I know, I know. One should blog more than once every six weeks or so. January was an insane month for me  (but this is fodder for another post).  However, I was able to squeeze in the reading of Sarah Thornton’s bestselling sociological study of the contemporary art scene, Seven Days in the Art World (2008).  My husband, who is especially keen on twentieth-century art, gave me the book for Christmas and I found it an engaging read. In a nutshell, it looks at various aspects of the contemporary art world and spends “a day” in the life of each arena.  Chapters are titled as follows: The Auction (Sotheby’s), The Crit (MFA studio class at Cal Arts), The Fair (Basel), The Prize (Turner), The Magazine (Artforum), The Studio Visit (Murakami), The Biannale (Venice).  I will confess to being more than a little annoyed at the lack of attention given to academics (as I recall, a discussion with a historian was briefly recounted in the chapter on “The Magazine”), but I am rather biased towards thinking that we have something to contribute to this realm:)  That said,  I think this book is a must-read for students who are interested in careers related to the contemporary art scene but have little sense of what these spaces and vocations actually look like and what it means to be a player in this realm.

I’d love to hear from those of you who have either read the book, who live or work in one of the above-mentioned places, or who would like to be a part of the contemporary art scene.

Conversation topic: If you could spend a day in the contemporary art world,  which one of these spaces would you visit and why?

Gentle readers, it has been far too long since I posted. As usual, I’m consumed with a number of projects. One of the more exciting ones involves my traveling to Paris in the spring to set up a student internship at Versailles. I was thinking back to the first time I visited the grand palace and gardens. It was the summer of 1997, and I was one of the faculty, albeit a grad student, for a London study abroad. My husband and I traveled to Paris for a week, where we went museum and monument hunting from dawn until dusk. It was one of the most blissful weeks of my life. The day we went to Versailles was a beautiful summer day, and I remember having one of those moments–you know those moments, when your heart swells and your eyes fill with tears and you think, “I’m here, I’m actually here! I’m seeing this masterpiece! I’m actually walking through this architectural wonder!” And you know that you are experiencing something exquisite and unforgettable, even life changing. Even though I have been to Versailles many times since, I am still overcome every time I approach the château.

One of the items that our administration is scrutinizing is study abroad, and they are determining the extent of their support for such programs. I personally think it is imperative that students of art history study and experience art and architecture in its original setting–or at least in an appropriate cultural/historical one (with a nod to the Elgin Marbles and all of those other “displaced” artworks). I know that many of you have participated in study abroad as students. We are in the process of gathering testimonials for study abroad as a central part of an art history curriculum and would be much obliged if former students shared their experiences with us, either as a comment to this blog or more formally via an email or letter addressed to the BYU art history faculty.

Conversation topic: How did study abroad enhance your educational experience?

There is a post that I’ve been forcing myself not to write, and this is about the recent announcement of the “discontinuance” of the Women’s Research Institute at BYU. I have felt at a loss as to how to respond meaningfully to this development. I have joined the Facebook “Save BYU’s Women’s Research Institute” group, talked to a number of faculty and students, followed the letters to editor and media attention given to this, and am drafting a personal letter to the administration. And I have decided that I want to surround myself with images that bespeak the significance and power of women in art and culture. So I am inviting all local students to come to my office and put up a postcard or color copy of a work that promotes these ideals. If you aren’t close to campus, respond to this post with your selection and I’ll put it up. This will be my own “pictorial call to arms” (said of David’s Oath of the Horatii), an installation to remind all of the critical causes and communities at stake here.

Conversation topic: What is your favorite “femocentric” artwork and why?

Among the more interesting things that I have been reading outside of my field proper is Jenny Graham’s Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age. My reading of this has coincided with the birth of a new class, ARTHC 300: The Historiography and Theory of Art History, and with my becoming reacquainted with old friends like Panofsky and Gombrich–you know, those ones who didn’t really care for modern art:) The book takes the artist and sign “Van Eyck” and considers how this has developed in tandem with the story of modern art. This kind of historiography is just the sort of thing that we ask students to do as their final project for our undergraduate and graduate seminars. That said, it isn’t boring and dry, but is, as Keith Moxey puts it, “a remarkably imaginative book.” For more information on the book, check out the publisher’s website [and no, this is not a paid endorsement!]

