ART HISTORY SALON

The Marriage of Hip-Hop and Art History

hbj — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:45:52 +0000

We just started the new school year this week and my day was filled with teaching. Strangely, hip-hop and/or Kanye West were invoked in all three of my classes today, so it’s got me to thinking about the relationship between art history and hip-hop, and more specifically, Kanye West. My theory class is starting out the semester reading the excellent essay by Krista Thompson, “The Sound of Light: Reflections on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop,” which was published in Art Bulletin in December 2009. The contemporary curator at BYU’s Museum of Art did a brief presentation on transcultural trends and used the Murakami/Kanye collaboration as a key example. And in Western Civ, one of my teaching assistants shared her special talent for rapping about art history.

And just a few weeks ago, a grad student forwarded a link to the latest Kanye video, Power, and suggested that he (or his artistic director, Marco Brambilla) had been looking at Girodet. She was dead on in making this connection. Girodet’s Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of French Heroes, in which Napoleon plays a prominent role, is definitely invoked in terms of composition, mood, and palette. Those scantily-clad women/creatures are eerie echoes of the Emperor’s consorts, like wife Joséphine or Mme Récamier or Mme Tallien. And come to think of it, Kanye is sort of like Napoleon in that the two have shared imperial ambitions. Others have suggested that Kanye and Brambilla were looking at Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling. Kanye has been collaborating with Murakami for years now. Clearly, his time at the American Academy of Art in Chicago was formative to his feel for aesthetics and history.

So I’m wondering about these connections between hip-hop and art history. . . .

Conversation topic: What has propelled these collaborations? And what is at stake here?

Museum souvenirs

hbj — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 05:21:36 +0000

I love art and shopping, so naturally, I always spend time looking through museum stores. I have some classy items to be sure, along with some kitschy things, like my Van Gogh mug where one of the ears disappears when the cup is filled with hot liquid (a thoughtful gift from some students who know of my teenage obsession with the man). And sometimes I find things that absolutely outrage me. Such was the case with the last museum store I visited–the one at the Getty, where I recently saw the Jean-Léon Gérôme blockbuster exhibition (and I’ve got to post on that later because I’m madder than heck about the exhibition thesis, which tacitly justifies his misogynistic and racist works by celebrating the artist’s “quirky irreverence”–but I digress). Anyway, here is the souvenir du jour: a compact mirror with Gérôme’s Moorish Bath on the case. Unpack the semiotics of that little number, my friends . . . .

Conversation topic: What is your favorite museum souvenir and why?

Children in art and spectatorship

hbj — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:00:58 +0000

One of my Paris rituals is to visit the Louvre on my final evening there and spend an hour with my much-beloved, machine-sized nineteenth-century paintings. I’m always surprised by certain details I hadn’t noticed before, such as the dark tonality of Girodet’s Burial of Atala or the flatness of certain passages in Ingres’ Grande Odalisque. This time, I was struck by the sheer beauty of David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women. The canvas has a freshness to it that makes it seem recently painted, all of the vignettes work cohesively, the bodies are magnificently articulated, and the facture is simply marvelous. I’ve always loved this work for its pro-woman possibilities, but this time, I was especially taken by all of the children in the painting. There are a number of babies and toddlers here, many of whom are looking out at the viewer with a moving plaintiveness or curiosity. While much significant work has been done on the women in this painting, little has been said about the children. I took a couple dozen photographs of all of the children I could find in the painting. Much has been done with children as subjects in art (and I’m particularly interested in how they are used as focalizers), but I also think something needs to be done with the whole matter of children as spectators. Contemporary accounts of the exhibition and reception of this painting remarked on the presence of women and children–mostly to express dismay that they were exposed to the indecent (read: male) nudity in the work. Other texts of the Revolutionary period attest to children’s involvement in the visual arts.

Conversation topic: What is your favorite work of art featuring a child and why?

Guest Blog: Kalisha Jacobson on the Musée d’Orsay’s Lack

hbj — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:20:16 +0000

A few days ago I went to the Musée d’Orsay to re-familiarize myself with the permanent collection and to see the boldly progressive exhibit “Crime et Châtiment.” The exhibit was excellent and due to current re-modeling the hanging of the museum’s regular holdings were fairly limited. As an avid admirer of many women artists during the later 19th century, especially women impressionists, I found myself sorely disappointed and even rashly infuriated upon discovering that throughout entire main floor there was only 1 painting by famed artist Berthe Morisot and 1 painting by the well-known Mary Cassatt. Indeed, while I was also happy to enjoy the room full of Corot’s that proceeded the monumental presentation of Rosa Bonheur’s Plowing in the Nivernais, I was surprised to find no other representation by this artist who was admittedly more widely admired and financially successful than any male peer of her time. In fact, my searches showed that at the Orsay museum women are only subjects (read: objects) displayed on their hallowed walls, yet are given no space to speak as author of these images. One must first plow through the rooms (yes rooms) of Monets, Manets, Courbets, Renoirs, and Gauguin’s Tahitian women in order to find a sliver of a real woman’s experience or a fully-clothed figure.

