden’s Musée Des Beaux Arts and General Conclusions

Abstract This article situates Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts in the process of his conversion to Christianity. The author argues for the layered intertextuality of the poem, in which allusions to Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, The Census at Jerusalem, and The Massacre of the Innocents can be recognised. Moreover, Philippe de Champaigne’s Presentation in the Temple and Peter Paul Rubens’s The Martyrdom of St Livinus (in the same museum in Brussels) seem also to have influenced the poem. Finally, there is reason to suppose that John Singer Sargent’s Crashed Aeroplane influenced Auden. In an analysis of the structure of the poem, the author argues that there is a clear structure hidden under the surface of day-to-day language. He connects this hidden structure with Auden’s poem The Hidden Law, and suggests that Auden wished to claim that even though we cannot understand suffering, it has a hidden meaning known only to God. This hidden meaning connects our suffering with the self-emptying of Christ, a connection which the author demonstrates is in fact also made in Musée des Beaux Arts.

Suffering and Techniques of Poetic Resistance: Mohammed Mahdi al-Jawahiri's "In Jail" and W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts"

Suffering and Techniques of Poetic ResistanceMohammed Mahdi al-Jawahiri's "In Jail" and W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" Ahmed F. Khaleel (bio) Many critics and writers agree that the modern political, social, and cultural history of Iraq cannot be studied without referring to Mohammed Mahdi al-Jawahiri, Shaʿir al-ʿArab al-Akbar (the great poet of Arabs), a poet whose career offers insight into the major events of the twentieth century in Iraq. Al-Jawahiri (Najaf, 1899–Damascus, 1997) belongs to a family of renowned religious scholars. His father insisted on teaching him to become a Shiite clergyman. His childhood was a difficult one: while his friends were playing outdoors he was obliged to study classical literature, Shiite doctrine, and classical Arabic language. This exceptional education made him worthy of becoming a scholar at the age of ten, but when his father died shortly after, he found his chance to become what he desired: a poet. Al-Jawahiri is regarded as the last of fohūl ul-shiʿr (the masters of traditional Arabic poetry). This title has been attached to him mainly because he was the last neoclassical poet living in the modern age of Arabic poetry. It is significant to mention in this respect that al-Jawahiri was nominated more than once for the Nobel Prize for peace, not for literature, for dedicating most of his poetry to defending rights, supporting peace, and opposing tyranny and oppression. Al-Jawahiri wrote the poem "Fī al-Sijn" in 1937, while in jail. The study of this poem on the one hand is inspired by the necessity to provide an [End Page 95] analysis of prison writing as a genre that is central to the idea of the poetry of human rights. Prison is one of the pillars of suffering in the Arab world, especially the suffering of the individual. On the other hand, the poem stands as an example of individual suffering, the circumstances that pave the way for its happening, and the kind of outcomes that individual suffering and social apathy could bring forth. The metrical construction of this poem is al-kāmil al-tām (the perfect), which consists of eight syllables in each half line (iambic tetrameter). This verse form is usually very strict, but al-Jawahiri in this poem meant to break the rhythm of the lines, although he did not move from al-kāmil al-tām into another metrical verse form. This metrical construction provides a more flexible space for the employment of sounds and makes the poem suitable for tarnīm (chanting). The choice of this meter is perfect for reflecting the unchanging atmosphere of prison, whose monotony is often broken by the clinking of chains or the sounds of pain made by prisoners. The slight change in the rhythm also provides an irregular but familiar tone, such as: 1. [Mādhā turī] [du min al-zamānī] / [wa min al-raghā]['ibi wa al-amānī] [mustafʿilun] [mutafāʿilātun] / [mutafāʿilun] [mutafāʿilātun]1 (What further desires and wishes / Do you seek from life) 2. [Awa kullamā] [shārafta min] / [āmālika al]-[ghurri al-hisānī] [mutafāʿilun] [mustafʿilun] / [mustafʿilun] [mustafʿilātun] (Haven't you been offered / To see your dreams come true) ("Fī al-Sijn," 1,2) The change, as we notice from these two lines, can hardly be recognized, but by toning them one becomes better able to notice it and like it as well, because it breaks the rigidity of al-kāmil al-tām metrical form. Choosing to tone a sad poem might reflect how al-Jawahiri felt in prison and how this "toning" can offer to help him in this difficult situation. As a public poet whose country was controlled by colonization and its government too vulnerable to suppress corruption, Al-Jawahiri believed that legal action in this polluted environment would not lead to political, social, and economic reform. He expressed in a short poem he titled "Al-Adl" [End Page 96] (Justice, 1937) how big the gap was between law and justice: Laʿamruk inn al-ʿAdl lafzun adā'uh...

