The Cranky Professor

October 9, 2008

3 Million Pound Pitcher

How did I miss this auction story the other day?

A 1,000-year-old carved rock crystal ewer, one of only seven known surviving examples, fetched 3.2 million pounds at auction on Tuesday, Christie's said.

The ewer is the same one that came up for auction in Britain in January this year, when it was catalogued as a 19th century French claret jug and valued at 100-200 pounds.

There's a picture at the link.

Of course, when pitchers are expensive and made of rock crystal, pitchers are ewers - kind of like jugs are vases when they're Greek. And, please, in the words of Miss Manners, it's a vahz when it's filled with dahzies.

via Cronaca

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

October 6, 2008

Weird 20th Century Art Property Law

I don't get this one - why do the heirs of Kazimir Malevich have a right to his work? Was it seized by the Soviet State and then sold? I'm just not clear. The setting is a story from Bloomberg.com about a Malevich sale expected to take a record price.

The idea of restitution of Malevich's art began in 1993 when German art historian Clemens Toussaint scoured the former Soviet Union for Malevich's heirs, Toussaint said in a 1999 interview in St. Petersburg.

He convinced the heirs to press a claim for Malevich works held by MoMA and the Stedelijk. In June 1999, MoMA paid the heirs an undisclosed cash settlement, and handed over a 1925 painting, also titled ``Suprematist Composition,'' according to a MoMA press release. MoMA kept the other 15 paintings.

The heirs sold the 1925 ``Suprematist Composition'' at a Phillips International auction in May 2000 for $17 million.

The identity of the Malevich heirs remains a guarded secret, and Toussaint declined to name any.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:53 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2008

The creepiest thing in the Greek Rooms

Aren't these odd? This is a detached pair of eyes, probably Greek 5th Century, for insertion into a statue. Remember that the Greeks painted marble and wood statues to look more naturalistic (they probably polished bronze to look like tanned flesh), added color effects like gilding to hair, and preferred naturalistic eyes. So this pair fell out of something - maybe the wooden head rotted, or the bronze head was broken up and melted.

Mounted this way they are intensely creepy. Yes, they're staring right at me.

Link to the Met page about them.

Click on them to go to my Flickr stream - the side view changes things!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2008

Morandi in New York

I got to run down to New York City this weekend with a friend and do a lot of walking around and enough museuming to hold me for awhile. I managed not to buy anything but food and drink, too - though we bought a lot of those! The best meal was certainly Indian, and I unaccountably forgot to grab a card from the restaurant on the way out. I'm going to be experimenting with chick peas for the immediate future to see if I can do anything like that. But then there were the Chinese baked goods from Canal Street. Yum. And the cute little smoothie-making machine that not only blended but sealed with a stretched plastic top - you know, sort of like a foil-sealed glass of juice. Tasty and hygienic!

The best art-dose was, of all things, Morandi at the Met. Now the Rome program went to the Morandi museum in Bologna this March, so it's not as though I was suffering from some kind of undiagnosed 20th Century still-life deficiency. The show at the Met, though it drew on lots of stuff owned by the museum in Bologna, was more analytical and less chronological - they had lots of multiple-version paintings. There was one group of four paintings from 1937-39 that was especially good for understanding work-technique. The little variations from still-life to still-life are worth contemplating, and I am always amazed by the little landscapes in person. Definitely worth seeing.

The medieval rooms were in disarray in advance of a renovation - most of them were closed or almost empty. We spent a good time in the arms and armor section - there's something very satisfying about the industrial design of life-saving equipment like this, with all the lines designed to slide projectiles away from the torso.

I went and mooned about the classical rooms, of course. There's never a visit without that. There were 4 loaned pieces of Greek pottery with clear-cut signage that they were ON LOAN FROM THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY. None of them struck ME as much consolation for the Sarpedon krater, but whatever.

Lots of wandering - a few pictures. The predicted rain mainly fell elsewhere, so we weren't too sloggy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2008

MacArthur Genius winner - neat art

I thought I recognized Tara Donovan's work from the description in the news this week about MacArthur prizes, but I couldn't find any confirmation - I saw a big piece at the Birmingham, Alabama, museum when my mother and I went down for the Pompeii show last Christmas. I can't turn it up on a search of their collection, so it must have been a temporary installation.

The work was on the ceiling of the cafe area - and it looked, from a distance, almost like a super-enlarged view of stomach lining. Tripe, you know, something like that. It was beautiful in a creepy way - compelling. I went over and found out that it was made of thousands of styrofoam coffee cups glued to a support structure. It looked remarkably like the piece in the photograph - either another from the same series or actually the same one.


Here's a gallery website with pictures of more art.

Here's the MacArthur write up.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:18 PM | Comments (1)

September 24, 2008

Your German Vocabulary Word for the Day

Arschgeweih - literally, ass antlers. English, tramp stamp.

The things you learn on the internet! I came across Arschgeweih in an encouraging article on the rise of tattoo removal in Germany. If I were in medical school, piercing repair and tattoo removal would be high on my list of skills to acquire.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM | Comments (1)

Think the economy has you worried?

Bloomsberg.muse has a story with a great teaser paragraph:

In a village in southern China, Wu Ruiqiu is worried about the effect of an economic slump on the art market. He should be. Wu represents artists that make 60 percent of the world's oil paintings.

60% of the world's oil paintings? Well, they may be right. Dafen is an industrial production center for paintings - original and replicas. I'm sure their sales are down.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Despite the Collapse of All Economic Markets, Art Sells

At least Damien Hirst. Be sure to watch the video. One of his animal-floating-in-formaldehyde pieces brought a record price. Here's Hirst in front of the Golden Calf floater. I kind of like it as a representation of Art as Religion, and, of course, as a mockery of art collectors. He was running 3 studios full of assistants at full steam for 2 years to turn out all this work.

I took the photo on the right a couple of years ago. I think I didn't post it on flickr then because it was disturbing without being really powerful - kind of the opposite of my response to Francis Bacon. More like that childhood toy, the Visible Woman or the Visible Man, than anything that moved me.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM | Comments (1)

September 13, 2008

The 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon

Professor Soltan visits the 9/11 Memorial.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2008

Pentagon 9/11 Memorial

CNN has good coverage, including lots about the design of the memorial.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)

Philippe de Montebello has it right - the Met has sold out

Has the Met has gone a-whoring after recent art?

In a phone interview, Mr. de Montebello praised Mr. Campbell’s appointment. “He’s the most modern of us all,” he said, invoking Met directors. “We’ve had a Romanist, a medievalist, but he goes up through the Baroque."

Actually, despite Mr. de Montebello's little joke, it's Carol Vogel in the New York Times article who regrets the modern and contemporary holdings in the Met. Soon-to-retire director de Montebello and new director Campbell don't say anything about the issue. If it even is an issue. I'm quite certain that the Met should not pursue cutting-edge contemporary art; show it if you like, but don't buy it. It's too hard to decide what's important and it's all too expensive.

Bloomberg's Linda Yablonsky has an interesting opinion piece about the selection, too. Speaking as a fellow 46-year-old, I'm amused she's calling Campbell 'youthful:'

Frankly, it seems fitting that a dark horse like the youthful Campbell should take the reins. In this U.S. presidential election year, inexperience seems anything but an obstacle to success. It might even be an asset, especially when the candidate comes with ideals, refined speech and a winning personality.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:56 AM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2008

Francis Bacon retrospective at the Tate

Bacon's work was included in important U.S. collections during his lifetime. He never quite conquered New York where the dominant styles were first the abstraction of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, then the cool of Pop and Minimalism.

His work, in contrast, was messily, sometimes squalidly, figurative. It was about subjects such as mortality, sex, and fear. New York critics often found it nasty and corny.

They had half a point. Bacon's work is a complex mixture. One of his aims was to make what he painted more real than any photograph could -- or as he put it in an interview with art critic David Sylvester, "to bring the figurative thing up onto the nervous system more violently and more poignantly."

Bacon is maybe the best example - certainly MY favorite example - of art that is disturbing and great. Better than de Kooning, easily.

I'm still thinking, five years after seeing it for the first time, about Bacon's Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres). Here's the Ingres painting. Gosh.

