Imagined homeland: landscape painting in Palestine in the 1920s*

Abstract. This essay examines the proposition that landscape representations both reflect and endorse national ideology. By studying in detail selected landscape paintings by Jewish artists in pre‐State Israel some of the assumptions linking landscape and nationalism will be revisited. In particular, I shall challenge received notions in Israeli art historiography that interpret the numerous landscape paintings of the 1920s as directly expressing the identification with Zionism – the Jewish national movement. Analysis of the subject repertoire reveals that artists usually ignored images of the Zionist settlement in Palestine. They preferred instead to depict oriental countryside or ancient cities in an emblematic idealistic manner supported by stylistic borrowings from contemporary French painting. The country in these paintings is more an idea than a reality. Yet they evoke neither the biblical past nor a Zionist futuristic vision, but rather an oriental Arcadia of an unspecified time.     

‘The land and its people’: reflections on artistic identification in an age of nations and nationalism

From the late eighteenth century onwards, increasing numbers of visual artists came to identify with their nations and with the homeland and its people. This development was strongly influenced by growing national cultural support and regulation of the arts by academies, art schools, museums and art markets in Western Europe. On a subjective level, the Rousseauan movement of a ‘return to Nature’, Herder's espousal of vernacular cultural self‐expression and, above all, the widespread Romantic cult of authenticity, were potent influences on the inner self‐identification of visual artists after 1800, and were manifested in the novel importance accorded to landscape and rural genre painting in Western Europe. Here I consider the role of national sentiment, the ‘return to Nature’ and the cult of authenticity, first in landscape paintings by Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable in early nineteenth‐century Britain, and then in the rural genre paintings of Jean‐Francois Millet and Jules Breton in nineteenth‐century France and Josef Israels, Anton Mauve and Vincent Van Gogh in the later nineteenth‐century Netherlands. Their work reveals how nineteenth‐century visual artists became inwardly identified with the ‘land and its people’, and how they in turn contributed, especially through prints and engravings, to the dissemination of national imagery and a cultural nationalism.     

明清鉴藏家对女画家艺术的鉴赏

晚明清初江浙一带一些持才善绘的女性进入了当时文人、书画史家和鉴藏家的视野,在同时期的诗文、笔记或书画著录中留下了有关其事略的直接记述,如作品的递藏、题跋或品评等情况。针对这一美术史现象,本文拟从女画家作品进入当时鉴藏领域的方式和收藏家对女画家艺术的品评两方面进行初步的探讨。     

Identification of Green Pigment Used in Persian Wall Paintings (ad 1501–1736) Using PLM,FT–IR,SEM/EDX and GC–MS Techniques

The technique of oil painting was introduced to Iran via a cultural exchange with Europe in the Safavid period (ad 1501–1736). Since the first attempt at scientific conservation of wall paintings in Iran in the 1960s, the nature of green pigment used in Persian wall paintings has not been clear, although work on contemporary miniature paintings has identified malachite and verdigris. PLM, FT–IR, SEM/EDX, GC–MS and the study of contemporary historical treatises of the Safavid period were the main tools used in the present study to identify the green pigments in Persian (oil‐based) wall paintings. Eight samples taken from the two famous Safavid buildings, Chehel Sotoon Palace and the Sukias House in Isfahan, were analysed. Here, the identification of copper‐based pigment and of verdigris in oil as oleate amends the existing knowledge of the green pigment used in these paintings. It also suggests that oleate was introduced to Persian artists via the European influence on Persian painting as a result of cultural exchange in the Safavid period, when the technique of Persian painting changed from tempera to oil painting. However, as verdigris in oil and resin can appear as oleate over time, it is unknown whether the Persian artists did this deliberately or accidentally.     

Holy Organ or Unholy Idol? Forming a History of the Sacred Heart in New Spain

In the eighteenth century, Novohispanic painters produced some of the most innovative and visually complex images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While they are based in part on European printed frontispieces of books about Christ's heart, the paintings are not mere copies or derivatives of European artworks. This article explores the reasons for the particular pictorial strategies of Novohispanic paintings of the Sacred Heart. I argue that the visual strategies employed by Novohispanic artists were intended to argue in support of the legitimacy and historicity of the cult of the Sacred Heart; the cult was under attack in the eighteenth century for, among other reasons, being too new and thus lacking historical roots, making it potentially heretical and apocryphal. Novohispanic depictions, like religious texts produced to defend the Sacred Heart, champion the cult, thereby attempting to shape perception through the power of the images.     

