Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies

Reviews in caa.reviews are published continuously by CAA and Taylor & Francis, with the most recently published reviews listed below. Browse reviews based on geographic region, period or cultural sphere, or specialty (from 1998 to the present) using Review Categories in the sidebar or by entering terms in the search bar above.

Recently Published Reviews

Katherine Smith Abbott, Wendy Watson, Andrea Rothe, and Jeanne Rothe
Exh. cat. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Museum of Art, 2009. 116 pp.; 50 color ills. Paper $24.95 (9781928825067)
Exhibition schedule: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA, February 9–May 30, 2009; Middlebury College Museum of Art, VT, September 17–December 13, 2009
The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy was published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name held at the Middlebury College Museum of Art and Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in 2009. As Richard Saunders, the director of Middlebury’s museum, explains, the exhibition was inspired by the museum’s acquisition in 2005 of a panel painting by the Florentine painter Lippo d’Andrea (ca. 1370–1451) of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist and Nicholas of Bari (cat. 4). Such acquisitions and exhibitions of historic art are particularly important for colleges and universities to… Full Review
March 10, 2011
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The 2009 American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) conference on “New Darshans: Seeing Southern Asian Religiosity and Visuality Across Disciplines” was wide in scope and interest: it featured thirty-five papers; covered periods from the second century B.C.E. to today; and focused on geographic areas from Rajasthan to Bengal, from Tibet and Himachal Pradesh to Tamilnad, and included Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Chattisgarh, and even areas outside the subcontinent like Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and the United States. “New darshans” were investigated through a stunning array of media: stūpa slabs; caves; temples, and their walls and pillars; relics; images; ivories; pilgrimage… Full Review
March 10, 2011
Shepard Fairey
Exh. cat. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Gingko Press in association with Obey Giant, 2009. 446 pp.; 780 color ills. Cloth $59.95 (9781584233497)
Exhibition schedule: Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, February 6–August 16, 2009
For most people, the familiar poster of Barack Obama with the caption, “HOPE,” introduced them to the work of the street artist and graphic designer, Shepard Fairey. This unofficial poster, which resulted from Fairey’s grassroots efforts, provoked a well-publicized lawsuit by the Associated Press over Fairey’s use of a copyrighted photograph by Mannie Garcia as the basis for the red-white-and-blue image of Obama on his poster. This poster, the same image slightly changed for the cover of Time magazine’s person-of-the-year issue (December 29, 2008), as well as Obama’s letter of February 22, 2008, thanking Fairey for his support, were included… Full Review
March 10, 2011
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Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ed.
Exh. cat. Milan: Skira, 2009. 320 pp.; 141 ills. Paper $39.00 (9788857201757)
Exhibition schedule: Canadian Centre for Architecture, May 20–November 8, 2009; Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, September 17, 2010–February 20, 2011
It is somehow appropriate that I began writing this review on a plane. In an attempt to squeeze in a few extra productive hours between a busy conference and a hectic end of the semester, I resort to technology: not just the jet engine that propels me across the continent at the speed of over four hundred mph, but also the netbook computer and the available on-board internet, which allow me to instantly access my notes stored on a distant hard drive. It is an exhilarating experience, but it is also exhausting, as I cannot but long for the days… Full Review
March 9, 2011
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William Wallace
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 428 pp.; 10 color ills. Cloth $30.00 (9780521111997)
Bernadine Barnes
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 244 pp.; 71 b/w ills. Cloth $99.95 (9780754663782)
Two new books on Michelangelo Buonarroti explore his life and work from different yet complementary vantage points. With Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and his Times, William Wallace offers a new biography that aims to present a balanced portrait to counter persistent characterizations of the artist as “an isolated, tortured genius, with few friends, an unappreciative family, and impossibly demanding patrons” (7). To this end, Wallace relies heavily on Michelangelo’s correspondence, professional records, and poetry as well as letters written among family members and friends and related documents including contracts, accounting records, and the highly influential biographies by Ascanio… Full Review
March 8, 2011
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Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood
Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2010. 456 pp.; 115 ills. Cloth $39.95 (9781935408024)
In recent years, revisions of Hans Belting’s groundbreaking Bild und Kult (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1990), arguably the most influential book published in the fields of medieval and byzantine art history in the last fifty years, led to two divergent paths. On the one hand, countless studies demonstrated that even in the “era of art” since the fifteenth century, the “image” with its claims of “magical” presence survived. On the other hand, medievalists revealed the enormous amount of self-reflexivity in pre-Renaissance art. Both lines of research, however, did not seriously challenge Belting’s conceptual dualism. In Anachronic Renaissance, Alexander Nagel and… Full Review
March 8, 2011
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Eduard Vallès, ed.
Exh. cat. Barcelona: Museu Picasso de Barcelona, 2010. 423 pp.; 250 ills. €30.00 (9788498502466)
Exhibition schedule: Museu Picasso de Barcelona, May 28–September 5, 2010
Focusing on the work of two key figures in the development of modern art in Barcelona at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Picasso versus Rusiñol exhibition offered insights into a number of significant cultural and historical themes. To begin with it explored Picasso's artistic formation and creative development through a study of his juvenilia, even if this term did not always seem applicable to many of the paintings displayed. Beyond tracing the trajectory of works marking Picasso's becoming an artist, the exhibition developed a wider perspective on this theme by exploring his relationship with the painter, collector, and… Full Review
March 3, 2011
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Ronda Kasl, ed.
Exh. cat. Indianapolis and New Haven: Indianapolis Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2009. 400 pp.; 125 color ills.; 25 b/w ills. Cloth $65.00 (9780300154719)