I don't like rawness and self-torture, but I don't really like tragedy, either. That doesn't mean we live in a non-tragic world.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:56 AM | Comments (1)

September 8, 2008

There's Stolen Art and there's LOST Art

A day after reports surfaced that Wellesley College's Davis Museum may have unintentionally thrown out a prized 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Leger, President H. Kim Bottomly promised that new controls will be in place by October to better protect the museum's art.

. . .

The Leger had been loaned to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for an exhibit that ended in April 2007. The work was then sent back to Wellesley, where it sat in a crate for months before the museum checked and found it was missing.

It is unclear what happened to the oil painting, which measures 25 by 21 inches, but museum officials have speculated that it may not have been removed from the crate before that crate was discarded.

One supposes that "new controls" may include "a new director" and "a new conservator." Read it all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 5, 2008

How you can spot an economic downturn . . .

The Bloomberg.com:Muse headline link is: Fewer $25,000 Gala Tables This Summer as Hamptons Arts Groups Woo Donors

"With this economy, people are a little more hesitant to spend money,'' said Weisbrodt, creative director of the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation, which operates the Watermill Center, an artists' residency program. "You can certainly feel a different climate. Instead of buying a $25,000 table, they buy a $15,000 table.''

. . .

"Watermill is a place where artists can create without the pressures of the market,'' said [Rufus] Wainwright, who performed new music he set to Shakespeare's sonnets for a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Isabella Rossellini. "It's the process that counts, and that's important to our society.''

Awwww. Poor artists, depending on patrons like that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 4, 2008

Should Museums be Free?

Waldemar Januszczak is having second thoughts. He goes to the Imperial War Museum in London and finds a paid admission special exhibition on, of all things, James Bond.

So, I hope the question I want to ask here is predictable. It should be. It’s a damned obvious question: why is the Imperial War Museum celebrating James Bond, when Bond and his Aston Martin and his girls and his gadgets have nothing to do with the terrible realities of war, and when our young men are having their legs blown away in Afghanistan and Iraq? If the question is obvious, so, alas, is the answer. We all know exactly why the Imperial War Museum has put on a Bond show. It’s as clear as a vodka martini. Bond is popular and, by devoting a display to him, the organisers hope to attract wagonloads of fee-paying visitors to their museum. He’ll bring a younger crowd. The kidults will love him. Seats are sure to be settled with bums.

. . .

There are, in fact, two tragedies being enacted here. One is the continuing collapse of cultural values that leaves us unable to tell the difference between Kylie’s dresses and the rightful terrain of a museum. The other is an unfortunate side effect of a well-meaning gesture - the abolition of museum charges. Making entry to national museums free, thereby reversing the policy of charging brought in by Margaret Thatcher’s government, is the biggest feather in new Labour’s cultural cap. Having marched outside the V&A in the 1980s, protesting against museum charges, I was as delighted as anyone by the Blair government’s determination to push through free entry.

Seven years on from the abolition of charges, however, things are no longer so clear. When that dreadful old Etonian, the then shadow culture secretary Hugo Swire, popped up in the papers last year suggesting that the Conservatives might reexamine the free-admissions policy, large barrels of ordure came down on his head, persuading him to beat a hasty retreat. Yet the cruel truth is that free museum entry has turned out to be a mixed blessing. Yes, the number of visitors going to galleries has increased dramatically, but the figures are not what they seem. A Mori poll conducted in 2002 discovered that, although numbers had increased, the make-up of the typical museumgoer had remained unchanged. What was actually happening was that the same people were going more often. And those people were, as before, the middle-class, the educated, the culturally involved.

. . .

The most serious effect, however, of the scrapping of entrance fees has been the impact it has had on exhibition policy. Unable to charge visitors for entry, museums have had to rely on special exhibitions for large chunks of their income. The talented among them have duly found ways of putting on shows that are both popular and proper. The British Museum’s tribute to the Terracotta Army is a perfect example: the most successful show of the year, but ambitious, thoughtful, enlightening. Yet it takes a rare museum talent to pull off that approach. Which is why the Imperial War Museum has resorted to waving [Halle] Berry’s bikini at us. [my emphasis]

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM | Comments (3)

September 2, 2008

Poster Sales Days

They set up folding tables across the front of the Scandling Center and sell posters the first days of the semester. I found this article about most popular posters amusing. Sadly, Dali's Persistence of Memory didn't make the list.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM | Comments (1)

Art News of the Ick

I just don't get the logistics of this deeply creepy art sale from the article. Follow the link if you like, but there's no picture.

Man sells his tattoo to German collector for €150,000

A Swiss man has sold an elaborate Virgin Mary tattoo on his back to a German collector, with the understanding it can be exhibited three times yearly, a Zurich gallery said Monday.

But . . .

The extraordinary transaction - which gallery owner Jutta Nexdorf claims is the first of its kind - fetched €150,000 ($219,000), with the main stipulation being that the 35-hour work can be removed from the bearer’s skin upon death and handed to its owner.

The owner will also be allowed to sell the tattoo, created by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye. It is notable for depicting the mother of Jesus with a lifeless skull.

Proceeds from the sale are being shared among the gallery, tattoo bearer Tim Steiner and Delvoye, Nexdorf told AFP. The tattoo will go on show for the first time next week in Singapore and Shanghai.

So is the - um - current bearer of the tattoo on the verge of death? Or will he be flown to Singapore and Shanghai for exhibition and then appear thrice yearly until death, at which point the tattoo will be removed and may be resold?

And, sad to say, is this really the first time that tattoos have been collected? We've all seen horrific photos from the Nazi era. Perhaps the novelty is that the proceeds are being shared?

I understand the price - the artist is Wim Delvoye, big-name conceptual artist. If you follow the wikipedia link, you'll learn that he's been doing tattoos for some time (I hadn't read about those before). Here are some of his tattoos on pigs.

You'd think it would be easier, cheaper, and quicker (in the sense that the tattoo will be removed after death) to buy one of these; I suppose the collector wants human skin, though. Ick.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM | Comments (2)

Venice gets its first new bridge in 70 years

And of course, all kinds of people hate it. It's a Calatrava. It was too expensive. It isn't even accessible to the handicapped (and I'm not sure how they pulled that off!) Go read about it here.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2008

So did they sacrifice 100 oxen?

If not, I'm not impressed, and I doubt Athena would be, either. Hecatombs, people!

New Acropolis Museum Prompts Greek Pagan Service at Parthenon

The funniest part, though it might have suffered in translation, is this: "Moving these sculptures to a museum that is foreign and hostile to the Greek environment is like breaking up a family.''

No, moving the sculptures from exposure to the chemically-hostile Greek environment is the only thing that might save them!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:19 AM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2008

What Candybar would Henry VIII Choose?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:11 AM | Comments (2)

August 22, 2008

And you thought stained glass was just pretty!

"For centuries people appreciated only the beautiful works of art, and long life of the colors, but little did they realize that these works of art are also, in modern language, photocatalytic air purifier with nanostructured gold catalyst," said Zhu in a statement.

I think that "little did they realize" is about right, but still, this is an interesting suggestion about stained glass.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:58 PM

August 14, 2008

New Pocketable Camera Joy!

A PowerShot SD870 IS (don't all those elements connote sophistication?). This will fit more slimly in my pockets - the tradeoff of the A530's use of over-the-counter batteries was the big bulge; of course, it also made it easy to handle. We'll see.

Once again I read around, but came back to Ken Rockwell's recommended list and ordered there - might as well support someone who is so very, very informative! Go there and do likewise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:59 PM | Comments (2)

The Old Pocketable Camera

My PowerShot A530 is still working fine - but the slide to switch from shoot to replay broke off - luckily in the shoot position! Time for a new camera!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2008

That rare bird, the collector of stolen art?

Whenever a major work of art is stolen people wonder if a reclusive billionaire is sending out minions to add to his collection. Somehow that notion usually gets dismissed - especially when stolen famous art turns up later and it appears the criminals were unable to move it on any market.

Here's an example to test the rule from the New York Times.