Posters for Unwritten Plays

At eighteen years old I was prepared to enter l’Institut des Beaux Arts. The day before the exam I inexplicably changed my mind and went instead to the Institute of Theatre and Cinema Studies. I graduated with honors in theatre criticism and got a job in the literary department of the National Theatre in Bucharest. I hated the censorship (Beckett and Ionesco were forbidden, words were under constant surveillance), but I loved the theatre. I loved what I imagined was happening between the words. In that invisible space of true freedom and solidarity. It was then that I met the legendary Ellen Stewart for the first time. It was a revelatory moment and, certainly, a predestined encounter in my life. Soon after, I managed to escape Ceausescu’s dictatorship. I flew to New York with a bandaged hand: my best friend, the dog across the street, bit me the night before my departure. In New York, while attending the PhD program in theatre at City University, my interest turned to playwriting. I then moved to California where I got an MFA in playwriting from the University of California, San Diego.

Leonardo da Vinci’s drapery studies: characterization of lead white pigments by µ-XRD and 2D scanning XRF

This work focuses on the composition and microstructure of the lead white pigment employed in a set of paintworks, using a combination of µ-XRD and 2D scanning XRF, directly applied on five drapery studies attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and conserved in the Departement des Arts Graphiques, Musee du Louvre and in the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. Trace elements present in the composition as well as in the lead white highlights were imaged by 2D scanning XRF. Mineral phases were determined in a fully noninvasive way using a special µ-XRD diffractometer. Phase proportions were estimated by Rietveld refinement. The analytical results obtained will contribute to differentiate lead white qualities and to highlight the artist’s technique.

The Affairs of Animals in W. H. Auden's MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS

The critical consensus concerning W. H. Auden's “Musee Des Beaux Arts” (1938) agrees that the poem is about human suffering and the failure of others to respond to it. To name a few, Thomas Dilwort...

A consideration of projects from the FUNDBÜRO art research initiative

FUNDBÜRO: a collective art research laboratory conducted between members of the postgraduate research institute Datdata associated with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Lyon and Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg that explores notions of the meaning of loss and recovery for objects and subjects in transit. The exposition describes the progress of three selected projects within FUNDBÜRO, discussing the working methods and the interim outcomes. They are: 1. Field Notes: Cynthia Kros presents a selection of her field notes and contextualises the taking of field notes within theorising of the arts. The format allows playful interaction with thought processes in FUNDBÜRO as a theorising space. 2. 'Chop Shop': this project creatively engages with disassemblage/reassemblage in both regulated and unregulated ways. It replays the vernacular practice of chop shopping in the field of art. 3. 'I had a dream': this project builds on the principles of 'chop shopping' and explores the possibilities of extraction, retelling, and reperforming. As a further sequence of chop shop actions, we interrogate how dreams can become source material for a collective art/theory project. Our collaborative work allows us to create/produce at and with distance. As we examine our projects in the making and the ways in which they interact with each other, we gain an understanding of generative processes which are at the heart of modern 'urban life'.

BASIC DESIGN EDUCATION PARAMETERS IN TURKEY

BASIC DESIGN EDUCATION PARAMETERS IN TURKEY

Starting and Today of the Interior Architecture Education; A Comparative Research on the Models of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi (Former Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) and Ecole Des Beaux Arts

The aim of the research is to examine the education model and architecture and decorative arts programmes formed by taking the “Ecole des Beaux Arts” as model in which Alexander VALLAURY, the founder of the Sanayi_i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi which is the first school that trains certified architect in the Ottoman and Turkish Republic, received education and to compare it with the MSGSÜ Department of Interior architecture. This research covers the France, Ecole des Beaux Arts Department of architecture (approximately 1796-1907), Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi Departments of Architecture and Decorative Arts (Turkish Republic Education Board published in hijri 1340) and MSGSÜ, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Interior Architecture. For this research, the resource and literature review have been done and the data belonging to the first education model which has been determined to continue till 1930 and regulations and programmes have been examined and the comparisons have been made.

