Print Quarterly, June 2019
Francisco Goya, Tan poco (So little), plate 36 of the Disasters of War, ca. 1810–13, etching and aquatint, 157 × 205 mm
(London: British Museum)
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The eighteenth century in the current issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 36.2 (June 2019)
A R T I C L E S
Natalia Keller, “On Goya’s Disasters of War, Plates 69 and 36,” pp. 139–45.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828) paid careful attention to both the visual and textual components of his compositions. The concise titles accompanying the images of his prints were an important reflection of their author’s intention. The article highlights how posthumous changes made by the Royal Academy to the Disasters of War series substantially changed their meanings. The change from Nada. Ello lo dice to Nada. Ello dirá has been noted and discussed. An explanation and interpretation of Goya’s hitherto overlooked original title Tan poco (‘So little’), which was erroneously changed to Tampoco, is here proposed.
N O T E S A N D R E V I E W S
Stephen Bergquist, “Reversed States of Two Landscapes by Crescenzio Onofri,” pp. 181–85.
“Onofri’s etches oeuvre consists of twelve landscape prints after his own series of paintings of 1696, five with mythological subjects, in larger format, and seven in pure landscape, in smaller format” (183). Bergquist corrects the misidentification in The Illustrated Bartsch (volume 45, 1990) of two states of two of the landscape prints: The Double-Arched Bridge and A Waterfall.
Caspar David Friedrich, Woman Seated under a Spider’s Web (Melancholy), ca. 1803, woodcut, 171 × 121 mm (Philadelphia Museum of Art).
Elizabeth McGrath, Review of Temi Odumosu, Africans in English Caricature 1769–1819: Black Jokes, White Humor (Brepols, 2017), pp. 185–88.
Temi Odumosu’s book addresses the black figure in British satirical prints by artists such as Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, Isaac and George Cruikshank, and Richard Newton, some of it a low-point in the history of racist imagery. Odumosu demonstrates how the ultimate target of the satire is almost always white people, the black characters in the prints being there as agents, or simply elements, in the mockery of others. Through her dedicated researches, Odumosu has uncovered a mass of new information and teased out previously baffling contemporary references, including to popular songs, theatre, and opera. In short, the book is, according to McGrath, “a triumph of historical scholarship which has particular importance for and relevance to the understanding of society in Britain today” (188).
Peter Prange, Review of John Ittmann, ed., Enchanted World of German Romantic Prints, 1770–1850 (Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 226–31.
John Smith Philipps bequeathed his collection of about 8,500 German prints to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. “In 1985 it was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a first exhibition entitled Art and Nature: German Printmaking, 1750–1850 followed in 1992. It is now the subject of the extensive volume The Enchanted World of German Romantic Prints, 1770–1850. . .” (227).
P U B L I C A T I O N S R E C E I V E D
• Florian Knothe, Pascal-François Bertrand, Kristel Smentek, and Nicholas Pearce, Imagining Qianlong: Louis XV’s Chinese Emperor Tapestries and Battle Scene Prints at the Imperial Court in Beijing, exhibition catalogue (Hong Kong University Press, 2017), p. 208.
• The Multigraph Collective, Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation (The University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 208.
• Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, et al., Ercolano e Pompei: Visioni di una scoperta / Herculaneum and Pompeii: Visions of a Discovery (Skira, 2018), pp. 208–09.
• Nicola Streeten and Cath Tate, eds., with contributions by Sheila O’Connell, Simon Grennan, Elizabeth Crawford, Carol Bennett, and Sofia Niazi, The Inking Woman: 250 Years of British Women Cartoon and Comic Artists (Myriad Editions, 2018), p. 209.
Hogarth’s ‘William Wollaston and His Family’ to Remain in Leicester
William Hogarth, William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior, signed and dated 1730, oil on canvas, 99 × 125 cm (Leicester: New Walk Museum and Art Gallery).
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Press release (24 May 2019) from the UK’s Art Fund:
An important painting by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth has been saved for the nation following a crowdfunding campaign and support from Art Fund. The painting William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior has been acquired by the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester where it has been displayed on a loan basis for 75 years. The work was acquired via the Acceptance in Lieu scheme following the ‘Save the Hogarth Campaign’, which raised over £500,000.
