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Amid their dense vegetation, the forests of West Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast yield a bounty of contradictory impressions. They host both captivating natural beauty and obscure supernatural terrors. They appear intrinsically wild, yet are carefully cultivated by neighboring communities. Their muddy feeder roads and indistinct bush paths render them seemingly remote and impenetrable, but they have served as conduits for countless movements in the name of exchange and conflict. This complex terrain mirrors and inspires complex cultures. Centuries of invasions and alliances, trade and theft, and creativity and mimesis have motivated an array of social affiliations defined by categories… Full Review

Kehinde Wiley’s lavish paintings demand a lushly illustrated and deeply contemplated exhibition catalogue, which is what Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic provides. It frames the artist’s oeuvre, beginning with his residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001, and spans his recent developments and the increasingly global scope of his art. The volume joins a considerable body of illustrated book-length attention to the artist, and avoids the more conventional exhibition catalogue format of themed chapters or single-author commentary. Instead it includes two introductory essays followed by succinct interpretations by thirty-five invited commentators. This approach allows multiple voices to frame… Full Review

Jacob Lawrence figures prominently in the small cohort of African American modernists to achieve renown in their lifetimes. In his case, that recognition came early, bound up with the reception of The Migration of the Negro, his narrative painting cycle of 1941 that is now known as the Migration Series. Over a couple of years, he earned a fellowship to develop it, researched and painted its sixty tempera panels, and published twenty-six in Fortune Magazine. In 1942, he sold the cycle to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which acquired the even-numbered paintings, and the Phillips Memorial… Full Review

Rulers of the Late Assyrian Empire (also known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire, ca. 900–612 BCE) constructed monumental royal palaces as part of large state-sponsored building programs at Assur, Kalḫu (Nimrud), Dur-Sharruken (Khorsabad), and Nineveh, the royal centers of the Assyrian heartland in present-day northern Iraq. These structures served as the principal residences of the royal family, as well as the administrative and ceremonial centers of state. Previous studies of this building type have focused largely on the role of their decoration in Assyrian visual culture, exploring questions of narrative, iconography, identity, and royal propaganda with respect to the carved stone… Full Review

Mary Ann Eaverly’s Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach addresses the skin color differentiation of men and women in ancient Egyptian and Greek art. Eaverly criticizes the marginalization of this topic in current scholarly discussion and contends that, in instances where the topic has been explored, interpretations are generally outdated. According to Eaverly, the consensus that male/female skin color differentiation occurs because it realistically indicates sun exposure—men are habitually outside in the sun, whereas women remain indoors—is an inadequate conclusion that continues to be recycled in scholarship today. In the book, she… Full Review

La peinture d’histoire occupe une place singulière dans l’histoire de l’art hollandais du XVIIe siècle. Cette peinture universelle qui, contrairement aux genres, s’adressent aux talents particuliers, suppose la maîtrise de toutes les parties de la peinture, est considérée théoriquement comme «le degré le plus haut et le plus important de l’art de peinture» (Samuel van Hoogstraten). De la peinture, elle est considérée en effet comme la partie la plus difficile, qui exige d’idéaliser la nature visible d’après l’antique, les grands maîtres et les grandes fables poétiques et historiques et de représenter la figure humaine, ses mouvements comme ses passions. … Full Review

Textbooks of nineteenth-century European art rarely mention the 1871 Paris Commune since it produced few memorable artworks, save for André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri’s photographs of dead bodies in coffins. The Commune is typically described as a workers’ insurrection that emerged after the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War left the city in ruins and absent of political authority as a result of the conservative government helmed by Adolphe Thiers having moved its headquarters to Versailles, along with most of the city’s wealthy population. Those left behind in the predominantly working-class neighborhoods established their own government on March 18, 1871. Disdéri’s images… Full Review

The Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475–1540 catalogue accompanied the first exhibition staged outside Germany focusing entirely on Renaissance art in Augsburg. It is a handsome, small-format hardcover, beautifully designed and illustrated with superb color reproductions. It contains three essays and a checklist of the 102 objects exhibited—of which, regrettably, fewer than half are illustrated. The vast majority of these are prints, complemented by a few drawings and medals, slightly compromising the title of the publication which seems to imply a more balanced selection. The core of the exhibits is drawn from the rich holdings at the National Gallery… Full Review

Cathédrales 1789–1914: Un mythe moderne provides a rich overview of the post-Revolutionary European fascination for depicting Gothic architecture in art. Reproducing some 180 works by 60 artists working in different media—including painting, sculpture, photography, furniture, jewelry, and wood carving—this beautifully illustrated catalogue is the fruit of an exhibition presented first at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen and then at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Fondation Corboud in Cologne. Like many commemorative exhibitions from 2014, this one, too, references the Great War, yet it focuses much more on shared values (mutual fascination for cathedrals) than on the cultural antagonism inherent in the… Full Review

On first glance, Robin Kelsey’s Photography and the Art of Chance appears to be a playful book. Its cover features three orange balls against a bright blue sky, a detail from Conceptual artist John Baldessari’s 1973 photographic series Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts). However, in both its physical heft and intellectual ambitions, this is not a light or lighthearted book. Instead, this study of photography from its beginnings in the 1830s to its acceptance by the U.S. art world in the 1970s combines a history of the medium with… Full Review