Exhibition schedule: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, October 11, 2009–January 3, 2010
This richly illustrated catalogue, produced in conjunction with the exhibition Sacred Spain, offers new perspectives that promise to revitalize the study of religious art in Spain and the Americas. The subject certainly warrants critical attention. As the organizer, Ronda Kasl, senior curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, points out in her introduction, art in the Spanish empire was “overwhelmingly religious” (12). Kasl and her co-authors sidestep the well-worn method of iconography in favor of two new approaches inspired by trends in religious studies: 1) examining religious art “through the lens of belief and its lived experience” (12); 2)… Full Review
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Ilia Dorontchenkov, ed.
Trans Charles Rougle Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 400 pp.; 42 b/w ills. Paper $29.95 (9780520253728)
In the preface to his futurist memoir, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer (1933), the poet Benedikt Livshits strangely seems to denounce the entire enterprise of his narrative: Futurist aesthetics were founded on the fallacious concept of the racial character of art. The subsequent development of these views led Marinetti to Fascism. The Russian budetliane never went as far in their passion for the East, but even they were not unblemished by their nationalist desires. Of course, in our day and age, there is no longer any sense in demonstrating the bankruptcy of racial theories. But I have… Full Review
March 3, 2011
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Kerry Brougher, Philippe Vergne, Klaus Ottmann, Kaira M. Cabañas, and Andria Hickey
Exh. cat. Washington, DC and Minneapolis: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Walker Art Center, 2010. 352 pp.; 120 color ills.; 175 b/w ills. Cloth $65.00 (9780935640946)
Exhibition schedule: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, May 20–September 12, 2010, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, October 23, 2010–February 13, 2011
One of the great things about looking at Yves Klein’s work is that a viewer can have a “transcendental” experience contemplating, say, one of his monochromes while simultaneously being hyper-aware of the way the gloriously saturated signature blue pigment functions as a critique of the genius-ridden art market. This is due to the fact that there are various Kleins: ironic Klein, misogynist Klein, sincere Klein, the Klein of beauty and exquisiteness. This is an artist who self-published a book, Yves Peintures (1954), which consisted of reproductions of his paintings that in fact did not exist; who offered empty space in… Full Review
February 24, 2011
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Beth Williamson
Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2009. 212 pp.; 8 color ills.; 40 b/w ills. Cloth $95.00 (9781843834199)
This slim volume provides a valuable contribution to the study of the art of the fourteenth century. Beth Williamson presents the iconographic theme of the Madonna of Humility and offers “both a new methodology and a new meaning of the image itself” (11). Whereas art historians frequently set out to revise a disciplinary narrative or adjust a category or genre by giving prominence to a neglected work or assigning importance to the role of such an object in re-contouring the establishment of the motif, Williamson sets a more ambitious task for herself by proposing to re-evaluate the composition of the… Full Review
February 24, 2011
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Natalie Adamson
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. 330 pp.; 60 b/w ills. Cloth $124.95 (9780754659280)
Natalie Adamson’s Painting, Politics and the Struggle for the École de Paris, 1944–1964 provides a thoroughly researched account of postwar debates about the School of Paris. It describes the various redefinitions of the school after World War II as inconsistent and directly conflicting, such that the school exists largely as a set of competing discourses, a discursive “complex” in Adamson’s description (3). In the late 1940s, artistic discourse was strongly divided as Communist painters like André Fougeron and critics like Louis Aragon and Jean Marcenac launched New Realism in defense of figurative painting as part of a French humanist tradition… Full Review
February 18, 2011
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Alexandra B. Bonds
Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. 376 pp.; 254 color ills.; 23 b/w ills. Cloth $50.00 (9780824829568)
Anyone living in the West who has ever attended a performance of Chinese Beijing opera will immediately notice that the actors wear elaborate headdresses above their brightly painted faces and that rich costumes clothe their bodies on a stark stage with few props. While listening to thus attired actors sing unfamiliar tunes accompanied by Asian instruments, the audience will follow with its gaze their exaggerated body movement and stylized hand gestures. Without question, the costumes present the most accessible information about the characters and the unfolding drama. But that doesn’t make them any more understandable. Alexandra Bond’s Beijing Opera… Full Review
February 18, 2011
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Trevor Schoonmaker, ed.
Exh. cat. Durham, NC: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2010. 216 pp.; 200 color ills.; 25 b/w ills. Paper $45.00 (9780938989332)
Exhibition schedule: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, September 2, 2010–February 6, 2011
The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is, quite appropriately, a mix. And, like any good mix, the exhibition includes perennial hits, lesser-known works by familiar artists, and more than a few unknown gems. Drawing upon vinyl records as “metaphor, archive, icon, portrait or transcendent medium” (as described in a wall text), the exhibition offers a wide-ranging view of how this single object has remained a catalyst for visual artists over the past forty-five years and, as all exhibitions should seek to do, merges a rigorous curatorial program with an almost guilt-inducing… Full Review
February 10, 2011
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John M. MacKenzie
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009. 272 pp.; 15 b/w ills. Cloth $89.95 (9780719080227)
Sandra Dudley, ed.
New York: Routledge, 2009. 312 pp.; 63 b/w ills. Paper $44.95 (9780415492188)
John M. MacKenzie’s Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities is a hugely detailed exploration of colonial museums that narrates their establishment during the nineteenth century in Canada, South Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, while at the same time interrogating their purposes in communicating the messages and global reach of the power of the British Empire. The book also points to the changes in political influence and organization that the museum institution reflected and was subject to during the shift and ultimate demise of British colonial power that stretched into the twentieth century. MacKenzie’s… Full Review
February 10, 2011
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