Recently Published Reviews

According to the well-known argument of Hayden White, each historiographical account--no matter how devoted to empirical detail in the tradition of Ranke or to grand systematic schemes in the manner of Hegel--is based on a theory or philosophy regarding its own aims and premises. This argument comes to mind after reading Hubert Locher's erudite book Kunstgeschichte als historische Theorie der Kunst 1750-1950 (Art History as a Historical Theory of Art 1750-1950). A historiographical achievement in many respects, the book guides us through a host of important contributions to the discourse of art history in the West over a… Full Review

Frank Furness was one of America's premier architects. It will come as something of a shock, then, to learn that with the publication of Michael Lewis's Frank Furness, we have just three books devoted to the work of this nineteenth-century Philadelphia-based designer: an exhibition catalogue, The Architecture of Frank Furness by James F. O'Gorman in 1973; a catalogue raisonné, Frank Furness: The Complete Works by George E. Thomas, Jeffrey A. Cohen, and Michael J. Lewis in 1991; and a slim 1996 monograph, University of Pennsylvania Library (Architecture in Detail) by Edward Bosley on Furness's library at the school. In contrast… Full Review

Norbert Nussbaum's excellent, well-illustrated book, already published in two German editions, is finally available in a clear, readable English translation. It is well laid out and includes extensive and useful notes, a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, a chronological list of buildings, and indices of persons and places. Given the exceptional quality and quantity of its photographs, plans, and text--all at a reasonable cost--the book will be a classic, a status it has already achieved for readers of the German versions. For English-speaking historians who know too little of this architecture, Nussbaum's book shows the enormous richness of medieval… Full Review

In writing about the newly rich in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, J. Mordaunt Crook has produced a study that is fascinating for its vast and colorful cast of characters, but also frustrating for its piecemeal and anecdotal approach to such a complex social phenomenon. Crook tells us his method is "impressionistic rather than statistical" (4), as he has not intended to produce the kind of meticulous, socioeconomic study of David Cannadine's Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (Yale University Press, 1990), with which this book will inevitably be compared. Despite its title, this book does… Full Review

Contemporary African art is a complex subject. Much of it has been produced by formally and informally trained artists and, for the most part, under the influence of Western education and creative enterprise. Some critics have argued that Western patronage is biased against contemporary African art in favor of "traditional" art, apparently because of the latter's impact on modern art in the early twentieth century. It is alleged that many Western critics prefer the works of the informally trained artists and often use their professional clout to foist their own agenda on the art scene, encouraging the production of a… Full Review

This is a remarkably brief book about a vast subject. While most museum histories are monographs or catalogues, James Sheehan's elegant survey presents the rise and fall of the monumental German art museums, including their eighteenth-century origins, along with appropriate fragments of their philosophical and historical context. For German-reading scholars interested in the German art world and its museums, the book covers a more or less familiar terrain in a more than familiar manner, although the condensed format and many observations are the author's own. The fact, however, that the text is not translated but originally produced in English signals… Full Review

The past decade has witnessed a veritable explosion of superior new English translations of Italian Renaissance architectural treatises, as well as a new critical translation of Vitruvius, whose Latin treatise served generations of Italian architects and theorists as the yardstick for proper classical style. This bounty of treatises has broadened significantly the English-speaking audience to whom these texts are now available, and the use of these books in the classroom should increase substantially. The two books under review here should be considered essential and exemplary complements to these translations, providing both a critical framework for their understanding and a synthetic… Full Review

This anthology is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on consumption and consumerism in the Renaissance, particularly from an art-historical perspective. It is based on a session entitled "Values in Renaissance Art" at the 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, held in Southampton, England, in April of 1999. Most of the original papers delivered at the conference were revised and have been included in this book; others were added to expand the scope of the project. These essays explore a wide spectrum of issues and employ an array of methods as they re-evaluate overlooked… Full Review

In recent years, numerous publications focusing on women in early modern Italy have appeared, and this volume, consisting of six essays by well-known scholars, is a welcome addition to the list. Developed in conjunction with the Progetto Donna of the Council for Public Education in Florence, this work is a fine example of combined public and private interests in gender history based on interdisciplinary studies. The unique value of this well-produced book rests in its collection of an extraordinary 403 illustrations, particularly from prints of the period that offer rare insight into the socially constructed norms for nuns, wives, maidservants… Full Review

Mark Cheetham's book, Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline, addresses the problem implied by the critic Thomas McEvilley's quip: "Kant and Greenberg are both things of the past and we should just get over them. Yet somehow, they keep arising from the grave like zombies" ("The Tomb of the Zombie," Art Criticism, 1998). Other critics and historians, such as Paul Crowther, want to excise Immanuel Kant from art history, due to amply documented misreadings of the philosopher's work, but Cheetham seeks rigorously to explore the uses to which Kant has been put--appropriately or not. By so… Full Review

Though it seems impossible to imagine today, there was a time, just thirty years ago, when major exhibitions of historical photographs were rare, and their sumptuously reproduced, oversize catalogues even rarer. With the exception of John Szarkowski's small, seminal The Photographer and the American Landscape (1963), nineteenth-century American landscape photography--now a boom business and a gilt-edge genre--had little or no exposure. If you wanted to see the work of Timothy O'Sullivan or William Henry Jackson, you went to the halftone insert pages of history books like William Goetzmann's enormously influential Exploration and Empire, first published in 1966. You couldn't… Full Review

In his preface, the author states that he intends to provide a "comprehensive account" (vii) of the place of images in sixteenth-century religious reformations--a laudable goal, though one that this volume ultimately falls short of delivering. John Dillenberger, a noted scholar of theological history, continues his contributions to the study of Reformation history, while taking a different angle by focusing on the role and perception of images in the sixteenth century. The author's endeavor, particularly in extending his efforts beyond his established area of expertise, is praiseworthy. Unfortunately, this foray into the visual arts frequently reveals the potential dangers that… Full Review

It is difficult to imagine a more stimulating and challenging meditation on visual theory than the one presented in this book. We are offered an initially unfamiliar vision of Mieke Bal's work: early writing on narrative theory; chapters from Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Prepostrous History (University of Chicago Press, 1999); aspects of her underappreciated but seminal work on museums; and some of Bal's most recent thinking on Marcel Proust and on contemporary art. Bal links these chapters with clarity and honesty, providing something of a narrative of her primary… Full Review

In late eleventh-century China, a group of disaffected government officials, their careers in disarray and their lives sometimes at risk, found ways to express political dissent and personal grievances through the use of literary allusions. Expressing dissatisfaction could be dangerous, so these allusions had to be oblique; a reference to spotted bamboo, for instance, evoked an ancient legend about loyal wives searching in vain for their dead lord. Recognizing such an allusion in a poem or in a painting, and understanding its implications in the contemporary context, required considerable erudition as well as a sympathetic alertness to the author's intentions… Full Review

Densely illustrated manuscripts of the lives and miracles of the saints constituted a distinct category of artistic production during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Of particular interest for the study of narrative and the relationship between text and image, these works also offer important evidence for scholars of political and religious history. Once deemed less aesthetically significant and intellectually sophisticated than illuminated Bibles and liturgical manuscripts, illustrated vitae have recently been the subject of much thought-provoking work by scholars such as Cynthia Hahn and Barbara Abou-El-Haj. Dominic Marner's book is devoted to one of the latest of these hagiographic cycles… Full Review