The curious case of William Milliken Vanderbilt Kingsland, a threadbare eccentric and an amateur genealogist of the Upper East Side, began in the summer of 2006, when, a few months after he died (at the age of either 58 or 62), it was discovered that his birth name was Melvyn Kohn, that he resided not on Fifth Avenue but in a small apartment on East 72nd Street, and that he had not — counter to his claims — attended Groton or Harvard, nor had he once been married to a French royal.

He left no will, and the apartment turned out to be full of artworks — including a bust by Giacometti that has since been valued at $900,000 to $1.2 million and a small painting by Giorgio Morandi that would eventually be auctioned for about $600,000 — that turned out to be stolen. (The Morandi was subsequently returned to the care of the Manhattan public administrator, who oversees legal details for the intestate.)

Some of the art in Mr. Kingsland’s collection does appear to have belonged, in the legal sense of the word, to him. But the F.B.I., brought in to sort through the trove, discovered that of the more than 300 pieces found in his apartment, — including stolen works by Picasso, Copley, Fairfield Porter and Odilon Redon — most anything of commercial significance was difficult, at best, to verify as his.

Mr. Kingsland doesn't seem to have been a Napoleon of Crime, Stolen Art Division, but it's a good story. I don't know that they'll ever work it out - he didn't leave much paper trail. On a guess, he seems to have been willing to buy things that weren't well-documented.

Follow the link and watch the slide show - maybe you own one of these?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 AM | Comments (0)

August 7, 2008

More typography

The Ampersand, a weblog.

via Daring Fireball

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

August 5, 2008

Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul

It wouldn't be a trip to visit my sister and her crew if I didn't get to the National Gallery! Mother wanted to see a show sponsored by the National Geographic Society called Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul. You can tell it was a National Geographic show because there were so many WORDS in the free brochure - available for download in PDF format! Click and see all the pictures I'm talking about. I've ordered the catalog, but it was way too heavy to lug back to NoVa on the Metro.

The show concentrates on the ancient gold work that was quietly preserved through the Soviet and Taliban eras of Afghanistan by being locked in safes in the cellars of the presidential palace; there was some fun video of a very excited crowd of Afghan museum folks cutting open the safes and taking the stuff out of boxes. This is framed by gutwrenching scenes of boxes of shattered stone sculptures, each topped with what looks like a xerox of a pre-revolutionary catalog page for future reference. A former director of the museum explains that this destruction was intentional - not related to the (accidental?) shelling of the museum during the Soviet invasion.

The show has a lot of individual objects, but it really isn't all that big, because those objects are ensembles. There are some stunning ivory plaques which originally decorated wooden furniture and there are the grave goods from 5 graves - if you add up all the little things in the show you might get into the low thousands, but 100 gold appliqué beads = 1 thing for me.

The material is all from Bactria, the northern rim of Afghanistan and the area eternally involved in East-West trade along the Silk Route. There were a few objects from around 2000 BC that show obvious Mesopotamian iconographical influence - if not actually Mesopotamian manufacture. One was a gold cup with repoussé bulls - bearded bulls like the harp box at Ur.

Then we leap to about 300 BC - yup, not a lot of supporting information there - but the treatment of a city founded by Alexander the Great was really splendid. The site was excavated after King Zahir Shah was shown a limestone Corinthian capital while on a hunting trip in 1961 and told someone to go explore the area. There was a brilliant 3-d walk through of a reconstruction of the city and palace. The remains were very, very Greek, as one would expect - including things like dedicatory statues of a gymnasiarch and torsos of beautiful youths. There was a splendid gilded silver plate with Cybele entering a city - great fun!

All of my favorite items in the show came from the city of Begram, a city that grew rich from Silk Road trade. The huge photographic mural of the ramparts was awe-inspiring - I'm sure merchants were glad to get there. The material from Begram was preserved in a mysterious accident - it was all found in two adjacent rooms sealed in antiquity. Since they seem to be much of the same era they might represent a store of trade goods. There were two or three rather normal glass beakers, Roman, with remarkable painted surfaces. I've really never seen anything quite like them - the paintings are very much like the style of late Antique manuscript painting. I don't think I've ever seen painted Roman glass.

The ivory furniture panels were also found in the Begram rooms. They may well have been manufactured in north India, not only because of the material but also because of the iconography. The carving was wonderful - lively, erotic, fun! The wall text suggested that the chair was for a woman or for women's quarters or some such. Their reconstruction of the original piece as a large, backed bench used all the parts and was pretty convincing.

Most of the gold (and let's face it, that's always the big marketing point) was from a find of 5 graves - one male grave and 4 female graves circling it. The reconstructions of the original clothing were interesting, but the gold was splendid. And there was a lot of it! The most gorgeous piece is definitely the one on the cover of the brochure - one of a pair of hat pendants showing a man (divine or royal?) dominating two dragons.

my verdict: Beautiful stuff, but not enough to be worth a trip from outside the metro area. If you're already here, go.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM

August 2, 2008

Rome to tear down part of the Ara Pacis Shell

The new Richard Meier setting for the Altar of Peace of Augustus has been controversial from the beginning, but the new government of Rome is going to tear down a travertine wall that is blocking the view of two churches from the Lungotevere. Hmm. Click on the picture and you can see two walls - I think it's one of these: either the long horizontal (which carries water to the pool below) or the vertical flanking the door.

The article, from Bloomberg/Muse, is pretty stubby. I'll try to find out some more from Corriere della sera online.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2008

The things museum directors will do to bring art to the people.

Remember the note about Duran Duran playing a fundraiser for Friends of the Louvre?

Here's a description of the day's events from a BusinessWeek article:

On a breezy June morning, several dozen people climb a narrow staircase to an ornate, high-ceilinged room in the Louvre Museum. Displayed on easels are 22 works by Leonardo da Vinci—a delicate pen-and-ink Madonna and child, detailed architectural sketches, subtly shaded tempera studies of draped fabric. These fragile 500-year-old drawings are rarely seen by anyone but scholars and museum curators.

Today, they've been removed from the vaults for a private showing to Friends of the Louvre, an elite group of $10,000-and-up donors. Later, the Friends will dine on veal and asparagus in truffle sauce amid Greek and Roman sculpture in the museum. Still later: a silent auction of luxury vacations and other indulgences and a concert by the '80s band Duran Duran. All told, the soiree will raise more than $2.7 million.

And you want to know why? The government's appropriations for the Louvre only cover half the budget, down from 70% in 2001. So an enterprising director looks to Duran Duran and Abu Dhabi . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:24 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Opening the Hadrian Show in London

There's a big Hadrian show at the British Museum - and here's a description of the opening from Bloomberg Muse:

For the first time in many years, the ruler of London addressed the assembled populus in Latin. Boris Johnson, mayor of the U.K. capital, climbed onto the podium at the opening of the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition and began spouting classical prose.

After awhile, he paused to ask the audience, ``How much more of this do you want? There's yards of it.'' The July 23 audience didn't demur, and perhaps some of them understood what he was saying since there were several professors of classical studies present.

So the mayor plunged on. He is himself, as Neil McGregor, director of the museum, pointed out, the ruler of a vast empire, namely the London government machine.

It was an impressive performance. Tony Blair is able to speak in passable French; President John F. Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner'' in German. But most British officials nowadays probably no longer have a working knowledge of Latin.

It may be that this was the best Latin speech made by a British politician since the Romans departed in the fifth century. Mayor Johnson studied Greats -- a four-year program in classics -- at Oxford, and is evidently a master of the Latin language. MacGregor, thanking the Italian ambassador for his help, described him as "the representative of the former colonial power.''

Here's a review of the show, as opposed to a love letter to Boris Johnson, from the 24 Hour Museum. It's getting great reviews; maybe because I'm just back from Rome I'm not all that thrilled - but they'll have things on show from all over the place. Still, they can't bring the Pantheon - and all the portrait busts in the world can't make up for that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM

July 23, 2008

Font convention

And how conventional all the fonts are! Click and laugh, if you're a little font-obsessed. I'll admit that I, too, have dismissed Ransom.

via Daring Fireball

Funny funny - but for me especially timely - I'm about finished with Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style, a book from which I've learned more new things that anything else I've read this summer. Gosh, it's good - I understand typography and book composition much better now, and could have learned even more if I'd applied myself.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (1)

July 18, 2008

Windows on Chicago

"When you go into a windowless room, it's exhausting,'' said [Chicago Art Institute] museum president James Cuno. "Light nourishes.''

