Michelle Kamhi
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Revisiting Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini “Wedding” Portrait

November 17, 2020 / Michelle Kamhi / Art criticism, Art History / 3 Comments

In 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 […]

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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 matter

Remembering Howard McP. Davis

October 20, 2020 / Michelle Kamhi / Art History, Contemporary art / 5 Comments

In 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 […]

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"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 Wittkower

Art History Gone Amuck

October 2, 2020 / Michelle Kamhi / Art History / No Comments

Widely 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 […]

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abstract art, Academic Questions (journal), avant-garde, conceptual art, Gardner's Art through the Ages, performance art, traditional art

Art Critics or Political Agitators/Activists? (redacted)

June 27, 2020 / Michelle Kamhi / Art and Politics, Art criticism, Contemporary art, social justice / 37 Comments

[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 […]

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"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 Syndrome

The Rehumanization of Public Art

January 23, 2020 / Michelle Kamhi / Contemporary art, Public Art / 3 Comments

For 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 […]

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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

Dismaying Exhibition of De Waal Installations at the Frick

June 23, 2019 / Michelle Kamhi / Contemporary art, Exhibitions / 28 Comments

Edmund de Waal is the justly acclaimed British author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, a superb history/memoir of the Ephrussi banking family, of which he is a scion. He is also the creator of an unprecedented temporary exhibition now at the Frick Collection in New York City. Entitled Elective Affinities, it is the first […]

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ceramist, Chardin, classical realists, Edmund de Waal, Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick, installation art, netsuke, pottery, sculpture

The Art of Critical Spinning

June 4, 2019 / Michelle Kamhi / Abstract Art, Art criticism, Contemporary art / 3 Comments

The Art of Looking (Basic Books, 2018) by art critic Lance Esplund—a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, among other prestigious publications—is yet another of countless attempts to reconcile the public to the bizarre inventions of the avant-garde.1 A more fitting title would be “The Art of Critical Spinning.” Subtitled How to Read Modern […]

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Balthus, contemporary art, Damien Hirst, elements of art, Giacometti, Gislebertus, Jackson Pollock, Lance Esplund, language of art, Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, modern art, Piero Manzoni, Piet Mondrian, readymades

Teaching (New) Media Art

May 12, 2019 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education, Contemporary art / No Comments

Having just read an article bearing the above title—in the March issue of SchoolArts Magazine—I am reminded of the Seinfeld “show about nothing.” For New Media Art, it turns out, includes just about everything. Which means, in effect, that it is nothing in particular, certainly nothing teachable as a discrete discipline. That has not deterred […]

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3D printing, Ai Weiwei, Anthea Hamilton, installation art, Marina Abramović, Nam June Paik, New Media, Northern Arizona University School of Art, Pam Stephens, performance art, SchoolArts Magazine, video art, Yayoi Kusama

What Semmelweis Taught Me

April 14, 2019 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education, General / 4 Comments

What does a book report on the life of a nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician named Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) have to do with art and art education, the subjects I’m now immersed in? Quite a lot, as it happens. Never heard of Semmelweis? Neither had I until I read a historical fiction about him entitled The Cry […]

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belief perseverance, Ignaz Semmelweis, institutional theory of art, Semmelweis Reflex, The Cry and the Covenant

Build Kindness not Walls—More Art Ed Nonsense

January 30, 2019 / Michelle Kamhi / Art Education / 10 Comments

Leafing recently through a back issue of Arts & Activities (which bills itself as “the Nation’s Leading Art Education Magazine”), I was struck by yet another instance of the foolish injection of political issues into art education.1 An article entitled “Design Thinkers” featured the following photo: The project shown had been carried out in 2016. […]

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2017 Design Thinkers Conference, Arts & Activities magazine, politicization of art education, Timothy Goodman
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About ‘For Piero’s Sake’

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Recent Posts

  • Revisiting Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini “Wedding” Portrait
  • Remembering Howard McP. Davis
  • Art History Gone Amuck
  • Art Critics or Political Agitators/Activists? (redacted)
  • The Rehumanization of Public Art

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