Recently Published Reviews

The first English-language book on this mid-nineteenth-century French painter, The Deaths of Henri Regnault will become an important reference with its many leads for art historians to pursue. Its first four chapters examine Regnault’s decade-long career, which took off when he won the Prix de Rome in 1866 and ended with his death in 1871; the final three examine his posthumous reputation until World War I, when it precipitously declined. Marc Gotlieb’s attempt to revive Regnault’s critical fortunes is laudable but hampered by a tendency to accept and extend Third Republic propaganda that lionized the artist. Regnault’s untimely death coincided… Full Review

It is hard to imagine that a painter as provocative and awe-inspiring as Rembrandt created his oeuvre without having a theory of art. His works are outspoken, offering robust statements (as Hubert Damisch and Mieke Bal would say) about the nature and status of pictorial representation. To have such pictorial statements further articulated and contextualized would have made a great book. However, in Rembrandt: The Painter Thinking, Ernst van de Wetering approaches with great caution the idea that Rembrandt possessed a theory of art, revealing from the outset an ambivalent view of art theory as such. In his preface… Full Review

The illuminating exhibition Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life recently at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), explored the deep connections between what seems at first glance to be the work of two starkly different artists. Both the exhibition and meticulously researched catalogue essay examine the common threads that bind Munch, the Norwegian Symbolist known for his dramatic, intensely personal depictions of the fleeting pleasures and enduring anxieties associated with life, death, and sexuality; and Johns, the post-1945 American artist known for rejecting precisely the notion of art as personal expression… Full Review

Women, Geography, Borders in the Age of (Anti)Globalization— The constituency of women is the primary subject of two books co-edited by art historian Marsha Meskimmon; and as represented in the above-listed volumes, the 2013 title was coedited with Dorothy C. Rowe while the 2016 compendium was with first editor Marion Arnold. The two collections of essays contribute to the resurgence of the name of woman in the aftermath of the disavowal of the term following the 1990s gender deconstructions that challenged the heteronormative signifier. As articulated by Arnold and Meskimmon, the name of woman “does not presuppose a singular… Full Review

In his introduction to Renaissance Art in Venice: From Tradition to Individualism, Tom Nichols takes careful aim at some overused concepts in the discussion of Venetian art, namely the characterization of it as distinguished by colore as opposed to disegno, and qualities of venezianità and mediocritas. He cautions his readers that these narratives do “little to explain the more dynamic dimensions of art and architecture in this period, and fail to account for the radical changes in their appearance” (8). This is a judicious beginning. Without rejecting past insights, Nichols offers a history of Venetian art that… Full Review

The forty works featured in Icon of Modernism: Representing the Brooklyn Bridge, 1883–1950 illustrate the influence that the imposing New York architectural landmark has had on modernist artists of varying stripes since its completion in 1883 to just after the Second World War. Included are a mix of paintings, works on paper, and photographs executed in several modernist styles from American Impressionism to Surrealism that depict the bridge from key vantage points. In fact, in the accompanying exhibition catalogue curator Sarah Kate Gillespie identifies three distinct categories of bridge imagery, the first being “views of the long sweep of the… Full Review

The 2016 TarraWarra Biennial was conceptualized as an exchange between two influential modes within contemporary art today: the recurring “biennial” exhibition format and the prevalence of contemporary art journals. The exhibition’s curatorial premise, its catalogue, and its associated program of talks and publications were envisaged by curators Victoria Lynn (director of TarraWarra Museum of Art) and Helen Hughes (co-founder of Discipline journal) as being not simply in dialogue with each other, but constructing an interconnected project not bounded by gallery walls or catalogue pages. The biennial’s theme, “Endless Circulation,” suggested a feeling of perpetual movement and flux that occurs… Full Review

Marking the centenary of the Mexican Constitution (and some argue the end of the Mexican Revolution), the year 2017 is the occasion for many celebrations of Mexican art and culture. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950 offers a rare opportunity to see numerous exceptional examples of Mexican modern art, many loaned from private collections. The exhibition and its accompanying lavishly illustrated catalogue are collaborations between the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Curators Matthew Affron, Mark A. Castro, Dafne Cruz Porchini, and Renato González Mello’s welcome transnational perspective… Full Review

With breaking news coming out of the White House daily, if given the chance, what would you “wish to say” to President Trump? What might you ask him? What would be your most pressing issue to discuss? Would you be able to fit it on a postcard? Sheryl Oring has been asking the public these and related questions for over a decade in her project, “I Wish to Say.” Donning 1960s-era dress suits, she travels across the country with her portable public office, a vintage manual typewriter in tow, and an ear to lend. What amassed is a diverse archive… Full Review

This excellent book by the feminist scholar, critic, and curator Jenni Sorkin exemplifies the value of incorporating craft and other forms of applied art more fully into the history of the avant-garde. Sorkin reveals the important role played by women ceramic artists of the 1950s and 1960s in shaping collective and performative experiences of art. Women ceramicists built alternative communities of practitioners while exploring issues of form and process, and Sorkin argues that their work anticipated avant-garde collectives and participatory art forms of the late twentieth century. Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community participates in a growing effort to… Full Review

A legendary artist with an extraordinary life story and a larger-than-life persona, Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) is a difficult subject for study, which leaves little room for diverse interpretation. Her account of mental illness and the fact that she has been living in a psychiatric hospital since the mid-1970s—upon returning to Tokyo after struggling in New York for recognition and success in the 1960s—have shaped not only public perception but also scholarly analysis of her artwork. When she reappeared on the international art scene in the early 1990s after two decades of relative obscurity, scholarship and criticism of her practice… Full Review

Finally there exists a comprehensive study of Russian painting before the twentieth century: Rosalind Blakesley’s gloriously illustrated, exceptionally researched history of painting from the foundation of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1757 to the death of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. This is a book we may not have even known we were waiting for, but now that it is here, it may well change the field of art history. To say that “it fills a gap in existing literature” (2) is a gross understatement. The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757–1881 not only shows us in profound… Full Review

Of Elephants and Roses: French Natural History, 1790–1830 offers an ambitious model for fostering interdisciplinary scholarly conversations between the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and literary history. An edited collection of papers that were delivered at a symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition at the American Philosophical Society in 2011 entitled Encounters with French Natural History, 1790–1830, the lavishly illustrated volume contains twenty essays and a checklist of all the objects on display at the exhibition. The result is an innovative kind of exhibition catalogue of the highest scholarly caliber: in the place of… Full Review

In their introduction to the exhibition catalogue Terry Fox: Elemental Gestures, editors Arnold Dreyblatt and Angela Lammert remark on the artist’s current position on the edge of art history. A vital force in the often overlooked San Francisco art scene of the late 1960s and 1970s, Terry Fox (1943–2008) appears to have found greater appreciation outside of the United States, particularly within mainland Europe. (It is perhaps telling that a retrospective of this scale was first mounted in Berlin, and that the Seattle-born artist is described here as “American-European”—presumably in recognition of the considerable time he spent living and… Full Review

With so much attention given to the music of the black diaspora in recent years, scholars of race have perhaps neglected other areas of popular culture, in particular fashion and style. But has fashion really been critical to the forging of racial and ethnic identity? Carol Tulloch seems to think so, hence her fascinating book brings together discussions of race, style, aesthetics, diasporic identities, and modernity. Black style has had a huge impact on twentieth-century fashion. Its absence within social history, cultural studies, and fashion studies is surprising. This is why Tulloch’s work on the emergence and enduring significance of… Full Review