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‘Art that explores history: Reconceptualizing contemporary art’s historicity in the global framework’. Review of: Eva Kernbauer, Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, New York City: Routledge, 2022. 260 pp., 53 colour ills, ISBN 9780367763251, Open Access, hbk £120.00.
Full text linkEva Kernbauer’s book Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990 argues that contemporary artistic historiographies can potentially help us to reconceptualize historiography and to rethink contemporary art’s historicity. Based on thorough analyses of historical and contemporary discourses of how art has been understood as contributing to historiography and philosophies of history, her analyses of artistic historiographies are not only about uncovering previously unknown histories and archives, but about theoretical reflections on history, history writing and time. This review summarizes Kernbauer’s key arguments, discusses her theoretical approach and the insights the book offers into (artistic) historiography and global art history methodology
Digital Editions at the Bibliotheca Hertziana
Full text linkDigital editions of books are enjoying a tremendous success in recent years, especially after COVID pandemics limited the access to physical books. But digital editions can be much more than just a digital reproduction of the pages of a printed book. For this reason, the Bibliotheca Hertziana, among other institutions, is investing lot of resources in order to improve the offer of digital publications, with the support of new technologies such as neural text recognition. Crucial points include the use of shared standards such as TEI XML and open source platforms such as TEI Publisher to ensure long-term accessibility and preservation
Activate the Archive: Photographic art reproductions from the Bruckmann Verlag and their potential digital futures
Full text linkThe following contribution is based on a first investigation of the historical image archive of the Bruckmann Verlag, one of the largest and most influential German publishing houses in the field of art reproduction at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. As only recently the archive is accessible for research at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, this text sets out some initial thoughts, as to why which research convolute and the related photo-objects are particularly recommended for digital projects, as well as to reveal the possible challenges involved
Rediscovering Pantelleria beyond the sea
Full text linkThis paper sets out a concept for a seasonal virtual exhibition located inside the Barbacane Castle on the island of Pantelleria. The virtual exhibition involves the animation of the cultural heritage icons of the island such as the Imperial portraits of Caesar, Tito and Antonia Minore, and the Goddess Tanit, and the creation of a fictional 3-dimensional, animated character: an Eneolithic boy. The aim of the project is to educate tourists towards a more conscious tourism on the island through the use of storytelling, augmented reality and animation
Perpetual iridescence, or Impressionism’s minor harmonies
Full text linkIn histories of modern colour, simultaneous contrast has become something of an idée fixe. From Paul Signac’s 1899 treatise, D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, to Laura Anne Kalba’s celebrated monograph, Color in the Age of Impressionism (2017), all paths seem to lead back to Eugène Chevreul and to the maximization of chromatic intensity. This essay develops an alternative history of modern colour, which simultaneous contrast has thus far outshined—that of iridescence. The Impressionist (and Neo-Impressionist) desire to represent iridescent colours is found to relate to a contrasting—and more paradigmatically Impressionist—aesthetic rationale for the same formal procedures of divided touches, which are typically associated with simultaneous contrast. Through an examination of iridescent colours in cognate fields of glassware, fashion, and photography, alongside close analyses of a few signal paintings by Berthe Morisot, it is argued that by the end of the 1870s, one of the major aesthetic antinomies that would go on to determine later critical debates surrounding avant-gardist and Modernist approaches to colour had already emerged: whether colour’s aesthetic value derives from its meaningfulness within a pictorial representation or from its physiological effects on the viewer’s experience
Schnecken, Schlitzmonger, and Poltergeist: Andy Warhol in German — translations and cultural context
Full text linkThis paper focuses on the role German translations played in Warhol’s early and unusually wide critical reception in West Germany. Here he had some of his earliest exhibitions and collectors, here his art and films found an exceptionally appreciative audience. His art-historical reception was governed, from the beginning, by the teachings of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, which divided his West German audience into two camps: one that believed his art was Marxist, the other that it was anti-Marxist. This unique reception was key to the chronology and varying quality of the German editions of Warhol’s books