Conversation topic: Have you read any good art history books lately?

Recently, I was doing some research on Chartres Cathedral and came across a thought-provoking quote by Ingmar Bergman, one of the most distinguished film directors of the twentieth century (and a personal fave; his The Seventh Seal is marvelously haunting). In this piece, Bergman argues that art lost something critical when the maker’s motivations were no longer spiritually motivated. He explains:

“There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed–master builders, artists, laborers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.

“Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; ‘eternal values,’ ‘immortality’ and ‘masterpiece’ were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility.

“Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest idea.”

Given that I’m a scholar of the modern period with a definite postmodern bent, I’ve been asking myself 1) if I agree with Bergman, and 2) if I do, whether or I should feel unsettled about investing my time and energies into studying and promoting these narcissists (I’m formulating a title for a new course. Maybe “Narcissism and Modernism in the Visual Arts: From Courbet to Koons”? It would be a dreadful class to teach–or take). I’ve been mulling over Bergman’s statement for several days now and think I want to argue with him a bit. But I thought I’d put this out there as a conversation topic and see what you think first.

[By the way, it is so good to hear from present and former students and from other lovers of art history! Please keep sharing your insights and experiences, and please feel free to suggest future topics. I don't want to be one of those formidable salonnières ]

Conversation Topic: Do you think that “art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship”?

I am often asked about my favorite artwork. I hate that question, because I always have to qualify my answer and want to change my response as soon as I have given it. So I’ve been thinking about that question about being stranded on a desert island and the things I would want to have with me. If I could have only one artwork, which would it be? I’ve decided that I would want Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son. Here, a broken spirit and contrite heart are met with the most tender mercies of a loving father. It is an exquisite painting about repentance and forgiveness and redemption, and it never fails to move me.

Conversation topic: If you were stranded on a desert island, which artwork would you want with you and why?

I recently contributed an informal exhibition review to Enfilade, where I declared that I had experienced a near perfect show–Juliette Récamier: Muse et mécène at the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France. An exhibition focused on a woman as patron in Napoleonic France, and one who was the dearest friend with the inimitable Germaine de Staël, was bound to delight me. The confluence of Récamier’s couture (lots of muslin dresses, cashmere shawls, and slippers that my nine-year old daughter wouldn’t fit into!), stunning portraits of this muse/agent, and paintings of other cultural luminaries of the period, all artfully placed in pastel-painted rooms, made for a most exquisite exhibition. I was moved to tears when I entered a room that had been fashioned as the salon of Récamier, complete with portraits of Staël by Vigée-Lebrun and Gérard, along with Girodet’s stunning portrait of Chateaubriand. After many years of inhabiting this world in my mind, I felt as if I were one step closer to being transported into this intellectual space and into conversation with figures that have so enchanted (and sometimes vexed) me for much of my life as an academic.

Conversation Topic: What is your favorite exhibition of all time?

Three formative experiences led me to my vocation. The first happened in the fourth grade. I remember coming into the classroom after recess, sitting in the cool and darkened room, and becoming mesmerized before a filmstrip detailing the dramatic disintegration of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco (and accompanied by appropriately intense music). I was enchanted by the high drama of the Renaissance art world. The summer after, my beloved teacher Miss Doxey sent me a postcard from her trip to Athens. I treasured that photo of the Parthenon for years and still view the Acropolis as my professional Mecca. In a tenth-grade humanities class, I remember doing a report on Vincent Van Gogh. We made a “Studio of the South” out of an old refrigerator box covered in yellow butcher paper. I painted a copy of his Crows Over Wheatfield and made ear-shaped sugar cookies to pass out to my classmates (gross, I know). And finally, on my trip up to college, my mother and I drove to the LACMA to see a traveling show of the Annenberg collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. When we were told that the show was sold out for the rest of the day, I was devastated. However, I was attended by the guardian angels of art history that day, and a well-heeled woman overheard our discussion with the ticket agent and offered us her two tickets. I was positively giddy as I walked through that exhibition and saw masterpiece after masterpiece of paintings I had only seen in books: Monet’s fields, Degas’s dancers, Van Gogh’s flowers, and Cézanne’s mountains. I knew from that moment forward that I had found my bliss.

Conversation topic: What drew you to art history?