Visitors to Versailles: From Louis XIV to the French Revolution
On books: Damozels & Deities
A new monograph on Pre-Raphaelite stained glass, plus notable museum catalogues from the past year.
Playing against type
At the artful, idiosyncratic publishing house Arion Press, surprise and delight are the stock in trade
On books: The Atlas of Ancient Rome
It seems to be, or should be, a law of intellectual life that the more obscure a discipline, the better the scholarship that it inspires. Its very obscurity, like a dragon guarding a valued horde, repels all but the most valiant and serious scholars. Compare a Wikipedia article on Khloé Kardashian with one on Pius IX and you will get the idea.
The Invention of the American Art Museum
America is so rich in great museums that we have come to take them for granted. We should not.
Making it Two Authors
Despite our best efforts to be accurate, on the rare occasion something slips through the cracks.
Republic of Taste: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America by Catherine E. Kelly
Artists and writers in eighteenth-century America, eager to craft a democratic culture distinct from that of Europe, but nonetheless notable for its refinement, elevated the idea of “taste” as an index of character and national virtue. This was not a populist project, but it reached into everyday life through the efforts of the people Catherine Kelly calls “aesthetic entrepreneurs,” who painted portraits, disseminated prints, opened museums, and produced banners and memorabilia to draw the multitudes into a patriotic festival of right-minded taste.
On Books: New and Noteworthy
Making It Modern: The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman by Margaret K. Hofer and Roberta J. M. Olson (New-York Historical Society in association with D. Giles). 376 pp., color and b/w illus. There’s nowt so queer as folk,” according to the venerable English comment on the vagaries of human personality. Indeed, when the Polish-born American sculptor Elie …
Black dolls
Dolls are the only toys made in our image, the only human-like creatures children are given dominion over.
About books
Recent noteworthy publications that are a pleasure to read and a delight to behold French Art Deco by Jared Goss (Metropolitan Museum of Art, distr. Yale University Press). 280 pp., color and b/w illus. As an artistic term, art deco is one of the most misunderstood. “Art Deco is commonly referred to as a ‘style,’ a designation that suggests specific shared characteristics,” …