Not usually for sensitive artworks, though. The windows will be equipped with translucent UV-filtering scrims -- shadelike shields strong enough to protect the pieces but thin enough to give museum-goers a hazy but discernable reading of Millennium Park's soaring Pritzker Pavilion. At night, the screens can be adjusted to reveal the sparkle of the lakefront skyscrapers.

A second set of scrims are opaque, allowing the museum to "black out" the galleries when the museum is closed.

Just how much natural light will be allowed through the windows and skylights is based on a formula called a "cumulative exposure calculation," said museum spokeswoman Erin Hogan.

The allowance varies greatly depending on the medium, said Hogan. Prints, drawings, and photography are very light sensitive. Paintings generally have a higher light tolerance, and sculptures even higher still.

. . .

The 264,000-square-foot wing will increase the Art Institute's exhibit space by about a third. Cuno said the museum's current collection of contemporary art, plus commissioned temporary exhibits, will be enough to fill the space.

With creations by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, "we have lots of stuff,'' said Cuno.

"The problem is we didn't have enough space to show it all,'' he said.

There are two really good reasons for windowless museums - to protect art (yes, yes, museums ARE treasure-houses of art and libraries ARE treasure-houses of books -- get over it) and to show it. Walls of glass cut into hanging space in a BIG way, leaving the galleries less useful. So good museum designers -- and goodness knows Renzo Piano is a great museum designer -- use windows sparingly.

Cuno ends by listing a bunch of 2-d guys (yes, they did 3-d, too). But the estimate that the new wing at Chicago increases the space of the museum by a third doesn't mean it increases the amount of 2-d exhibition wall-space by a third.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2008

The auctioneer says 'buy, it'll go up 20% a year!'

Auctions on cruise ships? Who knew?

When most people think of art auctions, they think of Christie’s or Sotheby’s in New York or London, not a cruise ship. But over the last two decades, auctioning “fine art” on cruises, often to first-time bidders who have never met a reserve or inspected a provenance, has become big business.

Which leads to unhappy first-time auction winners:

“It was very upsetting,” Mr. Maldonado said. “I’m not mad about spending $73,000. I’m mad about spending $73,000 for works that I was told are worth more than $100,000 and are probably worth $10,000, if they’re even real.”

Of course, even I, ignorant medievalist that I am, have been telling students for years not to buy Dalí prints because they're widely faked.

But read the whole thing - it's quite a good story!

via Tyler Cowen, whose price point without research is $1500. I have a simpler formula - cruises are for suckers.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (1)

July 15, 2008

A British Judge tries to explain private property to a graffiti practitioner

Judge Christopher Hardy said: “It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that some examples of your handiwork show considerable artistic talent, part of what is now known as the graffiti subculture and on the way to being recognised as a valid form of art. The trouble is that it is has been sprayed all over other people’s property without their consent and that is simply vandalism.”

via Times Online

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 AM

July 12, 2008

Motion photography

I don't think I'm cut out to be a sports photographer - and I don't have the lenses - but a few of my pictures of the Musselman* ITU PanAmerican Cup didn't turn out too badly. Click on this one and see the others if you like.

Today's big race actually used my street as their turning point - brick-paved bumpiness must've been fun on those highly tuned bikes!

*It's Musselman, not Muscle Man, because of the Zebra Mussels in Seneca Lake.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:55 PM

July 11, 2008

The Handwriting of Typographers

Have you ever wondered about the handwriting of individual typographers? It hadn't occurred to me - but go look at these examples!

via John Gruber.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:09 AM

The FIRST major Isamu Noguchi show in England

The Times Online story says "in Europe," though they remind us that Noguchi represented America at a Venice Biennale in 1986. Surely that was a major show? Oh, well, quibbling aside, this will be a big retrospective, and the article about "America's Henry Moore" is interesting - and there's a good slide show attached. If you're not sure who I'm talking about, you know his coffee table. That's a kind of artistic immortality very few sculptors attain.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:28 AM

July 10, 2008

LACMA buys a collection of Oceanic Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has bought a sizeable collection - 46 pieces - of Oceanic Art. Evidently, according to an AP story, LACMA didn't have an Oceanic collection and felt the gap was significant (no link - who knows where their anti-blogger policy is going?). The Detroit Institute of Art is a little disappointed - the collection was assembled on behalf of a Michigan foundation and was exhibited at the DIA at least once.

In an oddly condescending move for a modern museum, the AP story indicates that they intend to exhibit the materials with the modern art because of the influences on 20th century European art. The LA Times story is less explicit, but quotes the LACMA director:

Govan also noted the significant influence of the types of works in the collection on modern and contemporary artists, including Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Max Ernst and others.

"They're so accessible, even in a modern age. It's the sheer power of the items that you don't see in any other culture," he said. "The dance paddle is a sensual, abstract object that has that sort of power to it. And they are not important just because of their influence on European artists. They are an alternate aesthetic and should be seen that way.

But if you're exhibiting them that way . . . ?

The LA Times coverage has a photo of an stunning statue from Easter Island - wood with what looks like a bone eye and an obsidian iris (materials listed in the caption). Really - go look. I'd like to know the scale of the head, too, but the lines are amazing.

That head doesn't remind me of 20th, but of 12th Century French sculpture - think of Autun or Vezelay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:28 AM

July 9, 2008

Ooooh - BIG Byzantine Blockbuster

The Royal Academy of Arts mounts a blockbuster show (300 pieces!) of Byzantine art this fall - and it comes from all over. If you follow the link the pictures are disappointingly small, but give you some idea. The story leads with the typical conspiracy theory that the Antioch Chalice was the Holy Grail - but hey, if it gets 'em out. . . .

This link to the RAs exhibition page is much more satisfying.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM

June 10, 2008

Duran Duran plays a fundraiser at the Louvre

Yes, the Louvre.

The dinner is part of a series of events sponsored by the American Friends of the Louvre, a U.S. nonprofit organization set up in December 2002 to help the museum fund renovations and build ties with U.S. counterparts. AFL has pledged $4 million toward the Louvre's 18th-century decorative-arts galleries, and it already has raised $550,000.

"The fact that the Louvre is seeking outside patronage doesn't bother me. It depends what the patrons are getting in exchange,'' said Didier Rykner, an art historian whose Internet site La Tribune de l'Art (English version: http://www.thearttribune.com) has been a vocal critic of the Louvre's Atlanta and Abu Dhabi ventures. "If it's a gala dinner with Duran Duran playing underneath the pyramid, that's fine.''

I wonder how he means that? Is the pyramid a piece of 80s nostalgia, like a Duran Duran concert?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:03 AM

June 9, 2008

North British Palladianism, anyone?

One of the great ensemble museums of the 18th century has just opened - most of the furniture designed for the house, the paintings built up as an organic collection; it's not exactly on the beaten track, but it really would be something to see!

From the Bloomberg.com story:

Dumfries House in Scotland admitted its first paying visitors at the weekend. It was opened by the Prince of Wales, who saved it for the nation last year by backing a 45-million-pound ($88.4 million) rescue package.

Dumfries is an extraordinarily intact and beautiful country property, designed and built between 1754 and 1759 by the architect brothers John and Robert Adam for the Earls of Dumfries, who later became Marquesses of Bute. It stands in landscaped grounds of 2,070 acres (840 hectares) and has a collection of Thomas Chippendale furniture designed for its rooms.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

June 3, 2008

Technology on the March - Looking at Art Online

Over at Cronaca I read about an exhibition at the Morgan Library of a new acquisition of theirs, an early 16th century French prayer book (the Prayer Book of Claude de France). The manuscript is too late to be of much real interest to me (we all have our preferences, and a strong one of mine is for earlier art), but the online viewer he linked to is amazing! Just shows what money and thought can do - this is the best online viewer for books that I've used lately!

Go look!

By the way - total coolness! The donor's bookplate is still in the book; after all, it's a Picasso! The Morgan wouldn't go peeling that out, even for conservation purposes. Just look at the juxtaposition of interiors and exteriors - Picasso's sketchy little window looking onto a landscape (with the owner's initials worked into something that recalls a wrought iron balustrade) and the Claude Master's tricky little framed view of John on Patmos toying with space and illusionism. Fun!