William Hogarth was born in London at the end of the 17th century and is best known for his moral series including A Rake’s Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode and his prints such as Beer Street and Gin Lane. He was also recognised for his ‘conversation pieces’—informal group portraits that depict a large amount of people who were often families.
William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior is a conversation piece that depicts the family of William Wollaston, who was MP for Ipswich from 1733 until 1741. Hogarth was commissioned to paint the piece following a period of mourning for the family after the death of William’s elder brother Charlton Wollaston, the former head of the family. This is reflected in the black clothing of some of the sitters, as well as the cloths hung over the wall decoration and Charlton’s bust on the mantelpiece. The painting has been passed down through the Leicester Wollaston family, who have lived in the county of Leicestershire since 1652.
The work will remain on display to the public until 6 September 2019, before being removed for conservation cleaning in preparation for a series of public events and and an exhibition dedicated to the work and Hogarth in early 2020.
Stephen Deuchar, Director of Art Fund, said: “This is such a great acquisition for Leicester—a real coup to have acquired a work of such landmark significance to both Hogarth’s career and the wider history of 18th-century British art. We are delighted to have helped.”
Exhibition | The Sweetness of Life
From the Norton Simon:
The Sweetness of Life: Three 18th-Century French Paintings from The Frick Collection
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 14 June — 9 September 2019
Jean-Siméon Chardin, Lady with a Bird-Organ, 1753 (?), oil on canvas (lined), 20 × 17 inches (New York: The Frick Collection).
Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, the eminent 19th-century historians of French art and society, baptized the 1700s the ‘century of women’. Though 18th-century women did make strides in the sciences, literature, and the arts, they were most often portrayed in genre scenes pursuing leisurely, quotidian pleasures and tasks. Three superb 18th-century French genre paintings from The Frick Collection in New York, part of an ongoing reciprocal exchange program, are on view this summer at the Museum. These artfully constructed visions of contemporary life and fashion, as depicted by François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, provide viewers with an intimate look at the lives of middle-class French women of the 1740s and 1750s. The paintings will be installed in the Museum’s 18th-century Rococo gallery among its own works by Chardin and Boucher, as well as paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
S E L E C T E D P R O G R A M M I N G
• David Pullins (Assistant Curator, The Frick Collection), Female Models in the ‘Century of Women’: From Fiction to Reality in Chardin, Boucher, and Greuze
Saturday, 15 June, 4:00pm
• Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell (Fashion Historian), Fashioning the Feminine in 18th-Century France: Dress, Desire and Domesticity in Three Works from The Frick Collection
Saturday, 24 August 24, 4:00pm
Lonnie Bunch to Lead the Smithsonian
From the press release (28 May 2019). . .
Photo of Lonnie Bunch III, by Michael Barnes, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents announced today it elected Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, effective June 16.
Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016. He oversees the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history.
Bunch’s election is unprecedented for the Smithsonian: He will be the first African American to lead the Smithsonian, and the first historian elected Secretary. In addition, he will be the first museum director to ascend to Secretary in 74 years.
“Lonnie Bunch guided, from concept to completion, the complex effort to build the premier museum celebrating African American achievements,” said John G. Roberts, Jr., Smithsonian Chancellor and Chief Justice of the United States. “I look forward to working with him as we approach the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary, to increase its relevance and role as a beloved American institution and public trust.”
Bunch, a public historian, has spent more than 35 years in the museum field, where he is regarded as one of the nation’s leading figures in the historical and museum community. He and the Board of Regents are committed to driving forward the priorities and direction of the Smithsonian’s 2022 strategic plan.
“I am humbled and honored to become the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,” Bunch said. “I am excited to work with the Board of Regents and my colleagues throughout the Institution to build upon its legacy and to ensure that the Smithsonian will be even more relevant and more meaningful and reach more people in the future.”
The Regents’ 11-member search committee was co-led by Board Chair David Rubenstein and Board Vice Chair Steve Case.
“Lonnie is a deeply respected scholar, educator and leader,” Rubenstein said. “In looking for someone who would shepherd the Institution into the future, we wanted to find a special person with equal parts talent and passion. Fortunately, the ideal choice for our next Secretary was already an integral part of the Smithsonian family.”