Hokusai and Viollet-le-Duc: Eurasian Roots of Design Aesthetics

Although the idea of ＂fine arts＂ or ＂beaux-arts＂ certainly originated in Europe, the ideas of ＂art＂ or ＂arts＂ had already existed in Asia since antiquity or no later than the middle ages. Above all, such elitist terms as ＂beaux-arts＂ or ＂fine arts＂ is a kind of modern concept formulated in the 18th century. Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), an architect, theoretician, and major critic of ＂academic＂ fine-arts education in France and the Ecole des beaux-arts of Paris, equally appreciated the artistic talent of Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Japanese master of printmaking Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) in his last publication ＂Histoire d’un dessinateur＂ (History of a designer) published in Paris in 1879. Hokusai is now world-famous as the artist of some celebrated ukiyo-e prints such as ＂Great Wave off Kanagawa or Red Fuji＂. He was most influential and well-known in 19th-century Europe, however, for his series of ＂Hokusai manga＂, 15 volumes sketches published between 1814 and 1878, the last volumes being posthumously published in Tokyo, a year before the publication of the ＂Histoire d'un dessinateur＂. ＂Hokusai manga＂ means a ＂random collection of Hokusai's drawings＂ rather than a collection of ＂cartoons＂ or ＂comics＂ by Hokusai. It was a veritable encyclopedia of Japanese life and landscape by a versatile Asian artist and designer with whom another all-round European designer Viollet-lu-Duc must have immediately identified himself. His last publication ＂Histoire d’un dessinateur＂, perhaps inspired by the ＂Hokusai manga＂ and a very rare book which used the term ＂dessinateur＂ (designer) in France, was a kind of the last words of Viollet-le-Duc who fought against ＂academic＂ teaching of ＂fine-arts＂ throughout his lifetime for more rational, un-academic, and democratic ＂arts,＂ while worrying about the outdated ＂design＂ education in France.

Mound of butter: Antoine Vollon.

Mound of butter: Antoine Vollon.

Neil Corcoran Shakespeare and the Modern PoetShakespeare and the Modern Poet. Neil Corcoran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. v+248.

<i>Neil Corcoran</i> Shakespeare and the Modern Poet<i>Shakespeare and the Modern Poet</i>. Neil Corcoran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. v+248.

The image that wants to be read: an invitation for interpretation in a drawing by Albrecht Dürer

A drawing by Albrecht Dürer in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rennes depicts angels and devils recording the thoughts of the virtuous and the sinful. In the foreground of the image, a cluster of angels hold forth a sign, on which is written the injunction, “here write what you wish.” These words have been considered as evidence of an inter-artistic dialogue aimed at a collaborator, and as a direct address from the artist to the viewer. This article considers another possibility: that the drawing was intended as a gift, characteristic of the witty exchanges between Albrecht Dürer and his friend, Lazarus Spengler. Invitations to interpretation were not only transmitted from artists to close confidants, but also from artists to anonymous viewers through the medium of prints, which invited textual markings by their owners and occasions for viewer responses to the messages contained within.

Introduction: On the Substance of Wax

The figure of wax is properly the setting wherein the appearance of humanity outdoes itself.1 When Anish Kapoor's Svayambh (Fig. 1) premiered at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, France, in 2007, its resonance with the rich history of wax in art production was not immediately apparent. Though vaguely reminiscent of red sealing wax, the gigantic forty-ton blood-coloured block, pushed forwards on rails while smearing thick fat streaks on the museum's walls and floor, was too raw, too intimidating, and too messy to evoke, for instance, the breathtaking likenesses of eighteenth-century wax portraits, the refined Renaissance art of small wax medallions, the sophisticated drama of Baroque wax reliefs, the graceful statuettes of Degas, or the surreal body parts of Robert Gober. In hindsight, Svayambh (which means ‘self-generated’ in Sanskrit), arriving at London's Royal Academy in 2009, this time accompanied by a cannon firing bright red wax bullets at the snow-white gallery wall, clearly stood at the beginning of a wave of interest in contemporary wax sculpture. Indeed, in 2011, Urs Fischer showed his much-commented-upon melting figures at the Venice Biennale (Fig. 2), and the Denmark show Wax: Sensation in Contemporary Sculpture exhibited works by Vanessa Beechcroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Gavin Turk, and the Yangjiang Group, among other artists. A year later, Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax opened in Venice's Palazzo Fortuny, while a hyper-realistic portrait of Henry Moore, originally made by Karen Newman for Madame Tussauds in 1995, resurfaced in Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture at the Holborne Museum in Bath, which also included Ron Mueck's famous Mask II (2001).

