Recently Published Reviews

E. W. Godwin (1833-86) was a Victorian architect-designer who balanced historical precedent with innovation, "high" with "low" art, and exotic with vernacular to become the master of "judicious eclecticism." Two recent books on his practice, E. W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer and The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin, should be read as a pair. Undoubtedly, Susan Soros—editor of the first and author of the second—agrees, as she often refers the reader of one to the other. The former was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title held at the Bard Graduate Center for… Full Review

In this fascinating book, John W. O'Malley, the eminent church historian, analyzes scholarship on Roman Catholicism from about 1517 until the French Revolution in order to problematize the "names," or terms, we use for religious developments of that time. As he notes, although the term "Reformation" is generally accepted for Protestantism of the era, consensus is lacking on what to term coeval Catholicism (1). O'Malley examines the biases revealed by the competing names for Catholicism—such as "Counter-Reformation," "Catholic Reformation," and "Catholic Restoration"—and suggests that we use a new term instead: "early modern Catholicism." In making this suggestion, O'Malley aims to… Full Review

Art history is a revelatory discipline. Seeking to recover meaning from the past, we uncover pictures only to cover them once again with a veil of our own words. This instinct of turning pictures into puzzles, James Elkins argues, has led to an explosion, since at least the late-nineteenth century, in essays and articles about images (Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity, London and New York: Routledge, 1999). Whereas ancient or even early modern authors were satisfied with a brief sentence, stretched occasionally into a long paragraph—and very rarely into a few… Full Review

For most of the twentieth century, prints—especially reproductive prints—have been relegated to secondary status in the art world, if they have been mentioned at all. Painting and sculpture received the most attention; prints definitely were the "Other" and beyond the pale of the discourse. In the nineteenth century, however, prints carried more weight. Their role in disseminating art and culture was recognized and valued; a good print was considered worthier than a bad painting. Moreover, artists often earned more money from the sale of a copyright than for a single canvas, and they achieved greater critical and popular notice from… Full Review

David Batchelor's Chromophobia is a concise book on a large topic: the problem of color in the Western cultural imaginary of the last two centuries. The argument is anchored by, though not limited to, a consideration of color in the discourse of aesthetics and art history. Batchelor also considers literature, Hollywood cinema, television advertising, and architecture in order to bring color's extremely paradoxical and checkered history to light. Generations of cultural producers, art theorists, and philosophers, claims Batchelor, have treated color as an object of fear and loathing, as an alien invader within the cultural organism. Chromophobia's extremely eye-catching… Full Review

The explosion of visual images in seventeenth-century Holland was accompanied by an equally rich outpouring of critical dialogue on their benefits and dangers. Lifelike portraits could be praised in ekphrastic poems or disparaged in moralizing pamphlets for their capacity to fill the heart with "love's poison." Pictorial artifice could be both extolled for the pleasure it served upon the beholder and condemned as a "food of evil lust." As the poet Jacob Cats would succinctly state, "the higher the painter flies . . . the deeper he can wound," adding that "the best of minds . . . cause the… Full Review

This publication, which is part of the American Association of Museum's (AAM) Technical Information Service Series, compiles the codes of ethics written and employed by sixty-one museums, cultural institutions, and professional organizations. A spiral bound 8 1/2 by 11 inch compendium, Codes of Ethics and Practice of Interest to Museums reproduces the actual codes used by all of the AAM Standing Professional Committees, such as the Curators Committee, the Registrars Committee, and the Public Relations and Marketing Committee, as well as many AAM members, such as the Association of Youth Museums. It also contains a host of guidelines and codes… Full Review

The dust jacket of Bernard Smith's Modernism's History: A Study in Twentieth-Century Art and Ideas features a figural sculpture by Henry Moore entitled King and Queen (1952-53). Though one could imagine that Moore's couple looks into the future, the gaze betokened by the two figures is more likely retrospective, just as the artist's was in the 1950s and as Smith's study is at the end of the twentieth century. In his book, Smith looks back in order to survey and understand the accomplishments of Modernism in a new way. The book is unabashedly synthetic; it builds on the labors of… Full Review

The historical identity of modernism is one marked by global outlooks, humanism in the arts, technological invention, rational economics, and democratic principles. This identity is also frequently depicted as a paradigm of thought minted in the West and exported around the world through the veins of communication, commerce, and colonialism. Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s exposes how the concepts embodied in Western modernism were negotiated in Japan. In doing so, editors Elise K. Tipton and John Clark reorient modernism, unpacking its totality and displaying the way a society may interpret and weigh… Full Review

The last book of wide reputation written on Rembrandt in English and intended for a general audience was Christopher White's Rembrandt in 1984. Given the rate of change in the world of scholarship, the sixteen years that separate White's and Mariët Westermann's books counts as a generation. Thus, Westermann's book has been widely anticipated as a text that could fulfill many roles—an assigned textbook for students in art history courses, an accessible introduction to the artist for laypeople, and a quick refresher for art historians. The book does not disappoint any expectations, for it satisfies all of… Full Review

Historically, self-portraiture has been a problematic genre for many artists because of the necessity both to reveal and to conceal. For this reason, it can tell us things about artists that we otherwise would not know. The genre also provides scholars with a broader context for speculation about artists' personal lives, their creative motivations, professional ambitions, and psychological fears. John J. Ciofalo's book on Goya's self-portraits gives admirable scope for scholarly speculation from a highly informed perspective. The book is admirably researched, exceptionally well written, and profoundly provocative. Indeed, many of the author's readings of Goya's eternally fascinating paintings will… Full Review

Much has been written about the place of women in male-dominated professions, but systematic research and documentation of the architectural and design professions have been few and far between, with most such publications covering the subject in the United States and Western Europe. Annmarie Adams and Petra Tancred's 'Designing Women': Gender and the Architectural Profession is thus a welcome addition that focuses on a Canadian context. In more than one way, it is a unique contribution, going well beyond highlighting concepts of restriction and marginalization imposed on women's professional lives by the architectural profession. The book,… Full Review

Like their European counterparts, first-generation modernists in the United States depended on the word—in manifestoes, catalog essays, and "little magazines"—to advocate and advance their art. The Alfred Stieglitz circle, for instance, enlisted the journal Camera Work and the critical writing of Waldo Frank and Paul Rosenfeld to explicate their aesthetic goals to a public in need of instruction. This art movement was, moreover, engaged with literary modernism, as writers were prominent figures within its ranks. Camera Work published the early work of Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams and D.H. Lawrence were admired by the Stieglitz group and in turn… Full Review

Prepared for an exhibition that originated at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, this catalogue richly illustrates and analyzes the multivalent visual culture of American Orientalism from the post-Civil War Holy Land paintings of Frederic Church to the Hollywood movie celebrity Rudolph Valentino, who starred in The Sheik (1921). The catalogue comprises five interpretive essays by scholars from different disciplines as well as contextually detailed catalogue entries for a diverse array of art objects and artifacts, including paintings and the decorative arts, advertising, photography, film, fashions, and documentary ephemera. Curator and catalogue editor Holly Edwards writes… Full Review

In his sustained and enlightening meditation on Michelangelo and the figure of the dead Christ, Alexander Nagel has persuasively repositioned the artist’s work within a climate of historicism and reform. He has also achieved much more than this. Long before Vasari, as Nagel reminds us, artists had been mindful of art’s own history. Their definition of change—whether stylistic or iconographic—and their attitude toward it, embodied the highest kind of self-consciousness. With respect to art in the High Renaissance, Nagel wishes to revise the seasoned art-historical narrative in which change, conceived as innovation, assumes the nature of an identifying… Full Review