“After working at the Smithsonian in various capacities over three decades, and then birthing a wildly successful startup within the Smithsonian, Lonnie has the benefit of knowing the Smithsonian intimately,” Case said. “Now Lonnie will bring his insights and passion to reimagining the Smithsonian of the future, and creating a culture of agility and innovation to expand the Institution’s impact. The Regents stand ready to support Lonnie’s vision for driving cross-institutional collaboration to create a virtual Smithsonian that can reach everybody, everywhere.”
Under Bunch’s leadership, the National Museum of African American History and Culture came to life. When he started as director in 2005, he had one staff member, no collections, no funding and no site for a museum. Driven by optimism, determination and a commitment to build “a place that would make America better,” Bunch transformed a vision into a bold reality. The museum has welcomed about 4 million visitors and compiled a collection of 40,000 objects. The museum is the first “green building” on the National Mall. He rallied donors of every level and worked with Congress to fund the museum through a public-private collaboration.
Previously, Bunch was the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history (2001–05). There, he led a successful capital campaign to transform the Historical Society in celebration of its 150th anniversary, managed an institutional reorganization and began an unprecedented outreach initiative to diverse communities.
A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from the black military experience to the American presidency to the impact of race in the American West. He has also written extensively about diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums.
Bunch’s Smithsonian experience spans three museums: the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum.
Bunch held a number of positions at the National Museum of American History from 1989 through 2000. As the museum’s associate director for curatorial affairs from 1994 to 2000, he oversaw the curatorial and collections management staff. While assistant director for curatorial affairs (1992–94) at the museum, Bunch supervised the planning and implementation of the museum’s research and collection programs. As a supervising curator for the museum from 1989 to 1992, he oversaw several of the museum’s divisions, including Community Life and Political History.
Bunch began his Smithsonian career as an education specialist and historian at the National Air and Space Museum from 1978 to 1979.
Bunch was curator of history and program manager for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1989. While there, he organized several award-winning exhibitions, including The Black Olympians, 1904–1950 and Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850–1950. He also produced several historical documentaries for public television.
Born and raised in the Newark, New Jersey, area, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions at universities across the country, including American University and George Washington University, both in Washington, D.C.
Bunch has served on the advisory boards of the American Association of Museums, the Association of African American Museums, the American Association for State and Local History and ICOM-US. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. In 2005, Bunch was named one of the 100 most influential museum professionals of the 20th century by the American Association of Museums.
In 2017, Bunch was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That same year, he was given the President’s Award at the NAACP Image Awards, and the Greater Washington Urban League presented him with the Impact Leader Award. In 2018, the Phi Beta Kappa Society presented Bunch with the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities, and the National Education Association honored him with the Award for Distinguished Service to Education.
Bunch received his master’s (1976) and bachelor’s (1974) degrees from American University in Washington, D.C., in African American and American history. He is married to Maria Marable-Bunch, associate director for museum learning and programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Bunch succeeds David Skorton, a board-certified cardiologist, who is leaving the Smithsonian to become president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges.
The Search Process
In December 2018, the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents formed an 11-member committee to search for a Secretary to succeed Skorton. The committee was assisted by the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. Rubenstein and Case co-chaired the committee. The Regents committee and search firm conducted meetings with key Smithsonian stakeholders and employees to solicit their views on the types of skills and experiences the next Secretary would need; they used those conversations to develop a position specification and evaluation framework. The committee conducted interviews in April and May; the full Board of Regents voted on the new Secretary May 28.
About the Board of Regents
The 17-member Board of Regents is the governing body of the Smithsonian. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and the Vice President of the United States, both ex officio members of the Board; three members of the Senate; three members of the House of Representatives; and nine citizen members, nominated by the Board and approved by Congress in a joint resolution signed by the President of the United States.
About the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846, with a generous bequest from British scientist James Smithson (1765–1829) to found at Washington an establishment for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, with 19 museums and the National Zoological Park. The Smithsonian’s collections document the nation’s history and heritage and represent the world’s natural and cultural diversity. The total number of objects, works of art and specimens at the Smithsonian is estimated at nearly 155 million, including more than 146 million scientific specimens and artifacts at the National Museum of Natural History.
