History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

From The Studio To The Field: André Breton’S ‘Hopi Notebook’, Katharine Conley

Arts & Sciences Articles

André Breton’s visit to the Hopi villages of Arizona in 1945 had an impact on his view of the world and of the objects he collected. His response to what he witnessed in the month when the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was reflected in the notebook he kept on his trip, known as the “Hopi Notebook,” and in the poem he began writing that summer, “Ode to Charles Fourier.” His belief in the liveliness of repurposed things, haunted by their former lives, was particularly pertinent to the Hopi katsina figures he collected on his trip …

Behind The Brick Walls: On “Hearth” And Slavery At The William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "The William & Mary was the second university in the U.S. after Brown University to establish a funded, institutional examination of its dark history of complicity with slavery and Jim Crow segregation. After resolutions from the Student Assembly and Faculty Assembly, the Board of Visitors in 2009 established the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, named after Lemon, a man enslaved by the College..."

Writing At The Bray School: Part 2, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt: "In the last several years the contested question of whether Mrs. Wager taught writing at the Williamsburg Bray School has come up anew in several venues. In this follow-up to my earlier piece, “Writing at the Bray School,” I examine these recent developments..."

Lost In Space? Reconstructing Frank Willett’S Excavations At Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Rescue Excavations (1957–1958) And Trench Xiv (1962–1963)Lost In Space? Reconstructing Frank Willett’S Excavations At Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Rescue Excavations (1957–1958) And Trench Xiv (1962–1963), Léa Roth, Gérard Chouin, Adisa Ogunfolakan

Arts & Sciences Articles

From December 1957 to January 1958, Frank Willett conducted a “rescue” excavation at Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife (Nigeria), to investigate the fortuitous discovery of rare brass artifacts by laborers preparing the land for a construction project. Ita Yemoo soon emerged as a significant site, and Willett conducted subsequent archaeological campaigns between 1958 and 1963. The site became famous for its “bronzes” and several terracotta heads excavated in situ, which became icons of Ife’s “florescence” period during the 13th and 14th centuries CE. However, the fame of the site contrasts with the absence of detailed published material on its archaeology. In this …

W&M’S Memorials To Benjamin S. Ewell, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"As far as I can tell, Benjamin S. Ewell, the College’s sixteenth president (1854-1888), has been memorialized at William and Mary more than any other person. That is not surprising given his long tenure as president, his dedication to the College, and his titanic efforts on its behalf, especially in the decades after the Civil War..."

Speculations On Structures Once Near The Site Of Lemon Hall, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"One of the most intriguing views of Williamsburg in antebellum days depicts a series of large and small structures along Jamestown Road, roughly between where Barrett Hall and Lemon Hall stand today.

Made between 1859 and 1862 by James Austin Graham (1814/15-1878), the panorama presents Williamsburg as viewed roughly from where the law school is today and sweeps along the entire southern edge of town, from the Capitol on the east to, on the west, about the site of the College’s Lemon Hall..."

Cities In Africa Before 1900. Historiography And Research Perspectives, Clélia Coret, Roberto Zaugg, Gérard Chouin

Arts & Sciences Articles

What new issues arise several decades after the first academic studies? What are the answers and what sources are mobilized? This special issue proposes a historiographical review of research conducted on cities, taking into account the most recent methodological reflections on the issue of the relationship between the urban territory and the exercise of power before the 20th century, focusing on its material and symbolic aspects. Case studies in the Maghreb, West Africa's forest and Sahelian regions and East Africa examine these stakes.

Les Villes En Afrique Avant 1900. Bilan Historiographique Et Perspectives De Recherche, Clélia Coret, Roberto Zaugg, Gérard Chouin

Arts & Sciences Articles

Quels nouveaux questionnements émergent plusieurs décennies après les premières études académiques ? Quelles sont les réponses apportées et quelles sources sont mobilisées ? Ce numéro thématique propose un bilan historiographique des recherches menées sur les villes, tout en s’inscrivant dans les réflexions méthodologiques les plus récentes autour de la question des relations entre le territoire urbain et l’exercice du pouvoir avant le xx^e siècle, à travers ses aspects matériels et symboliques. Des études de cas au Maghreb, en Afrique occidentale forestière et sahélienne et en l'Afrique de l'Est abordent ces enjeux.