Art, Architecture, and Religious Orders in the Latin Americas: From Quebec to Quito

Art, Architecture, and Religious Orders in the Latin AmericasFrom Quebec to Quito Gauvin Alexander Bailey (bio) Painting of the Kingdoms: Shared Identities; Territories of the Spanish Monarchy, 16th–18th centuries. 4 volumes. Edited by Juana Gutiérrez Haces; introduction by Jonathan Brown. Mexico City: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2008–2009. Pp. xlviii + 1503. $400.00 cloth. ISBN: 9786077612063. Les arts en Nouvelle-France. Edited by Laurier Lacroix. Quebec City: Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, 2012. Pp. 296. $59.95 paper. ISBN: 9782551252114. Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika: Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Band II: Chile (1618–1771). Edited by Johannes Meier and Michael Müller. Münster: Aschendorff, 2011. Pp. 1 + 458. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9783402117897. Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika: Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Band III: Neugranada (1618–1771). Edited by Johannes Meier and Christoph Nebgen. Münster: Aschendorff, 2008. Pp. xxxvi + 244. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9783402117880. The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito / El arte de la pintura en Quito colonial. Edited by Susanne L. Stratton-Pruitt. Philadelphia: St Joseph’s University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 337. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 978091601695. Imágenes guaraní-jesuíticas: Paraguay, Argentina, Brasil. By Bozidar Darko Sustersic. Asunción, Paraguay: Centro de Artes Visuales / Museo del Barro, 2010. Pp. 421. ISBN: 9789995386948. Quito, ciudad de maestros: Arquitectos, edificios y urbanismo en el largo siglo XVII. By Susan V. Webster. Quito: Abya-Yala, 2012. Pp. viii + 298. $40.00 cloth. ISBN: 9789942090706. [End Page 181] The past four years have witnessed a sea change in the scholarship on viceregal Iberian American art history as well as that of the other Latin America, Nouvelle-France. Although the literature on Iberian America continues to focus mainly on the traditional New Spain/Cuzco/Lima corridor, new monographs on the arts of Quito (two in 2012 alone, The Art of Painting in Colonial Quito; and Quito, ciudad de maestros) and Paraguay (Imágenes guaraní-jesuíticas, 2010), as well as superlative archival studies of the impact of non-Spanish Jesuit priests and brothers—many of them craftsmen and architects—on Nueva Granada and Chile (Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika, volumes 2 and 3, 2011Jesuiten aus Zentraleuropa in Portugiesisch- und Spanisch-Amerika, volumes 2 and 3, 2008) are demanding that scholars no longer treat those regions as marginal to the field. Likewise, a major four-volume compendium of the painting of the Spanish Empire (Painting of the Kingdoms, 2008) has focused new attention on transatlantic themes, looking at artistic interaction within the entire Spanish Empire, including the Americas, Flanders, Portugal (under the Spanish monarchy between 1580 and 1640), and Southern Italy, although regrettably neglecting the Philippines. Similarly, colonial Québécois art history, hitherto virtually unknown outside the province and subject primarily to survey treatments, now takes its place on the hemispheric stage with a thematic, intelligent, and visually rich exhibition and companion volume from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City (Les arts en Nouvelle-France, 2012) that compels us to acknowledge the commonalities of the arts and visual culture of this region and those of its Catholic counterparts to the south. Although wide ranging, the volumes of Painting of the Kingdoms—published in advance of a blockbuster exhibition at the Prado and Palacio Nacional in Madrid (2010–2011)—fall short of being encyclopaedic, since the project limits itself primarily to pre–Bourbon era painting and concentrates on Europe, Mexico, and Peru despite brief forays into Brazil, Quito, and Nueva Granada. Its main theme, that the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church were “agents of unity” (25) in the Americas, risks turning into a celebration of European sovereignty, but enough of the chapters focus on regional variations that it avoids falling into that trap. Each volume takes a different theme, with some overlap. The first, One King, Many Kingdoms: New Perspectives, considers global interaction and the notion of a new artistic language arising from contact between dialects. The second, The Kingdoms and Painting, features surveys of painting in Spain, Italy, New Spain, Peru, and Luso-Brazil (mostly Portugal) and is useful in illuminating the diversity within these regions. The...

