In his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire d’un genre de polype d’eau douce, or Memoirs Concerning the Natural History of a Type of Freshwater Polyp (Leiden, 1744), the Swiss naturalist Abraham Trembley (1710–1784) included a startling figure, one that is not immediately legible (Fig. 1). Plate 9 of his…
Resemblance—things that look like other things—has played a near universal role in global art and material culture. Gods have been conjured into the temporal realm by their likenesses; portraits of rulers have been revered in the absence of their physical presence. In those two examples, the power of semblance is…
In April this year, HBO debuted the film accompanying Beyoncé’s sixth album, Lemonade. The film and the album’s twelve tracks were released on Tidal and iTunes a few days later. Viewers immediately asked if the album’s exploration of infidelity attested to longstanding rumors about Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z. But they also…
The scene is prosaic enough. Seven soldiers are arrayed in the foreground. A crumbling archway stretches above them; there are ramparts in the distance, and more soldiers on the bridge leading there. Just off to the center, two men stand side by side, facing away from each other—the soldier on…
Videos of the ‘Objects of Orientalism’ symposium are available on the Clark Art Institute’s YouTube Channel. On April 29th and 30th 2016, a symposium at the Clark entitled “Objects of Orientalism” – convened by Marc Gotlieb and Mary Roberts, and supported in part by the Williams Graduate Program in the…
Curated by Karina H. Corrigan, Jan van Campen, and Femke Diercks, on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts from February 27th-June 5th, 2016 (and previously at the Rijksmuseum), Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age displays 200 paintings and objects demonstrating the…
For the past year, The Getty Center in Los Angeles has celebrated the reign of Louis XIV during the tercentenary of his death. Woven Gold: Tapestries of Louis XIV, which opened on December 15, 2015 and runs until May 1, 2016, is the last major event in this program. Three…
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu, eds., Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2015) This collection of sixteen essays gives a good sense of the much-increased body of work now being carried out on cultural contacts between the…
Passing through what is now southwestern Mexico in 1763, the Spanish Capuchin friar Francisco de Ajofrín paused to praise a local artist: “Today there flourishes a celebrated painter, a noble Indian named Don José Manuel de la Cerda, who has greatly perfected this faculty [of painting lacquerware], so that it…
Review of Portrayals from a Brush Divine – A Special Exhibition on the Tricentennial of Giuseppe Castiglione’s Arrival in China (October 6, 2015 – January 4, 2016) On October 10, 1925, the Forbidden City in Beijing officially ceased to be the residence of the former imperial family and became…