September 2012 Issue of ‘The Art Bulletin’
In the current issue of The Art Bulletin, the “Notes from the Field” feature addresses the theme of contingency. Making a strong case for the proposition that it is possible to say something worthwhile in less than two pages, many of the essays are insightful and stimulating. The following two particularly address the eighteenth century. -CH
Gloria Kury, “On Contingency,” The Art Bulletin 94 (September 2012): 352-54.
Invoking Charles Le Brun, Emma and William Hamilton (“the first spell-binding teacher of art history was . . . a husband-wife duo”), and Dr. James Graham (famous for his sexual prescriptions involving the Celestial Bed at his Temple of Health and Hymen), Kury urges “scholars to start giving due heed to the significance of the spellbinding lecturer and / or master of the slide show, from the Hamiltons through Leo Steinberg and T. J. Clark, in the establishment and vitality of their discipline” . . . (354).
Mark Ledbury, “On Contingency,” The Art Bulletin 94 (September 2012): 354-55.
Addressing the “brilliant, but infuriating essay,” Charles Baudelaire’s “The Painter of Modern Life,” Ledbury draws readers’ attention to the critic’s coupling of “the contingent” with “the other half of art . . . the eternal and the immovable,” arguing that, in fact, modernity “has no monopoly over the contingent: wherever specialists look, the eternal and the immutable are thin on the ground” (354). Turning his attention then to eighteenth-century France (with reference to Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity), Ledbury contends “that compelling history is always aware of the gravitational forces of contingency tugging it from its lofty heights. . . . Certainly, in my own scholarship, to even begin to chart the fortunes of the Neoclassical generation is to appreciate both the force and unpredictability of contingency in the making of lives, works, and careers” . . . (355).
ARIAH Prize for Online Publishing
From the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) . . .
ARIAH Prize for Online Publishing
Nomination due by 1 September 2012
ARIAH looks for new initiatives to promote art historical research throughout the world, and invites nominations and self-nominations for the ARIAH Prize for Online Publishing. This award, which carries a $1,000 prize, seeks to encourage and promote high scholarly standards in online publishing in all fields of art history. The prize will be awarded annually to the author(s) of a distinguished article or essay published online in the past three years in the form of an e-journal or other short-form e-publication which advances the study of art history and visual culture. The article should either appear exclusively online, or should be substantially distinct from any print version, creatively capitalizing on the potential of digital publishing.
The competition is open to anyone, with the exception of delegates to ARIAH. Entries may be submitted by the author(s), or by others nominating authors for the prize, including publishers. Entries must be accompanied by the ARIAH Prize Entry Form.
Online publications must have appeared within three years of the submission date. All languages will be considered, but non-English submissions must also provide an English translation. Closing date for entries: September 1, 2012. Prize-winners will be notified by December 1, 2012. Please direct any questions to ARIAHprize@ariah.info
Articles and projects should contain substantial original scholarship and research, and enrich our understanding of art history and visual culture. Submissions will be considered that contribute new ideas and innovative approaches to the online presentation of information, and which exploit the potential offered by digital technology. Entries will be judged by a committee of ARIAH members.
August 2012 Issue of ‘Past & Present’
In the latest issue of Past and Present (August 2012), Michael Sonenscher responds to a recent article by William H. Sewell, “The Empire of Fashion and the Rise of Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France,” Past and Present 206 (February 2010): 81-120. Sewell then weighs in with his own reply (access to full texts will require institutional subscriptions).
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Michael Sonenscher, “Debate: The Empire of Fashion and the Rise of Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France,” Past and Present 216 (2012): 247-58.
[Full Text] [PDF]
‘Fashionable consumption’, Bill Sewell writes, ‘played a constitutive role in the development of French capitalism not only in the eighteenth century but also over the long term’. The claim goes with the grain of the many recent publications on eighteenth-century French trade and manufacturing industry that Sewell has expertly synthesized. But two further aspects of his article invite fuller comment. The first is an examination of the relationship between fashionable consumption and capitalist development that involves a modified version of Marx’s concept of surplus value. The second is a suggestion about the bearing of this fashion-oriented characterization of French capitalism on the subject of the origins and attributes of the French Revolution. Together they add up to an ambitious argument about the history of consumption as the way to overcome the neglect of social and economic considerations that, according to Sewell, has been one of the effects of the revisionist historiography of the French Revolution. . . .
