Browse Recent Book Reviews

Mary Ann Eaverly’s Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach addresses the skin color differentiation of men and women in ancient Egyptian and Greek art. Eaverly criticizes the marginalization of this topic in current scholarly discussion and contends that, in instances where the topic has been explored, interpretations are generally outdated. According to Eaverly, the consensus that male/female skin color differentiation occurs because it realistically indicates sun exposure—men are habitually outside in the sun, whereas women remain indoors—is an inadequate conclusion that continues to be recycled in scholarship today. In the book, she… Full Review

La peinture d’histoire occupe une place singulière dans l’histoire de l’art hollandais du XVIIe siècle. Cette peinture universelle qui, contrairement aux genres, s’adressent aux talents particuliers, suppose la maîtrise de toutes les parties de la peinture, est considérée théoriquement comme «le degré le plus haut et le plus important de l’art de peinture» (Samuel van Hoogstraten). De la peinture, elle est considérée en effet comme la partie la plus difficile, qui exige d’idéaliser la nature visible d’après l’antique, les grands maîtres et les grandes fables poétiques et historiques et de représenter la figure humaine, ses mouvements comme ses passions. … Full Review

Textbooks of nineteenth-century European art rarely mention the 1871 Paris Commune since it produced few memorable artworks, save for André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri’s photographs of dead bodies in coffins. The Commune is typically described as a workers’ insurrection that emerged after the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War left the city in ruins and absent of political authority as a result of the conservative government helmed by Adolphe Thiers having moved its headquarters to Versailles, along with most of the city’s wealthy population. Those left behind in the predominantly working-class neighborhoods established their own government on March 18, 1871. Disdéri’s images… Full Review

The Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475–1540 catalogue accompanied the first exhibition staged outside Germany focusing entirely on Renaissance art in Augsburg. It is a handsome, small-format hardcover, beautifully designed and illustrated with superb color reproductions. It contains three essays and a checklist of the 102 objects exhibited—of which, regrettably, fewer than half are illustrated. The vast majority of these are prints, complemented by a few drawings and medals, slightly compromising the title of the publication which seems to imply a more balanced selection. The core of the exhibits is drawn from the rich holdings at the National Gallery… Full Review

Cathédrales 1789–1914: Un mythe moderne provides a rich overview of the post-Revolutionary European fascination for depicting Gothic architecture in art. Reproducing some 180 works by 60 artists working in different media—including painting, sculpture, photography, furniture, jewelry, and wood carving—this beautifully illustrated catalogue is the fruit of an exhibition presented first at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen and then at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Fondation Corboud in Cologne. Like many commemorative exhibitions from 2014, this one, too, references the Great War, yet it focuses much more on shared values (mutual fascination for cathedrals) than on the cultural antagonism inherent in the… Full Review

On first glance, Robin Kelsey’s Photography and the Art of Chance appears to be a playful book. Its cover features three orange balls against a bright blue sky, a detail from Conceptual artist John Baldessari’s 1973 photographic series Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts). However, in both its physical heft and intellectual ambitions, this is not a light or lighthearted book. Instead, this study of photography from its beginnings in the 1830s to its acceptance by the U.S. art world in the 1970s combines a history of the medium with… Full Review

Numerous books have been written about William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. While he is revered for his contributions as a sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist, Du Bois was also a poet, playwright, and novelist, and believed very deeply in the social and political potency of art. Art historians have noted the great influence this pioneering figure had on the careers of early twentieth-century artists. He encouraged the sculptors Meta Warrick Fuller and Edmonia Lewis, as well as the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, to create art that emphasized black subject matter. In his essay “Criteria of Negro Art,” Du Bois formulated… Full Review

Thomas Crow’s scholarship has indelibly shaped the reception of Pop in the field of art history. In his 1996 book, Modern Art in the Common Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press), Crow advanced a reading of Andy Warhol that has had a lasting impact on how scholars understand the artist’s conflicted relationship to mass culture. Specifically, he argued that Warhol’s most powerful work examined the breakdown of commodity exchange in postwar society, an impulse connected to a tradition of truth-telling in U.S. commercial culture. Crow’s interpretation has come to stand for one of the primary methodological approaches to Pop—the “referential”… Full Review

The title under review is about the long lives of books—their authors and content, influential readers and reception. There is something highly satisfying about the structure of the book, for our experience of the changing shape of art history is primarily through the reading of books and measuring their impact from the ensuing debates. Despite the choice of books (rather than the theories, methodologies, or figures that usually structure surveys of modern art historiography), most of the chosen works did articulate a position in the discipline, and most of the essays in The Books That Shaped Art History demonstrate just… Full Review

The interactive website “Object:Photo, The Thomas Walther Collection” (visited March 2016) presents an archive of 241 photographs acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2001. The site is part of a multiplatform rollout, including a catalogue (Object:Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014) and an exhibition (Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949). All three components showcase new research and scholarship on the collection, which was partially supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The “Object:Photo” website features traditional scholarly essays… Full Review