Call for Articles | Ars Judaica
From ArtHist.net:
Ars Judaica: The Bar-Ilan Journal of Jewish Art calls for papers for its prospective volumes. Ars Judaica is delighted to announce it has made an agreement with Liverpool University Press to co-publish the journal from 2019. Liverpool University Press is an innovative academic publisher who combines a distinguished 120-year history and scholarly expertise with the forward-thinking mindset of the post-Gutenberg age.
Ars Judaica is an annual peer-reviewed publication of the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University. It showcases the Jewish contribution to the visual arts and architecture from antiquity to the present from a variety of perspectives, including history, iconography, semiotics, psychology, sociology, and folklore. As such it is a valuable resource for art historians, collectors, curators, and all those interested in the visual arts. The ever-growing international community of Ars Judaica authors range from world-renown scholars to young, promising researchers. Ilia Rodov, the journal’s Editor-in-chief stressed: “It is our pleasure to be collaborating with Liverpool University Press to expand the activity of Ars Judaica, established in 2005 as the Michael J. Floersheim Memorial under its founding editor Bracha Yaniv. I am sure that our joint work with Liverpool University Press will be a significant contribution to the excellence of scholarly research and thought-provoking exchange of ideas regarding the visual dimensions of Jewish civilization”.
Clare Hooper, Head of Journals at Liverpool University Press said: “We are delighted to be working with the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University to publish Ars Judaica. The journal is an extremely valuable resource to all scholars interested in the Jewish contribution to visual arts.”
The fifteenth volume of the journal and the first issue under the new publishing agreement will be published soon and will be fully available online. The Journal’s submission and style guidelines are available to download here. For more information, please see Ars Judaica’s website.
Exhibition | ‘To Arm Against an Enemy’
Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition:
‘To Arm Against an Enemy’: Weapons of the Revolutionary War
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 20 April 2019 — 2 January 2023
Silver hilted smallsword (detail), 1765–70; blade: 33 inches long, hilt: 7 inches long; silver, iron/steel, wood, enamel, and traces of gilding (Colonial Williamsburg).
Warfare is complex and sophisticated today, but in the 1700s, during the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars, weaponry and combat was far less so. The arms used by the combatants on all sides of these North American conflicts were an international jumble of firearms and bladed weapons. In ‘To Arm Against an Enemy’: Weapons of the Revolutionary War, opening on April 20, at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, visitors will gain a deeper understanding of these instruments of war as the weapons take center stage. The exhibition, which will remain on view until January 2, 2023, will feature approximately 70 muskets, carbines and rifles, bayonets, pistols, and swords as used by Loyalists, American patriots, Hessians, and British ‘red coats’ in battles on land and at sea.
‘To Arm Against an Enemy’ opens to coincide with the anniversary of the Gunpowder Incident in which Virginia’s last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, gave orders on April 20, 1775, to remove 15 barrels of gunpowder from Williamsburg’s Magazine. Conducted under the cover of darkness, the mission was successful, outraging the residents of the city and adding fuel to the rapidly intensifying revolutionary fire. The exhibition will be complimented by two satellite exhibitions opening in 2021. The first of these will tell the story of arms in Williamsburg from 1699 to 1780, and the other will discuss artillery, ammunition and military accouterments of the period.
“At the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, every exhibition helps to further the foundation’s mission of authentically telling America’s story,” said Ghislain d’Humières, executive director and senior vice president, core operations. “Its extensive collection of early weapons offers visitors an opportunity to learn more about an aspect of life in the colonies that is often overlooked. ’To Arm Against an Enemy’ promises to be illuminating.”
Prior to the French and Indian War (1754–63), when red-coated soldiers came across the Atlantic by the thousands and brought the first major influx of British military weaponry into the American colonies, the arms of the colonists were a mix of the obsolete, the old and the odd. Most firearms were privately owned and suited more for shooting game than for combat, while others were outdated foreign pieces captured in previous conflicts. A fresh wave of cutting-edge military arms arrived with the Revolutionary War, adding to the assortment of weapon types already in America.
“Over the last ninety years, Colonial Williamsburg has assembled one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Revolutionary-era weaponry,” said Ronald Hurst, the foundation’s Carlisle H. Humelsine chief curator and vice president for collections, conservation and museums. “That gives us the rare opportunity to explore this subject in an unbiased fashion, from every partisan perspective: American, French, British, and Hessian.”
