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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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