Anyone who has taken even the smallest introduction to feminist theory will know that the 1970s was a period of radical re-adjustment in the art world as scholars sought to add more names to the singular woman artist featured in their current textbooks and to recover important women that had been lost to history. This called for an entire re-examination on the way that we view women’s role in the artistic world.

Many people consider the “woman issue” to be a cause already completed, because we now live in a world where sexism obviously isn’t allowed to pervade our businesses, homes, and societies, let alone our museums housing national treasures that preserve timeless masterpieces that remain accepted and unchallenged by the critical eye.

Nevertheless, here I found myself at the limited showing of the Musée d’Orsay, which boasts one of the most extensive collections of the period, and claims to be the French authority on everything from Realism to Symbolism. I am shocked that such blatant ignorance of women in art is still prevalent at such a prestigious institution. Admittedly, there are greater holdings by many prominent women artists at other institutions in Paris (Berthe Morisot at the Musée Marmottan & Camille Claudel at the Musée Rodin), but I believe that this does not excuse the Orsay. As a museum whose new leadership professes to see into contemporary art history theory & technique, challenging the way things have always been done at this institution and initializing new bold exhibitions, I think that they could use an introduction to feminist interventions in the histories of art.

The purpose of this post is to bring to your attention that the “woman question” has not been answered or resolved, especially not in some of the most prestigious and frequented collections that are visited by millions each year.

Crime and Punishment (Crime et châtiment) at the Musée d’Orsay

hbj — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:36:33 +0000

I went to an incredibly powerful exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay yesterday: Crime et Châtiment. Of course, I knew I would love the show when I saw the publicity posters that featured Géricault’s painting of severed limbs. For those of you who have had the nineteenth-century class from me, you know that I’m kind of into that beautifully painted macabre scene.

The first room set the tone for the entire show. You walk into this narrow and long room with walls painted black and large canvases featuring the various aspects of crime and punishment disposed on either side. As you moved down this corridor of sorts, you realize that you are heading towards a large object that is draped in a black canopy and dramatically lit. The object is the emblem par excellence of 19th-century violence: the guillotine. The staging of this room, with the nave-like passage and altar of death, definitely draws on associations with sacred architecture and begs the question of how violence fits within the paradigm of worship.

Various kinds of crimes and punishments, as treated in modern European visual culture, are explored in this show. The exhibition, which is organized both thematically and chronologically, features a stunning array of works from “high” art and popular visual culture as well as objects related to acts of crime and punishment. While there were lots of well-known pieces in the show (Goya, Blake, Picasso) and a definite emphasis on the French fixation with this topic, I was happy to see lesser-known works too. I was stunned–but pleasantly so–to see the incorporation of so much material from popular culture–posters, book illustrations, images d’Epinal, etc.–and anthropological objects, such as death masks, phrenological instruments, and even a model of Bentham’s Panopticon. There were quotes from various literary figures on the walls (Hugo, Bréton, Dostoevsky) to add further texture to the show. It was an extremely avant-garde exhibition in terms of conception, content, and display, and if this exhibition is any indication of the vision of the Orsay’s new (and controversial) director, I’m going to be an ardent supporter. Quite frankly, I’ve never warmed to what I see as the sleek, safe, consumer-driven mentality that governed that institution and I’m glad to see the Orsay allow the complexities of nineteenth-century visual culture to bubble to the surface.

Not surprisingly, I was especially moved by the room devoted to the French Revolution, as well as with those images concerning women’s relationship to crime and punishment. Perhaps the most compelling work for me was Léon Bonnat’s Crucifixion. This painting should have been in that first room–or maybe its last–as a reminder to the world of the ultimate crime, deicide, and humankind’s potential for redemption.

For more info, click on these links:

Notice in rfi
Brief slide show

Conversation topic: What’s your favorite image of crime (or punishment) and why?

Louise Bourgeois, femme artiste formidable, passes away at age 98

hbj — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:55:46 +0000

Here are links to some of the notices in the press:

Guardian obit
The New York Times obit
Germaine Greer’s (noted feminist art historian) tribute

Conversation topic: What do you think about the art of Bourgeois?

Franco-American Band Rocks the Canon

hbj — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:06:18 +0000

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Conversation topic: Test your art history knowledge: How many of the paintings can you identify?

