Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies

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Steven Kossak, Jane Singer, and Robert Bruce-Gardner
Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1997. 224 pp.; 134 color ills.; 15 b/w ills. Cloth $70.00 (0810965275)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1998; Rietberg Museum, Zurich, February 1999
Identifying the sources of Tibetan Buddhist painting has been the object of much scholarship in recent years, a pursuit that has often been frustrated by the scarcity of materials. While almost nothing except a few Dunhuang paintings in Tibetan style remains from the period of the First Conversion in the eighth century, about 500 works have survived from the years between the eleventh-twelfth century chidar, or Second Conversion under the guidance of the Indian sage Atisha, and Tsongkhapa's founding of the Gelugpa order in the early fifteenth century. This number represents only a sample of an artistic inventory largely lost… Full Review
June 24, 1999
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Simon Olding, Giles Waterfield, and Mark Bills
Bournemouth, UK: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in association with Lund Humphries, 1999. 96 pp.; 52 color ills.; 36 b/w ills. Paper $29.95 (0853317488)
Dahesh Museum, New York, January 19–April 17, 1999; Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pa., May 6–July 4, 1999; City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland, August–September, 1999
The Dahesh Museum once again offered a valuable exhibition that expanded the offerings of art on view in New York. Dedicated to the display of "academic" art, its exhibitions have focused on the discarded artists of the modern period—Bouguereau, Rosa Bonheur, Alexandre Cabanel among others. This exhibition was no exception. While English art is on permanent display in New York at the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it tends toward the well-trod areas of eighteenth-century English portraiture and early nineteenth-century landscape paintings, whereas Victorian paintings are in short supply. Briefly for a few precious months, this exhibition… Full Review
June 14, 1999
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Richard Kendall
Exh. cat. Harry N. Abrams, 1997. 160 pp.; 85 color ills.; 36 b/w ills. Cloth $35.00 (0810963663)
National Gallery of Art, October 4, 1998–January 3, 1999; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, January 17–May 16, 1999
Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, currently mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new West Wing (the onetime May Company Building on Wilshire) is a chronological overview of the artist's career as a painter, comprising seventy works from 1882 to 1890. Imposing chestnuts (The Potato Eaters, Vincent's Bedroom) and masterful achievements (The Harvest (Blue Cart), Blossoming Almond Branch) co-mingle with pictures of modest scale and accomplishment. The unevenness of the offering—in addition to indicating the organizing institution's reluctance to lend its full arsenal of "masterpieces" documents the artist's sometimes warring preoccupations and… Full Review
May 3, 1999
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Michael R. Cunningham
Exh. cat. Cleveland: Hudson Hills Press in association with The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998. 286 pp.; 175 color ills.; 83 b/w ills. $50.00
The Cleveland Museum of Art held a monumental exhibition of Buddhist art from August 9 through September 27, 1998. Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan writes in her catalogue essay that "the Cleveland Museum of Art, in bringing the art of the Nara National Museum before an American audience . . . in all their [its] richness and diversity, is in itself an act of lasting merit that helps to preserve one of the great traditions of Asian art" (p. 33). In effect, an exhibition catalogue is similar to a pilgrimage souvenir that one might obtain during a visit to a temple, serving… Full Review
April 30, 1999
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Paul Tucker
Exh. cat. Yale University Press, 1997. 310 pp.; 130 color ills.; 25 b/w ills. $50.00 (0300077491)
Exhibition Schedule: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, September 23, 1998–January 3, 1999; Royal Academy of Arts in London, opened January 21, 1999.
This morning I drank my green tea from my lavender Monet-signature mug. This same autographic logo is reproduced as the first word of the title of Monet in the 20th Century, the catalogue of a major exhibition seen in the fall at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and appearing this spring at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. I wasn't able to join the international throng of visitors who saw the show in Boston and London, but I am nonetheless grateful to the guest curator, Paul Hayes Tucker of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, whose formidable curatorial capacities also… Full Review
April 21, 1999
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Janice Driesbach
Oakland, CA: University of California Press in association with Oakland Museum of California, 1998. 148 pp.; 75 color ills.; 50 b/w ills. Cloth $50.00 (0520214323)
Exhibition schedule: Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, June 20–Sept. 13, 1998; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., October 30, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, June 20–Sept. 13, 1998–Mar 7, 1999; Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa An Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, June 20–Sept. 13, a, Calif., April 17–June 6, 1999
Art of the Gold Rush, a book that accompanies an exhibition of the same name, sets out to present the impact of the gold rush on the northern California art scene. The authors' stated aim was to depict the era in works of art selected both for their visualization of gold rush themes, and for their intrinsic aesthetic quality. The project is a fascinating one, linking the influx of miners and artists with the rise in appreciation of the fine arts in San Francisco and Sacramento. The exhibition and book present more than genre paintings of the gold rush, extending… Full Review
March 15, 1999
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Joanna R. Barnes and J. Patrice Marandel
Pennsylvania State University Press in association with American Federation of Arts, 1994. 191 pp.; 92 color ills.; 51 b/w ills. Paper $35.00 (0812232755)
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, N.C., October 14–December 11, 1994; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Fla.; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta; Dahesh Museum, New York, September 22, 1998–January 2, 1999
The Dahesh Museum in New York was the latest venue for an exhibition titled French Oil Sketches and the Academic Tradition, organized by the American Federation of the Arts and previously shown, in a more expanded version, at the Mint Museum, the Society of the Four Arts, the Arkansas Art Center, and the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. The exhibition was composed entirely of works from a single private collection that is on long-term loan to the University Art Museum in Albuquerque. Perfectly suited to the Dahesh Museum, both for its size and its theme, this exhibition… Full Review
January 28, 1999
Vincent Pomarede and Arlette Serullaz
Exh. cat. Thames and Hudson, 1998. 408 pp.; 250 b/w ills. $65.00 (0500092753)
Grand Palais, Paris, April 7–July 20, 1998; Philadelphia Museum of Art, September 15, 1998–January 3, 1999
"I am in that phase of life when the tumult of the mad passions does not mingle with the delightful emotions which works of art give to me. I don't know the meaning of dusty papers and hateful occupations, which is what almost all human beings must devote themselves to; instead of thinking of business, I think only of Rubens and Mozart: my great business, for a week, is the memory of an aria or a picture. I go to my work as others hasten to their mistress, and when I leave it, I carry away into my solitude or… Full Review
January 28, 1999
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Judith Barter
Exh. cat. Art Institute of Chicago in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1998. 320 pp.; 100 color ills.; 200 b/w ills. $65.00 (0810940892)
Art Institute of Chicago, October 10, 1998–January 10, 1999; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, February 14–May 9, 1999; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 6–September 6, 1999
Not surprisingly, the public flocked to see the well-conceived Mary Cassatt exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, standing in line to buy calendars, posters, refrigerator magnets, and coffee cups adorned with her beloved images. Yet the exhibition curator, Judith Barter, intentionally downplayed the sentimental side of Cassatt, opting instead to show her evolution as a "modern" artist. Ninety key works, including paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints, highlighted Cassatt's progress from a young artist studying in Europe to her acceptance as a member of the Parisian avant-garde. Loosely following this basic chronology, each of the seven galleries was organized around… Full Review
January 28, 1999
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