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William H. Sewell, “Reply to Michael Sonenscher,” Past and Present 216 (2012): 259-67.
[Full Text] [PDF]
I would like to thank Michael Sonenscher for his learned and respectful comments on my article. In his comments he has filled out an aspect of the topic of ‘fashion’s empire’ that I made no sustained effort to cover in my own essay: varying contemporary opinions about the economics of fashion and about fashion’s relationship to France’s monarchical and aristocratic constitution. However, I think that his reflections on these eighteenth-century (or, in the case of Jean-Baptiste Say, early nineteenth-century) arguments about fashion have little bearing on what I take to be the central points of my essay. These are: (1) that fashion played a central role in French (and European) capitalist development in the eighteenth century; (2) that the dynamism of the fashion sector was based to a significant extent on harnessing the desires and labour of consumers; and (3) that certain consequences of the rise of fashion in eighteenth-century France ‘were … conducive to notions of equality of the sort specified in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789’ and were therefore ‘a key source’ of the French Revolution’s ‘epochal political and cultural transformations’. . .
July 2012 Issue of the Journal of the History of Collections
The following selection of articles from the current issue address the eighteenth century (access to full texts will require institutional subscriptions).
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Journal of the History of Collections 24 (July 2012)
A R T I C L E S
Thomas Ketelsen and Christien Melzer, “The Gottfried Wagner Collection in Leipzig: Insights into a Middle-Class Private Collection of c. 1700,” pp. 199-218.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
Cristiano Giometti, “‘Per accompagnare l’antico’: The Restoration of Ancient Sculpture in Early Eighteenth-Century Rome,” pp. 219-30.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
David A. Wisner, “French Neo-Classical Artists and Their Collections,” pp. 231-42.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
B O O K R E V I E W S
Nicholas Tromans, “Review of Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1920: Studies in Reception in Memory of Enriqueta Harris Frankfort, edited by Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney (2010),” pp. 276-77.
[Full Text] [PDF]
CAA Joins JSTOR Register & Read Program
As noted at CAA News (2 July 2012):
CAA has joined JSTOR’s new Register & Read program, which offers free, read-online access to a wide-range of academic journals to independent scholars and researchers. The service is designed to make scholarship available to those not affiliated with a subscribing institution by allowing them to register for a MyJSTOR account.
CAA is pleased to contribute the full back run of The Art Bulletin and Art Journal, through 2008, to an expanding, eclectic list that includes BOMB Magazine, Film Quarterly, Modern Law Review, and American Journal of Sociology. All articles from The Art Bulletin and Art Journal during this time will be available for individuals to read and, in some instances, to download and purchase as a PDF file.
Since JSTOR launched Register & Read in January 2012, approximately forty publishers have contributed material from seventy-seven journals to the beta site. The user-friendly program mimics the experience of a library by allowing visitors to store up to three articles on a virtual shelf for two weeks before exchanging items. Feedback is key to improving the borrowing service that Register & Read provides. JSTOR plans to perfect the functionality of the program and enlarge its scope to meet the unique research needs of the scholarly community.
The 2012 Issue of ‘The Walpole Society’
The Walpole Society 74 (2012)
• Rodney Griffiths, “The Life and Works of Edward Haytley (1713-1762),” pp. 1-60.
• Jason M. Kelly, “Letters from a Young Painter Abroad: James Russel in Rome, 1747-53,” pp. 61-164.
• Andrew Graciano, “The Memoir of Benjamin Wilson FRS (1721-1788): Painter and Electrical Scientist,” 165-244.
• Hugh Brigstocke, “The Journals and Accounts of James Irvine in Italy (1802-1806): Art Dealing and Speculation for William Buchanan, Arthur Champernowne and Alexander Gordon,” 245-432.