Historical Art, Ecology, And Implication, Alan C. Braddock

Arts & Sciences Articles

"For fifteen years, I have researched, published, lectured, and taught about art and ecology, focusing on contemporary contexts as well as historical work produced long before Ernst Haeckel coined “ecology” (Oecologie) in 1866, and prior to the emergence of modern environmentalism..."

Farago’S Global Art History, Charles J. Palermo

Arts & Sciences Articles

"Anyone who’s been paying attention for the past two decades has noticed that art history (just like the other humanities) has been furiously globalizing itself. From fighting Eurocentrism to tracing global networks of exchange, to acknowledging the incommensurability of multiple modernities, to challenging the category of art itself as an ideological mystification developed in modern Europe—which continues to reproduce power structures and to project them onto other cultures and peoples—turning global is a move with a lot of sponsorship, both intellectual and institutional. These different attacks on an art history variously understood as blinkered, racist or Eurocentric have been canonized …

Writing At The Williamsburg Bray School?, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"I’ve become interested recently in whether writing was taught to the pupils in the Williamsburg Bray School. I had assumed all along that it was, and that the discovery of 40 some slate pencils at the Bray School Dig was confirmation of that.

I’d not been alone in my assumption about the teaching of writing, for the great majority of those interested in the Bray School have affirmed that the curriculum included writing..."

Rembrandt’S Etched Angels: Traces Of The Divine, Catherine Levesque

Arts & Sciences Articles

This paper considers the paradoxes inherent in Rembrandt’s treatment of angels in his etched works where his choice of subject and medium directly addresses the fraught relation between the material and the spiritual, between reason and imagination, issues at the heart of Rembrandt’s artistic enterprise and central as well to the long reformation. Rembrandt’s etchings with angels draw particular attention to his craft, especially the distinction between the etching (on the plate) and the print (on paper) whereby the paper (as opposed to the plate) provides an unstable and fragile surface particularly suited to convey unsteadiness of all earthly things. …

Value And Hidden Cost In André Breton’S Surrealist Collection, Katharine Conley

Arts & Sciences Articles

André Breton’s collection provides a unique perspective on the environment within which the principles of surrealism were crystallized. In addition to his collection of European paintings, Breton’s Oceanic object collection grew during World War Two in New York. In essays from the 1950s and 1960s, Breton ascribed a “poetic view” and “prestige” to these things with no reference to their monetary value. And yet his history of acquisition and de-acquisition of such things and paintings show that he also understood collecting as a form of investment, despite his avowed objection to the forces of French colonialism that made it accessible …

Carrington's Kitchen, Katharine Conley

Arts & Sciences Articles

This essay argues that the objects in Leonora Carrington’s kitchen, as represented in her writing and painting, are comparable to the objects in Breton’s study, as he writes about them and has them photographed. Her most emblematic object - the cauldron - epitomizes the way she mixes the ingredients of her art, creating new substances through a literal process of embodiment. In comparison, Breton predominantly matches the ingredients of his art, through his strategy of juxtaposition, following the combinatory principle of the surrealist image, the spark that stimulates automatism’s flow. Both sets of objects reflect the spaces that house them …

Review Of "Picasso, Braque And Early Film In Cubism", Charles J. Palermo

Arts & Sciences Articles

"Pace Wildenstein’s exhibition Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism ran from 20 April to 23 June 2007 in New York. Those lucky enough to have seen it will surely recall a nice selection of well-known works and less widely published works, including pictures from private collections and from major museums in the United States and abroad. I expect the show itself would have ranked as a proud achievement for most museums. In addition to the fi ne selection of works on view, though, the gallery included specimens of early cinematographic equipment, which, while they may well be familiar to …

Tactile Translucence: Miró, Leiris, Einstein, Charles J. Palermo

Arts & Sciences Articles

"One might be tempted to see the background of Joan Miro's Head of a Catalan Peasant IV for what it is (albeit in a certain limited sense): the Miro's physical encounter with the canvas. This scumbled blue ground -which I will call the background even though it often refuses or complicates the organization of a deep space- records in some detail the application of a thin layer of paint. Variations in the density of the paint even across the trajectory stroke appear in Head of a Catalan Peasant with exemplary clarity, so that t position of such brush strokes makes …