Tag: Art History
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Female Agency and the Gendering of Knowledge in Twentieth-Century Visual Representations
Harry Fry examines the portrayal of women by female and male artists, pointing to the persistent limitations of their agency.
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Writing a Manifesto for Fun and Profit: What Dada Can Teach Us About Meme Culture
Memes are amongst the most trivial yet entertaining aspects of internet culture. Karen Buecking explores the potential power of the meme as it relates to the Dada movement in early twentieth century art.
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Egyptian Glam Rockers! – Glitter’s historically entrancing power of expression
From birthday parties to disco nights, glitter is a ubiquitous visual art used in a wide variety of ways. Tilly Bankes provides a brighter lens on history of these flashy sparkles.
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Not Quite Champing at the Bit: The Horse Statue that took Half a Millennium to Complete
Of the many notable inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the least focused on was a statue of a horse that was destroyed during a war between Italy and France. Kate Jensen discusses the complex reconstruction of the Sforza Horse statue 500 years after it had been destroyed.
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Dederer’s Monsters: Notes on Art and Ethics
People have long debated whether it is possible to separate the art from the artist. Georgia Smith discusses Claire Dederer’s book Monsters, and its attempt to answer this question.
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On Being an Angel: The Body, Subjectivity, and Seduction in the Images of Francesca Woodman
In her startingly and regrettably short career Woodman produced a body of photographic work preoccupied by human forms and their representation, gender, spaces, and the self. Georgia Smith examines that career and the themes it invoked.
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On John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
John Berger’s seminal text, “Ways of Seeing”, remains a critical work in the study of art, five decades after its publication. Georgia Smith provides an insightful discussion of his discourse on the “male gaze” and the spectator-subject relationship.
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Fascism: Art, Power, and Collections
What is the relationship between art and power? How is power exercised in the display of artwork in museums and galleries? Ash Tomkins discusses these questions and more through an analysis of a ‘degenerate art’ show in Nazi Germany and a modern-day auction of Adolf Hitler’s paintings.
Retrospect Journal 