General information about The Walpole Society is available here»
In the May 2012 Issue of ‘Apollo Magazine’
From the current issue of Apollo Magazine:
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Elizabeth Angelicoussis, “An Olympiad’s Portrait,” Apollo Magazine (May 2012)
During excavations at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli the archaeologist Gavin Hamilton unearthed a classical statue of Hermes. Hamilton’s conservation of the sculpture transformed its identity to create an 18th-century image of an Olympic victor inspired by the ideals of ancient Greece
In the late 18th century, the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, William Petty-Fitzmaurice (1737–1805), assembled the most impressive collection of classical marbles in the British Isles, which he displayed in Lansdowne House, in London’s Berkeley Square.1 Many prime specimens were sold at a Christie’s auction in London in 1930, but at a Sotheby’s sale in New York in 1972, a very perceptive buyer purchased one choice piece that deserves examination.2
The sculpture represents a life-size youth with a smooth complexion and flawless features (Figs. 1–4).3 The nose is straight and large; from its bridge the razor-sharp ridges of the eyebrows flare out horizontally. The thin-lidded eyes are unmarked and only the rightwards torsion and the slightly parted lips animate the face. The coif is unfinished: at the crown, thick hair clusters, coarsely carved into spiral curls, lack drill holes to define their centres, while the hair at the back is roughly modelled into two large masses divided by a deep furrow. A lump of marble protrudes from the hair at the right, while a branch chiselled into the tresses above the left ear divides into two sprigs bearing a lanceolate leaf and tiny berries – the genus of the foliage remains undetermined. A wide groove encircles the head. The nude bust is ancient, and the uneven fracture around the neck argues for an original connection between the two parts.4 . . .
Elizabeth Angelicoussis specialises in ancient sculptures in private British museums.
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1/ This article is an offshoot from my project of the reconstruction of the Lansdowne collection of classical marbles. For surveys of the Lansdowne collection and the construction of Lansdowne House, with further bibliography, see Adolph Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, Cambridge, 1882, pp. 103–06, 453–71; Jonathan Scott, The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome, New Haven and London, 2003, pp. 160–68; Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome, New Haven and London, 2010, vol. I, pp. 321–26. For more on the Marquess, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn. May 2010, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22070 (J. Cannon).
2/ Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Ancient Marbles, the Property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Lansdowne, 5 March 1930, p.77, lot 60; Sotheby’s Sales Catalogue of Egyptian, Western Asiatic, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, 4 December 1972, p. 30, lot 122.
3/ See Michaelis op cit., Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, Cambridge, 1882, p. 452, no. 62. The restorations include the tip of nose, a section of the left brow and a piece of the right side of the neck at the front.
4/ There is a diagonal break running from the back across the chest. The repairs of the bust include the base and index plate, the patchwork of the spine, and the left breast. The inside and the rim of the support have been smoothed over. . . .
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The full article is available here»
In the March 2012 Issue of ‘French History’
Selections from the current issue of French History:
Julian Wright and Penny Roberts, “Editors’ Note,” French History 26 (March 2012).
This issue allows us to mark a number of points about the continuing importance of the study of the French Revolution. Without having planned it as a special issue, it so happened that we have been able to publish together a number of important new studies of the French Revolutionary decade and its historiography. . .
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Claire Trévien, “Le monde à l’envers: The Carnivalesque in Prints of the Construction of the Fête de la Fédération of 1790,” French History 26 (March 2012).
Abstract: This article explores representations of the carnivalesque during the construction of the Fête de la Fédération of 1790. Bakhtin’s assertion that the carnival is always separate from official festivities is exemplified by this spontaneous manifestation which was shunned by officials and disregarded appropriate class and gender roles. This article focuses on the pictorial depiction of this unique event and discusses how a study of its iconography also reflects the suppression of the carnivalesque in early revolutionary Paris.
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David Gilks, “Art and Politics during the ‘First’ Directory: Artists’ Petitions and the Quarrel over the Confiscation of Works of Art from Italy in 1796,” French History 26 (March 2012).
Abstract: This article examines the place of artists’ petitions in the quarrel over confiscating works of art. It argues that the dispute provided opportunities for its participants to advance a series of distinct agendas that reflected political and professional concerns rather than judgements about the art in question. By tracing the earliest stages of the quarrel and radically reinterpreting Quatremère’s crucial contribution—his Letters on the Plan to Abduct the Monuments of Italy—as part of his reactionary politics, the article clarifies the meaning of the ensuing artists’ petitions. It argues that while Quatremère duped ‘insider’ artists into supporting the Papist cause by signing his petition questioning the confiscations, the artists themselves instead signed as a means to re-assert their status and right to patronage. The vituperative responses to his petition included a counter-petition supporting art confiscations; it was signed by ‘outsider’ artists, reluctant to let their more famous co-professionals monopolize the debate at their expense.