One-bedroom solo (review)

Reviewed by: one-bedroom solo Metta Sáma (bio) Sheila Maldonado . one-bedroom solo. Fly by Night Press. In the Afro Punk film The Triptych, visual artist Barron Claiborne provocatively urges listeners to throw out Richard Wright books because, to paraphrase, no [End Page 173] one's life is that bad. His distaste for Wright was in the utter sadness and depression present in the books, the lack of humor and, so to speak, Good Times. Sheila Maldonado's debut poetry collection, one-bedroom solo, would not disappoint the reader who seeks levity in tales of the New York City working class. Maldonado's poems are performance pieces; she sees the performance of daily interactions (yes, the world is a stage). Often the poet "maneuver[s]," "tip-toe[s]," "slide[s]" from one encounter to the next, negotiating her self-made world with the commotion around her. Finding a parking spot, for example, is a negotiation and ritual between herself and the "mighty beneficent Parking God," who blesses her with a car in a neighborhood that is "hundreds of thousands strong / each vicious resident with his own car" ("All Hail the Parking God"). Language, itself a performance, comes to humorous life when a Spanish language song plays on the radio, and the chanteur sings one thing and a girl hears another ("Bubbles of Love"): 1990, Juan Luis Guerra puts out his most famous song and it goes like this: . . . O-o-o-o-oPasar la noche en velaMojado en tiU-u-u-u-un pez A girl deep in the recesses of Brooklyn, hears this: . . . O-o-o-o-oTo spend the night Idon'tknowwhatthisphrasemeanswet inside youA-a-a-a-a fish In conventional written English rules, when a non-English language is written, it's performed in italics. In Maldonado's poems, she ignores those rules, truly blending Spanish language with English language. For example, in "Tube Ties," she writes: "We both correct her / quick, 'Todavía / está, a las dos / de la mañana."' This quiet political statement can be seen elsewhere in Maldonado's poems, a sleight of hand that subtly maximizes the politics in the poems. The poems are often simultaneously dependent on music, the visual world, and words to transform everyday experiences. "Pool," which begins, "Words have not held me up like the water does. I would like them / to try, acquire a density that changes gravity, changes how I think / of me, if I think of me," stages the tone for solo wanderings. The performance of language, music, and the visual world, a dynamic trio, becomes the locus for the metaphysical eye. Often the wandering philosopher is depicted as a grand sojourner who moves from one part of the country to the next, from one continent to the next, in order to understand human nature and the origins of human behavior. While the narrator [End Page 174] in Maldonado's poems certainly travels across the globe, her main travels are from one New York City borough to the next, and in these travels, she also seeks to understand the ways in which people behave and desire. She is able to locate then the beauty in, say, a park at night (which, in NYC, automatically becomes a battlefield at nightfall), which a potential mugger may see as a space ripe with opportunities. From "At the Meer in Harlem," she writes: It's me with me in the dark park hoping no one will be stabbing me. No one should be. It feels too cozy mellow for stabbing. If it were to happen it would be aesthetically inappropriate. That criminal would have done a disservice to his/her art. That's what I would tell him/her. It's not a night for that. Make out the ducks in the middle of the ripple, stabber. Avoid the raccoon silhouette on the garbage can. Count the orbs of traffic signal lamppost light, yellow, red, white in the bizarre water. Take in the green smoke. Cleverly painting a "wavy, impressionistic Monet world," the poem calls to mind W. H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles" and "Museé des Beaux Arts." Maldonado's...