Versailles Revisited, or The Inimitable M. David

hbj — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:12:03 +0000

I know that it has been forever since I posted. So you deserve more. I’m in Paris right now and am in a complete state of bliss, so I wanted to share. As usual, my eyes are either feasting on art (Louvre, Orsay, Carnavalet are musts) or bleary from looking at microfilms and transcribing texts from the BN. I love to hold those worn leather bound books–the smell of old books is one of my favorites!–and I treasure the freedom to focus on my research for hours on end.

The hands-down most thrilling experience of this trip was getting a 2 1/2 hour private tour of the nineteenth-century painting galleries at Versailles that are closed to the public. It was the first day of Kalisha Jacobson’s curatorial internship–and I’ll definitely have her guest blog about this–and part of the orientation was viewing the hundreds of sequestered masterpieces. The enormous keys of Louis XIV were used to open room after room, where wooden window shutters were opened to throw some light on the paintings. I gazed upon fabulous portraits of all the Bonapartes and Louis-Philippe and his entourage, massive military paintings, dozens of history paintings that I’d seen in only in tiny, black and white reproduction, and newly-discovered gems, all done from 1789-1848–the most magnificent period in the history of art, incidentally.

I’ll confess: I was so moved by the experience that I had to fight back tears on several occasions. And when the doors were thrown open and I saw Jacques-Louis David’s unfinished Oath of the Tennis Court [pictured above], I gasped and drew back. This was to be in line with his Horatii, Brutus, and Sabine paintings and yet, for political reasons, was never finished. As you can see, just a few heads were completed, and although we have oil sketches, this was the real deal and I’m telling you, it has a palpable aura. I just wanted to share this incredible moment with my art history friends who know what it is to connect passionately to this stuff.

Conversation topic (and this is a shout-out to those currently on study abroad): What artwork has “blown you away” of late?

Guest Blog: Chris Evans on Damien Hirst

hbj — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:12:01 +0000

[This post was graciously volunteered by former BYU Art History major, Chris Evans. Let it be known that I'd love to have guest bloggers contribute to this conversation!]

The first time I heard the name Damien Hirst was in connection with his 2003 work, Judgment Day. It is a large, square panel covered and encrusted with thousands of dead flies. Initially, the title and the imagery struck me as something unique and thought provoking. I searched for meaning, often coming back to religious connections due to the title, but was ultimately left wanting. The piece lacked any real formalist appeal that would excite the eye, so to enjoy and appreciate this work I assumed that it must have some sort of deep, consequential conceptual facet to it. In truth, the work lacks any such facet. Thus, it is devoid both of any aesthetic draw and any real conceptual meaning—as is the vast majority of Damien Hirst’s work of the last ten years.

I propose that Hirst’s ‘art’ is in fact ‘non-art.’ His work cannot be considered art on an aesthetic or beauty based criteria, nor can it be considered conceptual art because his works possess no meaning or substance beyond an initial shock. His pieces only alarm, repulse, and offend the viewer, which he does as a ploy for nothing more than profit and fame.

Since coming to the fore of contemporary art, Damien Hirst has built a major reputation and has often been hailed for his artistic vision. In the words of one art critic, he even has a “genius reputation”. His fame has spread from his homeland of England to every corner of the art world, and has permeated the fabric of the non-art world to the point that his “iconography has entered the common consciousness so completely…that even people with only a passing interest in art are likely to be familiar with his [work].”

To test the veracity of that statement, I asked my father if he knew who Hirst was. To be clear, my father is not involved in the art world, and aside from being dragged to the occasional Impressionist exhibit with my 19^th-century-art-loving mother, he is not frequently exposed to art. The conversation went as follows:

Me: “Hey, I have a question for you.”

Dad: “Okay.”

Me: “Have you ever heard of Damien Hirst?”

Dad: “The artist? The guy who cuts up the animals and sticks them in formaldehyde?”

That is exactly the guy, dad. Clearly, an artist, especially a contemporary artist, whose work has so fully integrated itself into the general knowledge of society must possess something very worthwhile in his work. This is not the case.

The desperate search for meaning within the work of Hirst is most likely spawned by the attention grabbing titles of his various pieces. Titles of his work include, The Twelve Disciples (1994), Resurrection (1998-2003), Adam and Eve (Banished from the Garden) (1999), Mother and Child, Divided (1993), and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991). As mentioned above, it was the title of Judgment Day that caused me to stop, pause, and ponder the meaning of the piece. Without the title, I would have quickly moved on with the clear understanding that I could look at the work for hours and never coming to an understanding of its meaning. However, after continuing to look at and ponder the various works of Hirst I soon came to find that the meaning thought to be within the works of Hirst is not there. The titles, which have been described as “very short novels,” are little more than facades for the empty works they accompany.

Conversation Topic: Should Damien Hirst’s work be considered “art?” If so, why?

The Contemporary Art Scene

hbj — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:51:13 +0000

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?