Among the highlights of the exhibition is an English silver hilted smallsword that was presented to Major General Nathanael Greene in 1781 by an unknown party, perhaps at the time he received command of the Southern Department of the Continental Army. Beginning as a private soldier in 1775, Greene had been promoted to major general in the Continental Army by the New York campaign of 1776 and became known as one of Washington’s best and brightest. Of classic smallsword form for the period (this example was made ca. 1765–70), all its elements are cast, chased and pierced. Decorative motifs include openwork scrolls, foliage, shells, lions, eagles, trophies and gorgon heads. At some point in the early to mid-19th century, this sword was memorialized by the addition of two plaquettes set onto the grip at the midpoint. Both are surrounded by an identical reeded bezel, the first of which frames a miniature enameled portrait of General Greene done after Charles Willson Peale’s famous likeness. The other appliqué is of engraved silver and bears the date and presentation to General Greene.
“More than just showcasing the weaponry of the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars, “To Arm Against an Enemy” speaks to the progression of military technology and the tools that were used to secure American independence,” said Erik Goldstein, Colonial Williamsburg’s senior curator of mechanical arts and numismatics, who curated the exhibition.
Another featured weapon to be on view in ‘To Arm Against an Enemy’ is a British Pattern 1769 Land Service musket known as a ‘Brown Bess’. Few such muskets in Colonial Williamsburg’s collection show as much wear as this example. New at the onset of the war, it was originally issued to the freshly raised 71st Regiment of Foot, also known as Fraser’s Highlanders. This unit was two battalions strong and fought in almost every campaign of the Revolutionary War after arriving from Scotland in 1776. Part of the regiment disembarked in Savannah in late 1778, kicking off an extended period of extremely hard service in the South that culminated in defeat at Yorktown in 1781 and disbandment a few years later. This musket ended up in American hands after the war, further contributing to its worn condition over the ensuing decades.
A sword made between 1778 and 1780 at James Hunter’s Rappahannock Forge in Falmouth, Virginia, is another featured weapon in the exhibition with a fascinating history. By 1778, there was an explosion in the number of cavalry units fighting on both sides of the Revolutionary War. While the Loyalist light dragoons were largely equipped with swords made by James Potter of New York City, the Continental Army was left scrambling to arm their mounted troops. To fill the void, they turned to Hunter, whose industrial complex was capable of manufacturing these indispensable cavalry swords. While additional research is needed to determine which blades were actually forged at Hunter’s works, it seems that he used whatever blades he could obtain to fulfill his orders. For this sword, Hunter used a common three-fullered blade of European manufacture and mounted it with a hilt marked with an ‘H’, struck into the outside of the knucklebow. In addition to this stamp are the engraved marks ‘1 T PL D N 22’, meaning the weapon was number 22 in the first troop of Pulaski’s Light (or ‘Legion’ of) Dragoons. As part of the armament of Pulaski’s Legion in the Continental Army, this saber likely saw action at Savannah (1779) and the Siege of Charleston (1780). In addition, it may also have been used at Camden, Guilford Court House and the Siege of Yorktown after Pulaski’s unit was incorporated into Armand’s Legion under the command of French Colonel Charles Armand Tuffin.
Conference | Baroque to Neo-Baroque
From the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz:
Baroque to Neo-Baroque: Curves of an Art Historical Concept
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Florence, 3–5 June 2019
Organized by Estelle Lingo and Lorenzo Pericolo with Alessandro Nova and Tristan Weddigen
In recent decades there has been a notable revival of scholarly discourse on the baroque. The term ‘baroque’ emerged in the mid-eighteenth century as a pejorative designation for the dominant style of European art produced from c. 1600 to c. 1750. The critical valences the term possessed from the outset have endowed the ‘baroque’ with an afterlife in art history quite distinct from that of the Renaissance and one that it is now particularly timely to interrogate. This conference will bring together eminent and emerging scholars of seventeenth-century European art, colonial Latin American art, and modern and contemporary art to discuss and reassess the ‘baroque’ and the ways in which this concept is currently in play across these diverse subfields. Free admission until capacity is reached.