Now having looked at that, go look at some of their other online exhibitions.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM

May 27, 2008

Oddly Sweet

Here's the New York Times obituary for Sydney Pollack. It was almost always worth watching his movies. Interesting, though - he married in 1958 and stayed married to the same woman. Oddly sweet when you see that in a Hollywood type, somehow.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2008

The Milan Galleria

So also on the Piazza del Duomo in MIlano is a temple to commerce, the Galleria. Much as I love this space - the first covered mall in modern history (though the ancient Romans did it much earlier) the art historian in me flashes to Boccioni's Riot in the Galleria, one of the great Futurist paintings lusting for modernity through violence, the kind of lust that got him killed in a training accident in WWI. Still, the Galleria is an amazing spatial experience. And Boccioni was a first rate artist.

Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:42 AM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2008

Mosaic from Milan - what IS this?

I spent the weekend in Milan and Venice, but the most excitingly odd art was the first I saw - a mosaic in the train station. I have no idea what this picture is about. Tarzan and Jane are shouting as they ride a raft with a dead and eviscerated moose?

Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 AM

April 18, 2008

The Horrible Yalie Story

Professor Soltan looks at the artist's statement. That's a genre that could use a lot of help anyway - this example is sadly characteristic.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:23 PM

April 17, 2008

So what am I doing with free time in Rome?

Mosaic-hopping, of course! This are the inscription and lamb bands at Sta. Cecilia in Trastevere - about all that's left of the 9th C church (yes, another Pascal I building like Sta Prassede and Sta Maria in Domnica). The knee is somewhat better, so trudging around Trastevere wasn't too bad. This morning I'm off to Saint Lawrence outside the walls - long bus ride, but not much walking.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM

April 11, 2008

Then in the afternoon . . .

Did I mention my knee is more achy yesterday than today? Well, in the afternoon I made the mistake of going out again instead of sitting quietly at home. At least I saw a great church - the only Nordic Gothic Revival church that I know of in Rome, Sacro Cuore del Suffragio in Prati (I've blogged about it before - go here for an exterior detail of the West window). The site of the Vicariate of Rome suggests that the church was established in 1890 - that's the best date I can find.

The interior lived up to expectation. And in the Sacristy, the Museum of the Souls in Purgatory! They have a number of things like prayer books and night caps showing scorch marks from fingers of souls returning from the fires of Purgatory to ask for Masses to be said - or reproaching relatives for not having the Masses said that the suffering soul provided for in his or her will! Great stuff.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:55 PM

My aching knee . . . Churchgoing

I overdid it a little yesterday and am paying the price today. Luckily, the Italian pharmacy system is happy to refill American prescriptions, and I brought an anti-inflammatory for the gout. For euro 1.45 I got 25 capsules - enough for a run at reducing the swelling.

So yesterday I hit the Celian Hill (by bus! The 81 runs from Largo Argentina right to via Navicella), looked at the aqueduct remains, Sta Maria in Domnica, and Santo Stefano Rotondo. Unfortunately, the Mithraeum under the last church is only open on 4th Saturdays - so I'll try to make it back then.

The apse mosaic it Sta Maria in Domnica is one of my favorites in Rome. It shows Pope Paschal I (817-824) holding the foot of the Virgin, who is enthroned with the Christ Child and surrounded by a heavenly court of angels. The inscription is remarkably fine.

Paschal also built or rebuilt Sta Prassede and Sta Cecilia in Trastevere - and the apse mosaics at least survive at those two churches as well.

So here's the core of Santo Stefano Rotondo. The Corinthian columns support a 12th Century structural intervention - a diaphragm wall that ends up being strangely beautiful in the space, even though it cuts the cylinder in half. The Ionic rotunda is late 5th C - spolia columns but with freshly-carved capitals and entablature. Santo Stefano is a strange church - much reduced from its original circumference, but still beautiful. The main exedra with its 7th C apse showing two military saints is unfortunately for me very much in restauro; I wanted to look at it up close to compare it to the 9th C mosaics made for Paschal's churches.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:31 PM

April 10, 2008

The finds never stop - but Metropolitana construction does

Yet another halt to a Metro C dig while they deal with a pretty big chunk of equestrian sculpture found under the pavement around the Colosseum. They're thinking it might be an emperor.

Here's the Sopritendenza Archaeologica di Roma's take on the project - clickable!

via Archaeology in Europe. I haven't bought a Roman newspaper this week.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:40 PM | Comments (0)

April 7, 2008

Book list for Layers of Rome

A commenter asked for the book list - and I realized that I hadn't put one up! I thought I had done so back in December when we were packing to come to Rome. Here it is below.

Next time I'll bit the bullet and use Krautheimer for the second half - it's back in print and it's not expensive. It's a fun book, but not really organized in a way that I find useful. The reproductions are not very well-produced, either. Claridge is a great thing for my class - readable, filled with information but not too full, and lots of good drawings instead of bad photos. The maps could use some work.

Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide Oxford University Press, USA, 1998. [great book!]

Any textbook of Roman Art:
Wheeler, Mortimer. Roman Art and Architecture. Thames & Hudson, 1985. [most of them bought this - very inexpensive]

Ramage & Ramage, Roman Art

Kleiner, Fred, A History of Roman Art [I had used this recently as the textbook for a course - one student had taken the course and had this book - very useful but quite expensive.]

- - - - - -

Mathews, Thomas F. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton University Press; Rev edition, 1999.

ANY edition or translation of the Bible

Lots of duplicated readings, to be distributed in Rome. [I made less use of these than in the 2003 version of the course - this was almost all primary source excerpts printed off the Internet Medieval Sourcebook and its ancient sourcebook sibling.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton Univ Press, 2000 [Next time I'll try to use this as a textbook.]

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM | Comments (0)

April 5, 2008

Art stolen a while back - 1902

The Grand Rapids Art Museum is repatriating two panels stolen from a church in Abruzzo in 1902. Everyone is very congratulatory, but there's something a bit off:

Laurence Kanter, a leading scholar of Italian Renaissance Art in America, is the Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of Early European Art at Yale University and former Curator of the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He commented on the repatriation, “The action of the Grand Rapids Art Museum is commendable. These panels will have far greater meaning and importance in the context of their home region than they would in any international museum setting. The Italian scholars dedicated to this worthy project can now take a significant step toward realizing their goal.”

. . .

The Saint Eustace panels will be on view at the Grand Rapids Art Museum from April 8 through May 4 before their return to Italy to Il Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo (The National Museum of Abruzzo). (My emphases)

You see, they're not returning them to the church of Saint Eustace in Campo di Giove, Abruzzo, whence they were stolen in 1902, but to a museum in Aquila, the provincial capital. The art has been nationalized and denaturized. Yes, it will be nice that they're in Abruzzo, but there don't even seem to be any other pieces of the stolen altarpiece there with which to reunite them.

This is like the question of where the objects looted from Etruscan graves and sold to museums like the Met and the Boston MFA will end up. The Sarpedon Krater is going to the Villa Giulia in Rome, I've read. I'm not in favor of American museums keeping stolen goods, but it's worth remembering that an object stolen from a church is to be given to the state.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

April 4, 2008

They've begun!

Final presentations began yesterday (Thursday) - and late this afternoon I'll be half-way through them!

I've divided the students into groups of 4 or 5 based on easy itinteraries (sometime that means a metro ride, but hey, we all have passes). Yesterday's group did (1) the Imperial fora and Mussolini's creation of a propaganda-rich, if archaeologically-problematic avenue across them; (2) the Piazza Venezia from its initiation through the Victor Emmanuel intervention and the fascist era, complete with Mussolini's balcony; (3) San Marco, from early Christian to 18th century changes; and the Markets and Forum of Trajan.

Everyone did quite a creditable job - we're off to a good start!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)

April 1, 2008

The B-52s know my pain

I ain't no student
of ancient culture
before I talk
I should read a book!
But there's one thing
that I do know
There's a lot of ruins
in Meso-Po-Tamia!