The 2012 Issue of ‘SECC’
Art history in the current issue of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture:
Head vignette, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas for 1781.
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• Michael Yonan, “The Wieskirche: Movement, Perception, and Salvation in the Bavarian Rococo,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (2012): 1-25.
• Sandro Jung, “Print Culture, Marketing, and Thomas Stothard’s Illustrations for The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas, 1779–1826,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (2012): 27-53.
• Jennifer Germann, “Tracing Marie-Éléonore Godefroid: Women’s Artistic Networks in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (2012): 55-84.
• Marc H. Lerner, “William Tell’s Atlantic Travels in the Revolutionary Era,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41 (2012): 85-114.
April 2012 Issue of ‘Apollo Magazine’
Eighteenth-century offerings from the latest Apollo Magazine (for the full text of each article, click on the images below). . .
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Anne Kapeller, “A Unique Heritage: Treasures of the Swiss National Museum in Nyon,” Apollo Magazine (April 2012).
. . . In 1741, the curate Johann Georg Sulzer carried out a series of excavations at Lunnern, in the Reuss Valley near Zurich, leading to the discovery of a Roman temple, baths and a necropolis. On 17 November, he uncovered a hoard consisting of 17 pieces of gold jewellery and 84 silver coins, hidden in a recess. Three days later news of the sensational discovery reached Zurich. The painter Johann Balthasar Bullinger was commissioned to visit the site and produce a picture of the excavations. It was preserved along with the jewels in the art collection of the Wasserkirche in Zurich, before becoming part of the collections of the SNM. . .
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Lucy Davis & Christoph Martin Vogtherr, “A Taste for Blue,” Apollo Magazine (April 2012).
The Wallace Collection is famous for its exceptional group of works from the French 18th century. A smaller collection of around 150 Dutch 17th-century paintings is of equally fine quality, including masterpieces by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Caspar Netscher, Jacob van Ruisdael, Nicolaes Berchem, Philips Wouwermans and other leading painters of the Golden Age. It is particularly rich in genre paintings, landscapes by the Dutch Italianates and the work of some outstanding artists – Rembrandt first of all, but also Steen, Metsu, Willem van de Velde, Meindert Hobbema and Willem van Mieris. The resulting view of Dutch art does not provide a systematic overview but follows the personal preferences of the collectors and the typical view of Dutch art during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Artists such as Jan van Goyen, Hercules Seghers and Vermeer, but also the earlier periods before Rembrandt, are hardly represented. They were only admitted to the canon
at a time when the Hertford family had stopped collecting Dutch art. . .
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Juliet Carey, “A House of Cards: Taking Time,” Apollo Magazine (April 2012).
Waddesdon Manor is temporarily home to a small but extraordinarily beautiful group of works by one of the most revered of all French painters. The exhibition Taking Time: Chardin’s ‘Boy Building a House of Cards’ and Other Paintings is prompted by the recent acquisition of one of four works by Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) of a subject that particularly fascinated him. The last to enter the public domain, the Waddesdon canvas, is united for the first time with three other variations on the theme, on loan from national collections in France, Britain and the United States. . .
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Humphrey Wine, “The Art of a Connoisseur: Review of Pierre Rosenberg and Laure Barthélemy-Labeeuw, Les Dessins de la Collection de Pierre-Jean Mariette (2011),” Apollo Magazine (April 2012).
Soon after the death of Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) his heirs had Pierre François Basan organise a sale of his collection. It included paintings (among them Poussin’s Nurture of Bacchus, c. 1628, now in the National Gallery, London), terracottas, antique marbles, bronzes and engraved gems; the bulk of the sale, however, comprised some 9,000 Italian, Dutch, Flemish and French drawings. It was not only size that distinguished Mariette’s collection of drawings – the earlier collection of Pierre Crozat, built with Mariette’s advice, had been twice as large – but also its quality and comprehensive nature. . . .
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