A cooperation of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte
M O N D A Y , 3 J U N E 2 0 1 9
15:00 Welcome and Introduction by Estelle Lingo, Lorenzo Pericolo, Alessandro Nova, and Tristan Weddigen
15:30 Keynote Address
• Alina Payne (Harvard University and Villa I Tatti)
16:50 The Formation of a Concept
Chair: Estelle Lingo
• Evonne Levy (University of Toronto), ‘Baroque’: Mnemosyne Atlas
• Brigid Doherty, Princeton University), ‘Das direkte Herauskommen aus dem Bilde, das Losgehen auf den Beschauer’: Wölfflin, Benjamin, and the Possibility of a ‘Neo-Baroque’ Sistine Madonna in Reproduction
T U E S D A Y , 4 J U N E 2 0 1 9
10:00 The European Baroque
Chair: Alessandro Nova
• Lorenzo Pericolo (University of Warwick), The Baroque Body as a Stylistic Paradox
• Celeste Brusati (University of Michigan), Painting Naturally in the Netherlands
• Estelle Lingo (University of Washington), Baroque Visuality between Perspective and the Photograph
15:00 The Colonial Baroque
Chair: Lorenzo Pericolo
• Jesús Escobar (Northwestern University), Baroque Classicism and Institutional Architecture in the Early Modern Spanish Empire
• Aaron Hyman (Johns Hopkins University), Toward a Notion of (Global, Colonial) Baroque Form
• Fernando Loffredo (New York University and The Cooper Union), The Baroque as National Identity: Aleijadinho in the Brazilian Cultural Imaginary
18:00 The Neo-Baroque
Chair: Tristan Weddigen
• Laura Moure Cecchini (Colgate University), Italian Fascism and the Baroque: Appropriation and Invention between 1922 and 1945
W E D N E S D A Y , 5 J U N E 2 0 1 9
9:30 The Neo-Baroque (continued)
Chair: Tristan Weddigen
• Amy Buono (Chapman University), Hidden Dreams of the Brazilian Baroque
• Jens Baumgarten (Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo), Invention of the Baroque and Discourses of the Neo-Baroque: Politics and Religion in Brazil and the Philippines
• Peter Krieger (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Contemporary Neo-Baroque Architecture and Neo-Colonial Ideology: The Mexican Case
New Book | Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades
From Penn State UP:
Jeffrey Merrick, ed., Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France: A Documentary History (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0271083353, $90.
In this book, Jeffrey Merrick brings together a rich array of primary-source documents—many of which are published or translated here for the first time—that depict in detail the policing of same-sex populations in eighteenth-century France and the ways in which Parisians regarded what they called sodomy or pederasty and tribadism. Taken together, these documents suggest that male and female same-sex relations played a more visible public role in Enlightenment-era society than was previously believed.
The translated and annotated sources included here show how robust the same-sex subculture was in eighteenth-century Paris, as well as how widespread the policing of sodomy was at the time. Part 1 includes archival police records from the 1720s to the 1780s that show how the police attempted to manage sodomitical activity through surveillance and repression; part 2 includes excerpts from treatises and encyclopedias, published nouvelles (collections of news) and libelles (libelous writings), fictive portrayals, and Enlightenment treatments of the topic that include calls for legal reform. Together these sources show how contemporaries understood same-sex relations in multiple contexts and cultures, including their own. The resulting volume is an unprecedented look at the role of same-sex relations in the culture and society of the era.
The product of years of archival research curated, translated, and annotated by a premier expert in the field, Sodomites, Pederasts, and Tribades in Eighteenth-Century France provides a foundational primary text for the study and teaching of the history of sexuality.
Jeffrey Merrick is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is the author of Order and Disorder Under the Ancien Régime and coeditor of Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France, the latter also published by Penn State University Press.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Introduction
Part I. Surveillance of the Parisian Subculture
A Reports from the Archives of the Bastille
B Reports of the Watch/Guard and the Commissaires
C Reports of the Swiss Guard in the Champs-Élysées and the Commissaires
D Reports of Commissaires Foucault and Desormeaux
Part II. Representations of Same-Sex Relations
E Gossip and Slander
F Tradition
G Enlightenment
H Fictions
Notes
Recommended Reading
Index
Display | Fans Unfolded
Now on view at The Fitzwilliam:
Fans Unfolded: Conserving the Lennox-Boyd Collection
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 5 March 2019 — 12 January 2020
Showcasing rare and exquisitely decorated fans from the collection of the Hon. Christopher Lennox Boyd, allocated to the Museum by H.M. Government in lieu of inheritance tax in 2015, this display reveals the techniques behind the making, investigation, and conservation of fans.