中国绘画程式略论

世界上任何一种成熟的艺术都表现为一定的程式，中国绘画尤其如此。本文通过对中国绘画史及世界绘画史以及对当代中国绘画的研究，对中国绘画程式的起源、发展过程及发展趋势进行了分析和论述。     

Towards The “New Rural History”: A Review Essay

The true subject of art history is the succession of innovations that have changed the practices of artists over time. This article uses a survey of illustrations in textbooks to consider not only when in their careers the greatest artists of the twentieth century made their greatest discoveries but also how quickly they made them. The results underscore the dominant position of Pablo Picasso and Cubism in twentieth-century art: Picasso alone accounts for the two best three-year periods produced by any artist, and he and Georges Braque account for three of the best five-year periods, all for the work the two young artists did in creating Cubism. Andy Warhol's innovations in pop art and Henri Matisse's development of Fauvism also rank among the century's most important breakthroughs. In general, identifying the most important short periods of artistic creativity highlights the differing methods of conceptual and experimental artists: great conceptual innovators (e.g., Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol) made their greatest discoveries abruptly, whereas great experimental innovators (e.g., Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock) made their discoveries more gradually. The finding that artists who innovate early in their lives do so suddenly, whereas those who innovate late do so more gradually, adds an important dimension to our understanding of human creativity.     

Quantification and the Scientific Study of History

Abstract

A survey of the illustrations in art history textbooks reveals that the most important Modern American painters, including Pollock, Johns, and Warhol, failed to produce individual paintings as famous as the masterpieces of a number of major French artists, such as Picasso, Manet, and Seurat. Analysis of the textbooks reveals that art historians do not consider the American artists to be less important than their French predecessors or judge the Americans' innovations to be less important. The absence of American masterpieces instead appears to be a consequence of market conditions. as changes over time in the primary methods of showing and selling fine art reduced the incentive for artists to produce important individual works. This study demonstrates that the study of markets is essential to a full understanding of the development of Modern art.     

Wuming: an underground art group during the Cultural Revolution

The Wuming painting group opened its first public exhibition in Beijing in 1979. The hundreds of small paintings exhibited were accumulated through years of clandestine art practice stretching back to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This article traces the history of the Wuming group and its art – describing the social identities of the artists, exploring the historical context of the group's formation, reconstructing the underground art and cultural activities, and contextualizing the group's artistic innovations. The history of this underground art group addresses larger debates over Chinese modernity, and over the interpretation of the history of the Cultural Revolution in today's global context.     

谈清宫皇帝后妃油画半身像

油画对于中国来说是一个外来的画种,经过美术史家多年的努力,它东传的时间和途径已然大致明确。但研究中还是有很多缺环。近些年来对清朝宫廷绘画实物及相关资料的发现,为欧洲油画东传的过程提供了更多的信息。本文通过对流传至今的清宫油画作品进行梳理,提出一些想法,或可补充关于"西画东渐"的叙述。     

三代传承 同宗异趣 吴伯滔、吴待秋、吴木翰墨因缘

历史悠久的中国画,以其独有的美学思想与风格体貌、自有的艺术规律与艺术特征,迥异于西方绘画。中国画以＂家学＂、＂师承＂为主要形式的传承体系,也颇具中国特色。综观中国绘画史,无论是开宗立派之大师,还是各流派中的大家、名家,无不得益于家学承继或名师授传。在不同的流派中,也多见亦父亦师、亦师亦友的结构关系。     

基于地理学视角的中国山水画分析

本文从美术地理学的角度出发阐述了中国山水画的地域差别,指出地理环境对山水画的影响主要表现在几方面:即对山水画作品面貌的影响,对山水画家创作灵感的影响,对作品风格和地域特色的影响,对山水画派和地域人才形成的影响。因而,地理环境是艺术家创作的对象和源泉,也是决定美术风格的关键因素,对山水画派和地域人才的形成具有重要影响。     

讽刺与宣传——记傅抱石的三幅时事宣传画

1959年1月,傅抱石在一篇创作随感中写道：自觉改造思想,争取政治挂帅,不但提高了思想水平,更提高了业务水平。真是政治挂了帅,笔墨就不同。在党的教育下,画家们的思想认识提高了,心情舒畅了,政治热情高涨,干劲冲天。     

英年早逝的清代宫廷画家张若澄

清代宫廷绘画艺术影响极大。宫廷画家张若澄画风工整细致,笔墨丰润绝俗,深受乾隆皇帝赏识。对其画作进行研究,有助于认识和了解清代宫廷绘画艺术。     

Troubling Naturalism: Shirana Shahbazi's The Curve

This article performs a reading of Shirana Shahbazi's photo-based mural The Curve (2007), an artwork that interrogates the production of knowledge based on various ideas of truth in representation. The Curve meditates on knowledge production in relation to three sites: contemporary documentary photography, the history of northern European still-life painting, and the murals of religious leaders and martyrs that adorn Tehran. The effect of these multiple citations is the creation of an artwork that cannot be comfortably contextualized either in Western art history or in contemporary Iranian visual culture. The Curve thereby anticipates and attempts to block its own assimilation into art historical and critical discourses that reduce the work of Iranian artists to static reflections of a particular geographical and political reality. The artwork thus demands a consideration of the ways in which context, as a term in contemporary global art history, is ideologically constructed within a certain network of power relationships.     