Would that everyone read the book before they talked! And/or, that they all dressed like Fred did in the 80s. That would help my mood.

Please note that I am posting this BEFORE final presentations start, so none of my immediate students are individually implicated - yet.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM | Comments (1)

March 30, 2008

Free museums

Yow! My feet hurt!

This is the Settimana della cultura, the week of culture, an annual extravaganza of free museums. I hit 3 today - the Palazzo Venezia, the Cripta Balbi, and the Forum/Palatine. I couldn't get into the House of Augustus - maybe tomorrow. Yesterday, Pal Massimo al Terme (another visit to the Pompeian paintings) and two temporary shows at the Palazzo della Esposizione.

This event is aimed at internal tourism, so it comes up almost unannounced - no one seemed ready for it (though I'm sure the museums were). I've been running around like crazy all week, and tomorrow I'm only taking some of a break because it's Monday (so museums will be closed, though archaeological sites are open) and because we're having a team-grading event, my colleague and I. The semester is drawing to a close for us!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2008

Resurrexit

So here in Rome it's already Sunday, and He's risen. Yay!

They baptized two babies at the Oratory - and that was quite enough! For a recessional the organist broke into the "Hallelujah Chorus." I suppose I was the only person in the building who knew all the words in the original, for once.

For the more visual than aural among us, I offer Piero della Francesca's version - the greatest of all Renaissance resurrections. If you don't believe me just click and enlarge.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:33 AM | Comments (2)

March 20, 2008

Sebastiano del Piombo exhibition

Yesterday I made it, finally, to the Sebastiano del Piombo show at the Palazzo Venezia. His painting best known in America (and actually in America) is the Christopher Columbus portrait at the Met (strange, the linked image is black'n'white). Sebastiano was indeed an amazing portraitist, and the portraits were the highlight of the show, however much the curators wanted us to look at some other works. A friend of Michelangelo and a rival of Raphael, Sebastiano did well as a portraitist and well-enough as a chatter-up of his papal sitters to be named keeper of the papal seal - il piombo, and hence, del Piombo. Portraitists had to spend a good bit of time with their sitters, and it shouldn't surprise us that personable artists like van Eyck, van Dyck, and Sebastiano del Piombo did well.

The exhibition space was splendid and dim - and a little strange. They had installed a wall covered with a velvety fabric. The paintings were hung about two feet behind this wall surface, framed by a window. The lighting was VERY dim in the gallery, though the paintings themselves were well-lit by lamps concealed in the false wall. It's hard to describe, but it was effective - certainly not a white wall with paintings jostling each other! There were about 20 drawings on display as well - I didn't spot any studies for paintings that were also on display, but I didn't linger long - that room was the only one that felt particularly crowded.

Sebastiano experimented with painting on slate instead of on canvas or wood panel - and in at least two of those paintings on show he used the color of the slate to leave figures floating in a kind of darkness - the head of Clement VII looked amazing that way.

My favorite comparison was stepping back and forth between the Met Columbus and the portrait of Andrea Doria. The great papal admiral made a much more interesting subject - the deep shadow and his gesture towards the piece of classical carving in front of him almost demands interpretation - and I don't know how to read it. Very disquieting.

My favorite portrait was the similarly ambiguous "Portrait of a Man in Armor," completed in 1512. You can find it on the slide show linked below - the Wadsworth Athenaeum owns it, but I can't find a version of it on their site. Sebastiano was fond of the quarter view - the sitter with a turned head - but this one is exaggerated in its playfulness. At least I found the figure playful. All in all, a good show!

Here's a review in the International Herald Tribune with a useful slide show.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM | Comments (1)

March 19, 2008

Class prep + Holy Week = Credit towards Heaven?

Bring on the Doctrine of Works - I'm having a good week!

So I'm previewing my favorite mosaics on the Quirinal Hill this afternoon for class tomorrow - I run by Santa Pudenziana, check on Santa Prassede, and hit Santa Maria Maggiore last - and just in time for the Wednesday after Palm Sunday Stational Mass with Penitential Procession. The presiding bishop was a little frighteningly doddery - I saw him holding his chest at one point while the procession was coming back up the aisle, and I'm not sure he was clutching his pectoral cross. The music was splendid - the kind of thing that having a college of canons can do for you! I made use of one of the Dominicans in the college of confessors, too, while I was at it. Is there a plenary indulgence on offer here? Readers?

I've told my students that unless they really want the vast sea of devotion thing they should evade St. Peter's this week and go to the other great basilicas - especially for the Easter Vigil. For the Easter Vigil myself I'm torn between going to Sta Prassede, as I did in 2003 (when, to be sure, it was within easy walking distance of my apartment) and going next door to Chiesa Nuova. I'm really not much of a church hopper when it comes to mass - I tend to go to the same place over and over anyway. Living next door to Chiesa Nuova has been very nice!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM

March 18, 2008

How do you give a final exam in Rome? Let them do the talking!

Here's the assignment for the final exam:

Choose a well-layered site - a single building or a area of the city - no more than 10 minutes of walking time. You should not choose a site or building we have visited together in any detail - hence the major monuments we have discussed and everything from the midterm is off limits. You don't have to avoid the same themes, however. All sites must be approved by me.

Prepare a 25-30 minute presentation for me and a group of your colleagues. You are not, unlike the midterm, just talking to me! Part of your grade will be determined by how well you communicate your site to people who haven't studied it. When we head out for presentations, your engagement in others' talks also counts. Do you pay attention? Do you ask meaningful questions of your colleagues?

Your site should show layers from at least 2 of the 4 broad period divisions below and should have at least one more - if the ancient layer is now invisible because of being built over, you might show us drawings or diagrams. Holding up the textbook is BARELY sufficient, but will not be penalized. That is to say, if your site shows 4 layers, GREAT! But if your site shows only layers from 2 periods but had others which you can convey to us, fine.

*ancient
------------------------------
*medieval - before 1000
*medieval - after 1000
------------------------------
*renaissance - eh, 1350-1600
*baroque/rococo - 1600-1800
------------------------------
*Unification - 1800-1920
*Fascist - 1920-1944
*Contemporary - 1945-now

You will deliver these presentations in groups of 4 or 5. We will begin Thursday, April 3, during the regular Layers time slot. I have no idea yet how long it will take or exactly how many groups we will have - I am leaving that decision until you have chosen sites.

Here's the list of sites they've chosen* - there is some duplication; because we will be going out in groups of 4 or 5 that won't be a problem.

Piazza Navona
Piazza del Popolo
Piazza Venezia

Santa Cecilia
Ss Cosmas and Damian
San Giovanni a Laterano (basilica)
San Lorenzo in Damaso
San Marco, Piazza Venezia
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as architecture
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as remodeled Baths
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva

Theater of Marcellus, esp Fascist phase of the neighborhood
Forum of Trajan
Horti Sallustiani (Quirinal Hill)
Palatine / Augustus
Trajan's Market

Castel Sant'Angelo
Bridges
Obelisks
Porta Pia
Protestant Cemetary (Pyramid, too??)
Tiber Island

*well, most of them chose. At the end there I had to pass out assignments to four or six people. But now they have two full weeks to prepare!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 PM

March 13, 2008

Sabina - the best day-trip ever!

We had splendid weather today for a trip to Sabina - after a week of showers and dicey grey skies we met a bus at Termini and headed north.

By happenstance (sheer small worldism) my colleague Nick Ruth met Nicole Franchini, an alumna of William Smith College (the female half of the Hobart and William Smith coordinate system). Nicole has lived in Italy for more than 20 years, most recently in Rome. She and her family also have a house in the Sabine Hills.

Nicole arranged our trip today - and maybe even the weather!

We started at Farfa, one of the great imperial abbeys of medieval Italy - think of the abbey in The Name of the Rose but a little further south in the peninsula. One of the two Carolingian towers survives with a a bit of the Westwork beside it (and a chunk of painted wall - go look at the pictures on Flickr!). The body of the current church is later and perpendicular to the Carolingian building.

We had a good tour of Farfa and then headed on to Casperia, an incredibly beautiful hill town. There were other incredibly beautiful hill towns within sight, as was Mount Soracte, beloved of Horace, who seems to have had a view of it from his Sabine Farm.

