Haohao Lu, Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College, talks about her article in the December issue of Ludica: Annali di storia e civiltà del gioco, entitled: “Games, Flirtation, and the Use of Interpretive Risk: Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Portrait of Husband and Wife Playing Tables.”
Usually commissioned from local artists working anonymously, retablos feature a narrative that is both written and pictorial. First-person vignettes, dated and inscribed with the supplicants’ names, draw on a traditional vocabulary such as “doy infinitas gracias” (I give infinite thanks). In the luminous illustrations above the inscriptions, earthly figures share space with holy images and a dreamlike representation of the miracle. As they accumulate on church walls, both in Mexico and the United States, these votives become public records of private faith, fears, and familial attachments.
Thomas Cole. Detail from View on the Catskill--Early Autumn, 1836–37. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
May 15, 2019 (SEASON FINALE).
H. Daniel Peck, Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College, discusses his monograph and exhibition, on view at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill May 4 - November 3, 2019 entitled: Thomas Cole's Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek. Thomas Cole's Refrain shows how Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, while reflecting concepts such as the stages of life, opened a more capacious vision of experience than his narrative-driven series, such as The Voyage of Life. Relying on rich visual evidence provided by paintings, topographic maps, and contemporary photographs, Peck argues that human experience is conveyed through Cole's embedding into a stable, recurring landscape key motifs that tell stories of their own. The motifs include enigmatic human figures, mysterious architectural forms, and particular trees and plants. Peck finds significant continuities—personal and conceptual—running throughout the Catskill Creek paintings, continuities that cast new light on familiar works and bring significance to ones never before seen by many viewers.
Violet Oakley. The Great Wonder: Vision of the Apocalypse, Vassar College, Alumnae House, 1924. Oil on panel.
February 20, 2019.
Bailey Van Hook, Professor of Art History and co-director of the MA Program in Material Culture and Public Humanities at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, discusses her biography Violet Oakley: An Artist's Life (University of Delaware Press, 2016). "Violet Oakley: An Artist's Life is the first full-length biography of Violet Oakley (1874–1961), the only major female artist of the beaux-arts mural movement in the United States, as well as an illustrator, stained glass artist, portraitist and author. There is much human interest here: a pampered and spoiled young woman who suddenly finds herself in near poverty, forced to make a living in illustration to support her parents; a sensitive and idealistic young woman who, in a desperate attempt to save her neurasthenic father, embraces Christian Science, a religion derided by her family and friends; a 28 year old woman who receives one of the plum commissions of the era, a mural cycle in the Pennsylvania State Capitol, in a field dominated by much older and predominantly male artists; a woman in her forties who although professionally successful finds herself very much alone and bonds with her student, Edith Emerson; a friend of artists like dancer Ruth St. Denis and violinist Albert Spalding who nevertheless was supremely conscious of social mores, the “Miss Oakley” of the Social Register who preferred the company of upper class to bohemian society; the tireless self-promoter who traveled abroad to become the unofficial visual historian of the League of Nations yet who ironically was increasingly regarded as a local artist."
Wendy N. E. Ikemoto, Associate Curator of American Art at the New York Historical Society and former Vassar professor, talks about her new book Antebellum American Pendant Paintings: New Ways of Looking (Routledge, 2017). Antebellum American Pendant Paintings: New Ways of Looking marks the first sustained study of pendant paintings: discrete images designed as a pair. It opens with a broad overview that anchors the form in the medieval diptych, religious history, and aesthetic theory and explores its cultural and historical resonance in the 19th-century United States. Three case studies examine how antebellum American artists used the pendant format in ways revelatory of their historical moment and the aesthetic and cultural developments in which they partook. The case studies on John Quidor’s Rip Van Winkle and His Companions at the Inn Door of Nicholas Vedder (1839) and The Return of Rip Van Winkle (1849) and Thomas Cole’s Departure and Return (1837) shed new light on canonical antebellum American artists and their practices. The chapter on Titian Ramsay Peale’s Kilauea by Day and Kilauea by Night (1842) presents new material that pushes the geographical boundaries of American art studies toward the Pacific Rim. The book contributes to American art history the study of a characteristic but as yet overlooked format and models for the discipline a new and productive framework of analysis focused on the fundamental yet complex way images work back and forth with one another.
Meredith J. Gill, Professor of 15th and 16th Century Italian Art at the University of Maryland, talks about her latest book Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2014).
(Cambridge 2014).
"In this beautifully written and deeply thoughtful book, Meredith Gill, one of the
best scholars working in the field of medieval and Renaissance art history,
tackles a highly compelling subject that has been “hidden in plain sight.” It
considers the difference between medieval and Renaissance angelology,
offering close readings of angels in the literary tradition and the visual arts
(such as Guariento, Melozzo da Forlì, Raphael, and Rosso). It explores
angels’ relationship to the immaterial, as graceful bodies imbued with aria,
and their meaning in the history of devotion and philosophy. Gill’s writing
style is in harmony with her topic, and her deeply engaging prose never fails
to transport the reader into its beauty and mystery. Drawing upon earlier
excellent work on St Augustine, Gill’s extensive but lightly worn knowledge of Christian thought—a rare achievement amongst art historians today—lays
the foundation for every chapter. The book is an essential read not only for
art historians, but for anyone with an interest in medieval and Renaissance
Christianity." --Kathleen Christian, The Open University
Artist Seaver Leslie discusses his work and the exhibition of magnificent glass sculptures on view in Thompson Library at Vassar College through November 22 entitled the Ulysses Cylindersby Dale Chihuly and Sever Leslie, with Flora C. Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick.
"Gorgeous, enigmatic, and provocative, Dale Chihuly's Ulysses Cylinders stand as some of the artists's most intellectually compelling and unique works. Begun in 1975 and completed nearly forty years later in 2014, the Ulysses Cylinders--adapting drawings by Seaver Leslie to Glass--follow the course of James Joyce's Ulysses, in equal parts representation of the senses in the novel and insightful interpretation of Joyce's work and its place in the history of Irish culture and literary allusion."
Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, will discuss the exhibition currently on view at the Center through December 14, 2014 entitled: Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475-1540.
"Like Albrecht Dürer’s Nuremberg, the city of Augsburg was vital to the flowering of the Renaissance in Germany. The exhibition features prints, drawings, illustrated books, medals, and armor from Augsburg and addresses the themes of Christian devotion and the Reformation, moral conduct and everyday life, and art made for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I."
Marc Michael Epstein, Professor of Religion at Vassar College, talks about his book: The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination, published by Yale University Press and listed by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2011.
“A dazzling analysis. . . . The Medieval Haggadah shows with
remarkable sophistication and an acute visual sense how those who
commissioned, produced the blueprint for, and illuminated four medieval
haggadot, or books for use at the Passover ceremony, did much more than
illustrate the story of the Exodus, creating, rather, complex statements
about the role and place of Jews in the society of the time, as well as
producing remarkable works of art."— Gabriel Josipovici, The Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year)
Kathleen Hart, professor of French and Chair of the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Vassar College, talks about Flora Tristan, George Sand, Louise Michel, and her book: Revolution and Women's Autobiography in Nineteenth-century France, published by Rodopi.
