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In 1126, Fujiwara no Kiyohira dedicated a Buddhist Canon in more than 5,000 fascicles copied in alternating columns of gold and silver ink on indigo paper. This Canon is unique in Japan because of the gold and silver script and also because Kiyohira was the only commoner of his day to sponsor an entire Buddhist Canon. Kiyohira, the descendant of Emishi ("toad barbarians"), ruled from Hiraizumi, capital of a stronghold in northern Honshu that has been variously identified as a kingdom, a polity, a military government, and as "the Buddhist heaven of the eastern barbarians" (202). Kiyohira's son Motohira and… Full Review

Thomas Crow is one of the most exacting and vigilant of art historians, never prone to following received opinions, methods, or practices. His way of thinking has sometimes produced works that are exemplary in their circumspection and nuance; the theory of society and art embedded in the opening chapter of Modern Art in the Common Culture has yet to be adequately answered. The Intelligence of Art is an attempt to say more generally, but with the precision afforded by individual examples, where the discipline of art history might find promising models. Crow is especially concerned with what he… Full Review

This book takes on the challenging topic of Italian (despite its title) Renaissance portraiture and self-fashioning, but with a particular focus, that of artists' self-portraits. The author's premise is that the increasing number of such self-portraits over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marks the changing status of the artist within the culture from craftsman to intellect. Such an evolutionary claim is certainly supported by historical evidence familiar to students of the period, most notably the application of the epithet of "divino" to artists like Michelangelo and Titian toward the end of the period Woods-Marsden discusses and by Castiglione's assertion in… Full Review

Lisa Peters begins her beautifully illustrated book John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist with strong language: "A painter of intimate landscapes rendered in an original and expressive style, John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) was the epitome of the modern American artist in the late nineteenth century" (13). This position is antithetical to the usual understanding of Twachtman within the canon of American art. In Wayne Craven's textbook American Art: History and Culture (1994), we learn that Twachtman "never received the critical acclaim he hoped for, and he died at age forty-nine" (353). In Milton Brown et al.'s text American Art: Painting,… Full Review

This CD-ROM opens with a visual witticism too canny not to have been intentional. When the disk is installed (easily done), the first screen reproduces part of Pieter Bruegel's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, one of the real treasures of the Courtauld's collection. In the detail, taken from the painting's right-hand side, the user encounters a micro-crowd of onlookers, who bend forward, all eyes, all focus, all attention. These figures gaze toward a point at the screen's lower left, while the foremost among them gapes in astonishment and tips a long-fingered hand downward, emphasizing the trajectory of… Full Review

The American public has not given works by Barbizon artists star billing in a little over a century. Where once Americans were proud of themselves for having recognized Millet's talents early, they are now harder to please. Since Impressionist art has risen to blockbuster fame, it takes a monumental effort to call attention to the considerable but subtle charm of what Millet referred to as "rustic art." The subtitle of this exhibition, "Drawn into the Light," implies that Millet could be considered an artist who anticipated the goals of the Impressionists. It is unfortunate, in my view, to remove this… Full Review

Most Americans will know about Tilman Riemenschneider from the wonderful 1980 publication, Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, by Michael Baxandall, one of the rare discussions of German wood sculpture in English, or perhaps from the scattered fragments of the artist's works in American museums, such as Cleveland or Raleigh (an essay by William Wixom in the present catalogue chronicles "Riemenschneider in America" and offers a useful checklist). Now viewers have the opportunity to visit an unprecedented exhibition of the artist's works, first in Washington and then in New York, thanks to the remarkable organizational, curatorial, and editorial skills of Julien… Full Review

The most substantial exhibition devoted to Gustave Courbet's paintings since the Brooklyn Museum of Art's Courbet Reconsidered a decade ago was presented at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne last winter from November through March. It then traveled to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, where it closed on May 30. Titled Courbet: Artiste et Promoteur de Son Oeuvre, it was organized by Lausanne's director, Jürg Zutter, in collaboration with the noted Courbet scholar Petra ten-Doesschate Chu. The well-illustrated catalogue contains valuable essays by Patricia Mainardi and Michael Clarke as well as by the two organizers. Although somewhat difficult to use… Full Review

Most art historians seem to consider Genoa a quiet, provincial backwater that has little to offer to an inquisitive mind. One reason for this misconception may be that the Genoese purportedly guard their privacy and are said to keep their artistic treasures to themselves rather than sharing them with a wider public. However, as any visitor to this city can attest, there is more than just a glimpse to catch of the rich trove of artworks, many of which are readily accessible in churches, museums, and palaces--with many more still in private, often welcoming hands. But things may be changing… Full Review

The prevailing tone of Icons of the Left: Benjamin and Eisenstein, Picasso and Kafka After the Fall of Communism is exasperation. "The predicament of leftist intellectuals working in capitalist society, like myself," says Otto Karl Werckmeister, "has been that their principled critique of capitalism has nearly always been advanced in a hypothetical mode" (p. 5). Arguing for a solution to this problem, which--consistent with his Marxism--he believes to have been caused by the separation of theory from practice, he describes hypothesis flowering as delusion. Marx was right about how capitalism works, and his version of it, therefore, continues to be… Full Review