Nicole had arranged a buffet luncheon on a terrace / piazza, then dessert and coffee at the house of the restaurant owners afterwards. We wandered around town for a little while, then back to Rome. The students seemed happy in a stunned-by-the-beauty kind of way. I certainly enjoyed myself!

We have to turn our story in to the Pulteney Street Survey, these Colleges' alumnae/i magazine!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM

Historic Photos on Flickr

Notre Dame's Architecture Library has (or maybe 'is in the process of'?) uploading scans of its lantern slides - and they're all under a Creative Commons license!

This one shows the Pons Fabricius, the foot bridge to Tiber Island, with an INCREDIBLE load of silt - perhaps in the aftermath of the 1870 flood? I'm not sure. Here's my photo from this spring of the same bridge - taken from a slightly different point of view.

Amazing photos! Over 600 for Italy alone! Lantern slides were amazingly high quality black and white medium format glass slides, and nothing is much better for showing architecture. Given the collection there are few scenes of everyday life except those in the foreground of buildings and there's an obvious western European bias, but this is a real resource - 2,714 reasonably high quality photos in the public domain of the world before World War I. Thank you, Notre Dame!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM

March 11, 2008

Sta Maria Maggiore - the apse

I decided to run up and see some of the mosaics I love in Rome. I knew that the Ravennate work was great, but the immediate comparison was really noticeable for the Torriti apse at Sta. Maria Maggiore. His composition really suffers - all that scrolling vine work above Christ and the Virgin with the standing folks below just doesn't hang together as well.

Sta. Prassede didn't disappoint, though - the color fields there are so strong! I'll have to borrow a tripod and take some decent shots there.


Because of the travel and the recent weather this was my first clear afternoon in awhile to run look at something - but it started sprinkling when I came out of Sta Prassede, so I didn't hang around. Seems clear now. We're having a very showery March here in Rome!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:44 PM

March 10, 2008

Serendipity, Exegetical style

Just as I sit down to grade the Bible exercises for my layers class Google News turns up a book review for me Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, edited and translated by Robert Louis Wilken. The somewhat hostile review notes:

The production of these works [this new series] is essentially a historical exercise, perhaps with the editors operating according to the conviction that biblical interpretation is too important to be left to exegetes, especially critical and postcritical exegetes. The offer of an early Christian reading of the book of Isaiah is especially to the point of the new series, for Isaiah—more than any other Old Testament book—lends itself to a christological reading, so much so that the early church referred to it as the "fifth Gospel." The assumption of the series, surely correct, is that the church has much to learn from the history of interpretation in the early period before church interpretation engaged historical criticism, which exhibited the problems in the text and began to distance the text from the claims of the gospel. My emphases.

In my case, it's not that interpretation is too important to be left to the exegetes, but that critical and postcritical readings of the Bible are pretty much useless for understanding art that draws on the Bible. In contrast, while we were at San Vitale in Ravenna this weekend, my students all understood not only WHICH scene showed the Sacrifice of Isaac but also understood WHY it is adjacent to the altar. That is to say, why Christians saw the sacrifice of Isaac as a foreshadowing, a type, of the crucifixion of Jesus, even in the episodes that weren't depicted!

In case you haven't read Genesis lately, let me remind you that Abraham and Isaac and the servant journey for 3 days to the mountain. Isaac carries the wood for burning the sacrifice on his own shoulders - those are two elements that are never, or almost never, depicted, though they bring the parallel into sharper focus than just saying Abraham:Isaac::God:Jesus. Earlier viewers, of course, knew the whole story.

One of my difficulties is selecting passages that like this one are brief enough to read quickly, obvious enough that students can work out the parallels the Early Christians saw without having to do a lot of following up cross references, and (most important for my purpose) have important visual traditions. As an example of something I can't do much with you can think about the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes; while they're vital for understanding all sorts of stuff about Christianity they have very little importance in the visual tradition. Talking doesn't make a great picture.

Here's an entry from a good while back on the same subject.

Pitiful to say, I'm blogging with someone else's picture of the Sacrifice of Isaac - my interiors at San Vitale were not very good.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM

March 6, 2008

Meet the blogger...

I also met a blogger today - something that I, who usually live in scenic Geneva, NY, seldom do.

Zadok the Roman invited me to meet him outside the Cancelleria, where he had a class this afternoon. We got caffé, then he showed me the Sala Riario (named after the cardinal who built the palazzo) and the Sala dei Cento Giorni, painted by Giorgio Vasari.

I had never been further than the Bramante courtyard. Here's the best picture I can find on the web of the Sala dei Cento Giorni, which is as good an answer in paint to the question "What is Mannerism?" as the Villa Giulia is for architecture. The name of the room comes from the funniest anecdote in Renaissance art history (a field of striking solemnity and self-importance, I usually find). Vasari, now better known as a biographer than a painter, showed the room to his old master MIchelangelo and bragged that he had completed the work in 100 days. Michelangelo said, "It shows." I rather liked it, but then I have decadent tendencies. Paul III surveying New St Peter's dressed as the Jewish High Priest really made me happy! There was a scene of the distribution of cardinals hats to semi-nude men in advanced states of ascetical skinniness that made no sense at all - that's Mannerism for you!

I enjoyed meeting Zadok. He had to stay for a lecture in the glorious Sala Riario on the Internal Forum from James, Cardinal Stafford. Sad to say, even princes of the Church use PowerPoint. I skedaddled.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM

March 4, 2008

On being a beginner, or Lucy Clink and the drawing class, without me.

I was taking the picture. Click to see two of the things we drew yesterday on the flickr photostream.

One of the things I have enjoyed about both semesters in Rome (2003 and now) is taking a class - professors owe it to themselves to be bad at something once in awhile; that helps us keep our 100-level classes more honest. You know, there was a time, now very far away, when I knew very little about art history - and it pays to be reminded of what it feels like to be a beginner.

Oh - yes, I've taken drawing before - but somehow it always gets dropped when things get busy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:49 PM

March 2, 2008

This Way to the Miraculous Statue!

I went to Sta Maria in Aracoeli today for the first time this trip - if you've ever climbed those stairs you'll know why I was putting it off until I needed to go for class prep! No pictures of the interior, much as I love it, other than this awful 1960s sign (at least I always think of them as 1960s - maybe they're 50s?) pointing to the chapel with the miraculous statue of the Infant Jesus. It oozes oil or some such and wears a particularly horrid 19th Century crown, but when taken to hospitals there are occasional miraculous cures. Me, I prefer the image of the Virgin on the high altar, but I didn't take a picture of it.

It was a beautiful morning on the Capitoline, though - just gorgeous. Click and see.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:56 PM

February 29, 2008

Frida in Philadelphia

I've never had the urge to go to Philadelphia for an art show, but for Frida Kahlo I'd go. Her content is beyond definition, and I'd really like to see the pictorial qualities.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:04 PM

Lucca's Stil Liberty shops

In the midst of all these Romanesque churches and the later palazzi there are a striking number (well, they struck me) of Stil Liberty storefronts. Stil Liberty, Liberty Style, is Italy's version of Art Nouveau; I was talking last night to an architectural historian who specailizes in Modernism who confirmed what I'd always heard - the name seems to refer both to the economic exuberance of the Liberal state after Unification and to the English shop Liberty of London. Lots of plaques around Rome, for instance, refer to the invasion and destruction of the Papal States, completed with the 1870 capture of Rome, as the Liberation of Rome. Liberty was a major purveyor of the Art nouveau - so the nomenclature in Italy is as though we called the 1980s in American the Laura Ashley era after that other London enterprise.

Lucca photo set.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:39 AM

February 26, 2008

via Cenami, Lucca, Italy

So I'm walking around Lucca and I hit the via Cenami a few times and I keep asking myself why the name is so familiar and then I think AHAH! Giovanna Cenami! Which probably doesn't ring a bell for very many of my regular viewers. Do you know Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding? Of course you do! That's Giovanna on the right. Big Lucchese banking family, though the poor girl may never have seen the incredibly beautiful city of Lucca - she lived in Paris. Which in the 1430s was a little less thrilling than it is today. Giovanni Arnolfini was a Florentine. So teaching Northern Renaissance at Agnes Scott paid off, and in Tuscany!

