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Near the end of her new study on the group portraits of Henri Fantin-Latour, Bridget Alsdorf notes: “The history of nineteenth-century French art is a field fascinated by movements and collective politics, yet still dominated by accounts of singular artists and oeuvres. Although we depend on groups to give structure to history, as artists depended on them to provide camaraderie and support, it has proved difficult to imagine the artistic self as formed fundamentally by way of others” (227). Her book Fellow Men: Fantin-Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-Century French Painting goes a long way toward rectifying… Full Review

The exhibition catalogue for Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits is the third published in an ongoing partnership between the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and the Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. Each year visitors to the Texas museum are treated to a new, small exhibition that centers on a work brought to the United States from Spain. El Greco and José de Ribera starred in the first two installments of this series, and in 2012 it was Velázquez’s turn, represented by the Prado’s important early full-length Portrait of Philip IV (ca. 1623–28). The choice could… Full Review

Patricia Emison's The Italian Renaissance and Cultural Memory examines some of the most celebrated works of art of the Italian Renaissance. Its itinerary is not based on a linear, chronological trajectory, but rather on salient issues and works that have defined the field of early modern art history. Emison establishes her objectives in the introductory chapter, stating that her book addresses students of the Italian Renaissance who wish to learn more about specific topics as well as a more general audience interested in acquiring a broader knowledge of this extraordinarily rich period in the history of art. In Emison's own… Full Review

“I am forgetting the art world. It’s going now—and fast” (2). These are the words that inaugurate Pamela Lee’s new book, a study of the impact of globalization on contemporary art practice. They seem initially to describe her growing fatigue with the art world’s rapid fashion cycle of artists, styles, and theorists du jour—an understandable if prosaic exhaustion. Quickly, though, the problem she means to articulate becomes more serious and encompassing, if more difficult to pin down. Detached from the problematics of medium and the social formations of bohemia and the avant-garde, the art world accelerates and sprawls, such that… Full Review

“Not for Beginners” would make an appropriate subtitle for Therese Dolan’s methodologically varied and critically diverse collection of essays on the master of French modernism, Édouard Manet. Noncommittally and appropriately entitled Perspectives on Manet, the volume presents a picture of Manet that is as thought-provoking and smart as it is fragmentary. Dolan makes no apologies for the sense of noncohesiveness among its nine distinct essays. Rather, she explains that it is a testament to Manet’s genius that such a heterogeneous collection of opinions and investigations could arise, and will continue to arise, from his paintings. Indeed, Manet’s… Full Review

For over a century, the history of Mantua and the Gonzaga family’s role in shaping the cultural heritage of early modern Italy has comprised the subject of numerous, often excellent, scholarly publications. Most have focused on specific members of the Gonzaga dynasty—Isabella d’Este in primis—or on their court artists, or on the impact of these individuals’ activities in the fields of architecture, literature, theater, music, and the visual arts. Only recently have scholars begun to explore the social and artistic networks formed beyond the innermost circles of the Gonzaga court; a notable example is Guido Rebecchini’s 2002 volume, Private… Full Review

Lisa N. Owen’s Carving Devotion in the Jain Caves at Ellora presents a thorough analysis of its subject. The expansive site at Ellora has been studied for a long time, but the Jain excavations have been considered a sort of footnote to the Hindu and Buddhist ones there. The site’s chronology has already been established, so Owen does not need to dwell on stylistic analysis to come up with relative dates but instead considers these caves in a much more focused way. Where Jain art has often been treated in a superficial manner, Owen considers from a Jain perspective the… Full Review

Published on the occasion of the El Greco und die Moderne exhibition at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, this catalogue examines how artists and writers responded to the figure who, after centuries of neglect, experienced acclaim in the decades around 1900. Historians already know the basic outline, for example, of how Julius Meier-Graefe and Roger Fry linked the work of the native of Crete with the concerns of early twentieth-century painters. Many implications of that development, however, remain largely unfamiliar to scholars and enthusiasts alike. The chief contribution of this book is its ambitious illustration of how international artists drew… Full Review

War/Photography, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition by the same name at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) (click here for review), is a massive and important book. Topping out at 606 pages with hundreds of photographs gathered from archives around the world, War/Photography is now and will be for many years a crucial resource for anyone working on war and photography. According to the authors, most notably Anne Wilkes Tucker, the chief curator and engineer of the project, “the primary goal . . . has been to expand the discourse about photographs of armed conflict and… Full Review

Originally published in Japanese in 1999, Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty (Meiji Kokka to Kindai Bijutsu: Bi no Seijigaku) by Satō Dōshin was hailed as the culmination of the ongoing attempts by some Japanese art historians, including Satō himself, to adopt a more self-reflexive approach to their own discipline.[1] Throughout the book he argues that, although the narrative of Japanese art history was constructed as a "self-portrait" to be presented to the West, the implicit significance of its origin and reception were never arduously scrutinized almost fifty years into the postwar period. His study… Full Review