皇家名分的确认与再确认——清宫至伪满皇宫收藏钱选《观鹅图》始末

清宫的书画收藏是中国封建社会后期文化史的重要组成部分,为考察艺术与社会的关系提供了一个特殊的窗口。大量珍贵的前代书画作品从民间进入清代宫廷,并在乾隆朝形成鼎盛局面。成为宋徽宗以来又一个皇家艺术收藏的高峰。这不仅是封建集权制度的产物,同时也是满汉文化融合的结果。自清王朝覆亡至满洲国出笼,逊帝溥仪及其小朝廷在北京、天津及长春的一系列复辟和称帝活动中从未放弃对清宫旧藏的关注与重视,将之作为象征皇家名分的主要标志之一。本文以1746年到1940年代元代钱选《羲之观鹅图》(现藏美国纽约大都会美术馆)的收藏过程为脉络,通过考察画卷上诸多收藏印鉴和题跋来认识清宫绘画收藏的兴衰转折及其历史意义。在近200年的皇家收藏史中,特别是在清皇室20世纪所经历的变故中,这一画卷成为不可多得的历史见证。其奇特的收藏始末,深刻地向世人揭示了中国和世界政治、经济及文化史中的一段精彩画面。     

Narrative Trauma and Civil War History Painting,or Why Are These Pictures So Terrible?

The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several history paintings of Civil War scenes in light of this tradition and argue that their "failure" to capture the meaning and essence of the war resulted from a breakdown of the narrative conventions of history painting. Finally, I glance briefly at Winslow Homer's Civil War scenes, arguably the only ones which have become canonical, and suggest that the success of these images comes from their abandonment of old conventions and the invention of new ones.     

5. CONTROVERSIAL CHRONOLOGIES: THE TEMPORAL DEMARCATION OF HISTORIC EVENTS

In everyday language and in historiography, influential events are commonly described as “historic” but are rarely defined from a theoretical standpoint. Discussing temporal demarcations of events by scholars—in particular William H. Sewell Jr.'s foundational study of the Storming of the Bastille—this article considers the contemporary urge to define the event's temporal boundaries to better evaluate the alleged importance of certain events in history. Rather than perpetuating the constructivist idea that any event possesses a fundamentally interpretable character, it crafts a theoretical definition of the historic event that distinguishes between its flexible fringes and its rather stable core. Fixing an event as an anchor point on the timeline of history is thus presented as a process that provokes political, social, and—last but not least—financial controversies. As this article shows with examples from the history of revolutions reaching from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty‐first century, such epoch‐making events are essentially shaped by their flexible beginning and ending points. Although the cores of these events remain strikingly stable, their temporal fringes become objects of highly controversial discussions.     

Suburban Identity in Paul Maitland's Paintings of Cheyne Walk

The aim of this article is to consider the extent to which Paul Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk addressed the problem of establishing suburban identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of the modern suburb during this period presented a particular problem with regard to how this form of urban living might be defined, understood and experienced. As part of a group of artists that could loosely by described as British Impressionists, Maitland was among the first to engage in a close study of this subject. This article situates Maitland's visual project within its wider cultural context, comparing his work with that of associated artists also interested in the suburban subject and in Cheyne Walk in particular and with a range of contemporary texts that addressed the complex problem of Chelsea's place identity, including guidebooks, letters, novels and the work of local historians. Drawing on the methodology of cultural and historical geography, this article highlights the extent to which place identity changes through time and how its formulation is based upon the economic and social structures of those who ‘live’ the place. Adopting and elaborating a range of visual signifiers associated with the modern suburb, including both its rural and working aspect, Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk provide a valuable and subtle insight into how this new urban space was being conceptualized at the end of the nineteenth century.     

河南北宋壁画墓的题材及艺术特色

北宋墓室壁画是宋代绘画的重要组成部分,题材有日常生活、孝行故事、超度升仙和装饰性画面等四类,布局、构图都遵循一定的程式,但构思巧妙、技法多变,体现了北宋绘画艺术的丰富多彩与繁荣昌盛。