Lucca photo set.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:00 PM

But speaking of good or bad ecclesiastical acessories . . .

But speaking of good or bad ecclesiastical acessories, here's one of the the excellent confessionals at San Frediano, the university church in Pisa. The photo isn't much (sorry about that light fixture), but I do think that along with actually having times for confession having noble confessionals could only help bring people back to that sacrament! Or at least it would be more fun!

The confessionals are solid masonry set into the wall, no turning THESE into face-to-face encounter rooms!

The church itself is, like many of those in Pisa, Romanesque (click to go to flickr and see an exterior). Living in Rome, land of the Baroque make-over, lets me forget how popular Romanesque was in Italy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM

February 25, 2008

The world's ugliest pulpit?

This pulpit at the front of the cathedral in Pisa may be the worst piece of 20th century religious art I've ever seen - and I've seen some doozies! Mind you, it's all marble. To make matters worse, it's within yards of one of the lovelier pulpits, by Giovanni Pisano from around 1300. I do not think this is a kneejerk medievalist reaction in favor of the Gothic (in fact, I don't much like late Gothic Italian sculpture), but look at those horrible shapes in the new pulpit! And the colors? What were they thinking? Oh, well - it looks like it will be easy to remove, someday.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:18 PM

February 15, 2008

Layered view in the Velabro

I'm happy with this photo; we're looking past film crew trucks (21st C) and through the Arch of Janus (4th C) to San Giorgio in Velabro (which is a welter of medieval construction and post 1993 reconstruction). The Velabro is the site of the swamp, long drained by the Cloaca Maxima, where the She-wolf found Romulus and Remus.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 PM

February 12, 2008

Zombie Error - Islam Forbids Depictions of Muhammad.

I hope that alumni/ae of Art 249 groan when they read this in the New York Times:

Islam forbids even respectful depictions of Muhammad, to avoid idolatry.

As they learn to say in that class, some schools of Islam in some periods forbid depictions of Muhammad. Because otherwise, why is it that we have depictions of Muhammad in art created by and for Muslims? Go here to see my quick list of 10 of these in the HWS image collection - and we're not a big university and I only teach Islamic Art and Architecture (Art 249) every once in awhile.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 PM

MKB for scale

Mary Kate studied the Ara Pacis with me before and insisted that we need an image in the HWS Visual Resources Collection with someone in it to show scale because she had gotten no idea of how big the figures in the reliefs are from studying it on screen - so here she is standing in front of the Italia/Tellus/Rhea Silvia relief (take your pick for the identification of the central female). Talk about embodiment! Now she'll be a virtual presence in Art 101 and Roman Art!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:47 PM

Back from Break and Ready for more Roman Art

We had a longish walk down south down the Via del Corso from the Flaminian Gate to the Piazza della Colonna (Column of Marcus Aurelius) and then a windy path to see the obelisk in front of Palazzo Montecitorio (formerly part of the the Augustan Sundial). My pedagogical goal with the long walk - after all, we passed within a couple of blocks of the Ara Pacis on our way south - goes to the difference between teaching with slides in a darkened classroom and teaching on site: in Rome we can embody the past, use our bodies to stimulate our imaginations. We don't look at pictures, we look at real things and we have real experiences of distance and time and topography. One of the great problems of studying ancient Rome is imagining away the intervening centuries, but I hope that task is easier for the crew after today.

Because there's nothing more easily exhausted than a 20 year old, we took a cappucino break before heading in to the new Richard Meier pavilion to see the Altar of Augustan Peace. (Alright, I'm being cranky - I was ready for a little something warm myself.)

This was my second time inside the Meier building and my 3rd visit to the area - I have decided that I like the Meier building a good bit - though it looks too big from the north - probably entirely because of the auditorium the client added to the project. I'll go back and take more pictures with the Nikon.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM

February 7, 2008

San Clemente - a very layered site

Yesterday afternoon I got to San Clemente for a preview visit - I'm taking the Layers of Rome class there next week. Here's the basilica's site - go look - it's great! It includes what they're calling virtual reality views - draggable 360 images.

The Irish Dominicans have had the church since the 17th Century, and a Fr. Mulloly got to excavating under the building in the mid 19th C only to find that under the early Christian church was a 1st Century building dating to after the fire of 64 (Nero's fire). They also found a Mithraeum built into that level - underlying the later apses of the churches. There must have been a time when the Early Christian church was operating in one building while in the basement next door people were bathing in bull's blood! Exciting!

When Mithraism was suppressed in the late 4th Century the Mithraeum was filled in - and eventually the church of Saint Clement, the 3rd pope, expanded over it - a bit of architectural triumphalism, if they knew what they were building over.

There are some surviving 9th-11th century paintings in the lower church (they don't allow photography), one of which has an inscription that's a nice bit of early vernacular Italian.

Then there's the upper church, built using the early Christian church as a foundation - they just filled it in and started over on a slightly narrower scale. They reused lots of pieces, but the Cosmatesque floor is amazing.

The apse mosaic is strikingly odd - it's one of the few that doesn't draw on Early Christian models, instead putting a crucifix on a giant field of vine scrolls growing out of an acanthus (see - they're everywhere). The cross beams are occupied by doves. Very odd, like I said.
Then there's the Cyril and Methodius connection - St. Cyril is buried here, and the place is a major pilgrimage spot for Slavs of all sorts.

I'm looking forward to what the Layers class makes of the whole place.

Click over to the photo stream on flickr and see a lot more views of San Clemente.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:28 PM

Earliest known oil paintings . . . 7th C

This pushes a horizon back a bit - researchers have found oil and resin-based techniques in caves at Bamian dated to the 7th C. The National Geographic Online story has a reasonably good picture, though of course you can't tell it from fresco that way. Here's a photo gallery - two extra photos of paintings.

The UN World Heritage-listed Bamian Valley, which lies 145 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, is best known as the home of two giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

But murals depicting ornate swirling patterns, Buddhist imagery, and mythological animals also adorn 50 of up to a thousand caves in the region. The decorations date to between the 5th and 9th centuries A.D.

. . .

Oil is used in paint to help fix the dye and help it adhere to a surface. Oil also changes a paint's drying time and viscosity.

More complex than the standard mineral pigments and animal glue previously favored, the technique hints of Indian, West Chinese, and Mediterranean influences, Taniguchi said.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 AM

February 6, 2008

Acanthus, the Kudzu of the Mediterranean

Have I ever told you that acanthus is the kudzu of the Mediterranean? If not, you haven't taken the right class with me, because that's one of my favorite lines. The stuff grows everywhere! We had a nice specimen in Houghton House a few years ago, grown from seed by my colleague Stan Mathews. Of course, it's everywhere in Rome in the corinthian form, too. Here's Wikipedia on the Corinthian order - go look and compare.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:37 PM

February 3, 2008

Life is a battle

This past Wednesday I got to see one of my favorite things in Rome, the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus - click to go to flickr to see the whole thing!

Some (most?) scholars feel secure in identifying the central figure as the son of the emperor Trajan Decius. The general popularity of battle scenes on 3rd Century sarcophagi makes an identification kind of unnecessary - the general theme of life as a battle is most of what we need to see here to think about the 3rd Century.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:47 AM

February 2, 2008

All is forgiven? Italy loans art to the Getty . . .

Well, this has always been about position, not right and wrong, but here's an announcement about a major loan of Berninis to the Getty.

The end of the article sounds like someone's been in couples counselling:

"The Getty and the institutions in Italy for many years have had solid relationships that were tense during the time the negotiations were going forward," said Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig.

"The relationship that now exists is very solid," Hartwig said.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:46 AM

February 1, 2008

Don't tell your family what you've got - they may pop you into a home to take it!

A couple of years ago there was an interesting story out of England in which an elderly woman died leaving some Fra Angelico paintings in her bedroom. Her nephew made what struck me as some ill-informed comments. Here's more evidence that Ms. Preston's nephew was not only ill-informed about his aunt, but is a twit - she had PILES of stuff in her house: millions of pounds worth of art and books.

via Zadok the Roman, who comments here.

my previous comment.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at