Though I’ve been silent on the topic of art education in these pages for nearly two years, I’ve frequently weighed in on it elsewhere. Since those articles would no doubt be of interest to my readers here, what follows is a brief summary of their genesis and content. Owing to space limitations, “Art History Gone […]
critical race theory, Kenneth M. Lansing, National Art Education Association, National Association of Scholars, Visual InquiryA Fourth of July message from Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, rightly emphasizes the need for every generation of Americans to engage in thoughtful, informed reflection on, and debate about, our founding principles. His message focuses on the Constitution but, given its timing, it is of course […]
education, Frederick Douglass, July 4, Martin Luther King Jr.Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror—a mammoth two-part show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art through February 13, 2022—is the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to Johns’s work. What entitles him to an exhibition of such unprecedented scope? In the Whitney’s exalted view (generally shared by the artworld mainstream): […]
Jasper Johns, Leo Steinberg, meaningless "art", Robert HughesThe double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza by Piero della Francesca in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, is an intriguing masterpiece by one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance. Most familiar to art lovers are its superb profile portraits of two notable early Renaissance personages. But it also comprises, on the […]
Federico da Montefeltro, Piero della Francesca, Renaissance portraiture, Uffizi diptychNearly four decades ago, I produced an educational film entitled Books Our Children Read.1 It documented a constructive approach to resolving parent-teacher conflict over education in a rural Ohio school district, at a time when such conflict was erupting in violence in other American communities. The film focuses on the study of literature in the […]
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Allan Glatthorn, conservative values, controversial literature, parents vs. teachersIn both Who Says That’s Art? and my blog post “How Not to Teach Art History” (reprinted in Bucking the Artworld Tide), I cited the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky’s interpretation of Jan van Eyck’s famed double portrait in the National Gallery, London. Panofsky viewed the work as a marriage portrait, memorializing the private wedding […]
Carola Hicks, Costanza Trenta, Erwin Panofsky, Giovanni Arnolfini, interpreting art, Jan van Eyck, Jeanne Cenami, Lorne Campbell, Margaret Koster, meaning in art, National Gallery - London, primary subject matterIn early March, as New York was beginning to descend into its long, grim Covid-19 lockdown, I was unexpectedly cheered by a remarkable bit of art-related news. Columbia University announced the creation of the Howard McP. Davis Professorship of Art History. What made this news especially remarkable was that Davis had died more than a […]
"Art History Gone Amuck", Arena Chapel - Padua, Art across Time, Columbia University, Giotto, Howard McP. Davis, Hunter College, Italian Renaissance painting, Laurie Schneider Adams, Piero della Francesca, Rudolf WittkowerWidely used art history textbooks such as Gardner’s Art through the Ages present a distorted narrative of visual art from the early twentieth century on. They focus on countless modernist and postmodernist inventions—from “abstract art” to “conceptual art” and “performance art”—at the expense of traditionally representational painting and sculpture. The result is an utterly incoherent […]
abstract art, Academic Questions (journal), avant-garde, conceptual art, Gardner's Art through the Ages, performance art, traditional art[July 3 Addendum] As a member of AICA-USA (the U.S. section of the International Association of Art Critics), I recently received an email message from the Board of Directors announcing: “AICA-USA has issued a statement of solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives [M4BL].”1 That statement—which had not been submitted to members for input or […]
"systemic racism", AICA-USA, art criticism, avant-garde, conceptual art, contemporary art, critical pedagogy, critical standards, critical thinking, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, de-skilling of art, Defund the Police, diversity, George Floyd, Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children", Gregory Sholette, John Canaday, M4BL, Marilou Lemmens, Peter Schjeldahl, Richard Ibghy, Seattle's CHOP district, Shaun King, Susan Rothenberg, Trump Derangement SyndromeFor anyone who shares my utter dismay regarding the dehumanization of public art in recent decades,1 I have good news. An extraordinarily ambitious, heartfelt, and skillful work of figurative public art is underway that communicates without the aid of an artist’s statement. It is the slightly larger-than-life sculptural relief for the National World War I […]
A Soldier’s Journey: The Weight of Sacrifice, Commission of Fine Arts, dehumanization of public art, Duane Hanson, Edwin Fountain, figurative sculpture, George Segal, Joseph Weishaar, Maya Lin, National World War I Memorial, Pangolin foundry, Pershing Park, Sabin Howard, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Weta Workshop, WW I Centennial Commission