The collection of over 600 objects ranges in date from the 18th to the 20th centuries and in type from bejewelled and hand-painted court and wedding fans, to printed mass-produced advertising fans, aide-memoire fans, mourning fans and children’s fans. A conservation project generously funded by the Marlay group has allowed the museum to display a selection of these fragile but extraordinary objects for the first time.
Exhibition | William Blake
William Blake, Newton, 1795–c.1805, color print, ink and watercolour on paper
(London: Tate Britain)
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Press release (4 April 2019) for the exhibition:
William Blake
Tate Britain, London, 11 September 2019 — 2 February 2020
Curated by Martin Myrone and Amy Concannon
This autumn, Tate Britain will present the largest survey of work by William Blake (1757–1827) in the UK for a generation. A visionary painter, printmaker, and poet, Blake created some of the most iconic images in the history of British art and has remained an inspiration to artists, musicians, writers, and performers worldwide for over two centuries. This ambitious exhibition will bring together over 300 remarkable and rarely seen works and rediscover Blake as a visual artist for the 21st century.
Tate Britain will reimagine the artist’s work as he intended it to be experienced. Blake’s art was a product of his tumultuous times, with revolution, war and progressive politics acting as the crucible of his unique imagination; yet he struggled to be understood and appreciated during his life. Now renowned as a poet, Blake also had grand ambitions as a visual artist and envisioned vast frescos that were never realised. For the first time, The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan (c.1805–09) and The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth (c.1805) will be digitally enlarged and projected onto the gallery wall on the huge scale that Blake imagined. The original artworks will be displayed nearby in a restaging of Blake’s ill-fated exhibition of 1809, the artist’s only significant attempt to create a public reputation for himself as a painter. Tate will recreate the domestic room above his family hosiery shop in which the show was held, allowing visitors to encounter the paintings exactly as people did in 1809.
The exhibition will provide a vivid biographical framework in which to consider Blake’s life and work. There will be a focus on London, the city in which he was born and lived for most of his life. The burgeoning metropolis was a constant inspiration for the artist, offering an environment in which harsh realities and pure imagination were woven together. His creative freedom was also dependent on the unwavering support of those closest to him, his friends, family, and patrons. Tate will highlight the vital presence of his wife Catherine who offered both practical assistance and became an unacknowledged hand in the production of his engravings and illuminated books. The exhibition will showcase a series of illustrations to Pilgrim’s Progress (1824–27) and a copy of the book The complaint, and the consolation Night Thoughts (1797), now thought to be coloured by Catherine.
William Blake, Catherine Blake, 1805, graphite on paper (London: Tate Britain).
Blake was a staunch defender of the fundamental role of art in society and the importance of artistic freedom. Shaped by his personal struggles in a period of political terror and oppression, his technical innovation, and his political commitment, these beliefs have inspired the generations that followed and remain pertinent today. Tate Britain’s exhibition will open with Albion Rose (c.1793), an exuberant visualisation of the mythical founding of Britain, created in contrast to the commercialisation, austerity, and crass populism of the times. A section of the exhibition will also be dedicated to his illuminated books such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794), his central achievement as a radical poet.
Additional highlights will include a selection of works from the Royal Collection and some of his best-known paintings including Newton (1795–c.1805) and Ghost of a Flea (c.1819–20). The latter work was inspired by a séance-induced vision and will be shown alongside a rarely seen preliminary sketch. The exhibition will close with The Ancient of Days (1827), a frontispiece for an edition of Europe: A Prophecy, completed only days before the artist’s death.
William Blake is curated by Martin Myrone, Lead Curator pre-1800 British Art, and Amy Concannon, Assistant Curator British Art 1790–1850. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue from Tate Publishing (distributed by Princeton University Press), along with a programme of talks and events in the gallery.
Martin Myrone, ed., William Blake (London: Tate Publishing, 2019), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0691198316, £43 / $55.
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Note (added 30 November 2019) — The original posting used the exhibition’s initial working title, William Blake: The Artist.
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