Photography and Folk Art at the Art Institute of Chicago: new models for exhibitions and scholarship
Full text linkIn the 1930s, a surging interest in early American vernacular arts, collectively referred to as folk art, converged with major photographic documentation projects of the Great Depression. These twin impulses—to collect the past and record the present—flourished concurrently during this critical period in American history. As artists, curators, collectors, and even government administrators sought to define American visual identities that were distinct from Europe, they found symbols of an American culture that was egalitarian, unpretentious, and self-made. The exhibition Photography and Folk Art: Looking for America in the 1930s (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2019) brought documentary photographs and folk art objects together to explore the aesthetic and conceptual connections between two fields—linked by overlapping networks of cultural agents—that had long been studied separately in disciplinary silos. This article details the exhibition’s collaborative research and discovery process, innovative display and interpretive strategies, and ultimately present-day relevance for twenty-first century audiences
America’s greatest empiricist’. Review of: Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind by C. Oliver O’Donnell, University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019, 272pp, 36 b. & w. illus. ISBN 9780271084640
Full text linkIn this first biography of Meyer Schapiro, C. Oliver O’Donnell presents an account of Schapiro as theorist, to connect him more thoroughly to intellectual trends of the twentieth century. O’Donnell makes his case through a series of well-researched “debates” in which Schapiro engaged, including Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud. This review considers the interpretation of these encounters and the profile of Schapiro that we are left with
Forest innovation to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergencies
Full text linkOverview
• Planting mixed woodland enhances tree growth and productivity. Mixed woodland plantations should, therefore, play a key role enabling the UK to meet its 2050 net zero greenhouse gas emissions targets.
• Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations (eCO2) increase photosynthesis, which is necessary (but not in itself sufficient) for increased carbon storage in forests. Remote sensing data have revealed an increased greening of the earth over the last 20 years that is largely due to greater leaf area in forests. Such findings demonstrate that UK forests are effective in carbon uptake in the future, as well as improving soil health.
• Undisturbed forests eventually reach carbon balance. They may continue to provide long-term carbon draw-down and storage by building ‘recalcitrant’ soil carbon. To secure and enhance long-term draw-down and storage in the forest canopy above ground, wood products must be taken from the forest and stored long term. Hence, woodland planning must incorporate harvesting for timber and other wood products in order to contribute to long-term carbon budgeting, biodiversity enhancement, and the delivery of societal benefits.
• Current afforestation and forest management regulations and guidelines are innovation-averse and highly vulnerable to globalised disease and climate risks. Neither the Nature for Climate Fund1, nor the ongoing series of UK Carbon Budgets2, provide the space for innovation to manage these risks.
• Private actors are pathfinding recolonisation and silvicultural portfolio approaches to increase resilience and manage social risks such as ‘carbon colonialism’.
• Choosing forest-facing post-16, apprenticeship, and degree training is a direct route to climate action for UK school leavers but this case is not being made to them.
• Forest-facing education is tarnished by outmoded and educationally indefensible caricatures of practice-based learning (cf. medicine or veterinary science), severely hindering One Health responses to the climate and nature emergencies and the pandemic.
• The benefits of woodland creation are inherently context-dependent, and sensitive to what tree species are used. For example, as sources of nitrogen pollution come under control in the UK, adding nitrogen fixing tree species will enhance woodland carbon sequestration rates under most circumstances
Competing images: illustrated volumes by Max Dvořák and his contemporaries shaping national Art History
Full text linkThis article focuses on the visual material of illustrated volumes of art and architectural histories produced and published by Max Dvořák and his contemporaries. On the one hand, such images were considered necessary instruments to disseminate art-historical knowledge. As ‘visual archives’, they served as collections of scholarly working objects. On the other hand, the images moreover became visual representatives of heritage, constructing national identities in Central Europe and having a lasting influence on art historical discourses. This article considers how audience and publishing requirements, technical possibilities of the visualisation and image reproduction processes and lastly ideologies shaped the images of (national) art of the time
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