Outstanding Academic Titles 2020: Art, Sculpture & Photography

Enjoy these five selections from our 2020 Outstanding Academic Titles list, highlighting art, sculpture and photography.

Posted on May 27, 2021 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five academic art book reviews from our 2020 Outstanding Academic Titles list, highlighting art, sculpture and photography.

1. Verrocchio: sculptor and painter of Renaissance Florence
ed. by Andrew Butterfield National Gallery of Art, Washington/Princeton, 2019

Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–88), one of the most important artists of the early Italian Renaissance, has not always enjoyed the spotlight. This impressive volume and the 2019–20 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art (Washington) it catalogues reevaluate Verrocchio to find his deserved place as an unusually inventive artist who made profound contributions to the history of art. Editor Butterfield (independent scholar and Verrocchio expert) served as guest curator of the exhibition, which was originally conceived by the late Eleonora Luciano (a curator at the National Gallery). The catalogue reveals Verrocchio as experimental and innovative and a natural inspiration for a genius such as Leonardo da Vinci, his star pupil. Essays by leading scholars contextualize the artist in passionate tones. The 51 catalogue entries, moreover, demonstrate the value of collaborative study for exploring meaningful new avenues of research.
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2. Rubens, Rembrandt and drawing in the Golden Age
Lobis, Victoria Sancho. essays by Antoinette Owen with contributions by Francesca Casadio and Emily Vokt Ziemba Yale, 2019

The Art Institute of Chicago has an outstanding collection of drawings, and 110 of the northern baroque sheets are presented in this solidly researched catalogue of a 2019–20 exhibition. Eight essays, intelligently organized by topic, examine the drawings’ varied functions, meanings, and materials, with comparative illustrations. This topical approach gives each sheet a narrative and a historical context. Included are prototypes for a painting or print, biblical and historical subjects, figure models, independent landscapes, and northern artists in Italy. An essay on papermaking and watermarks explains the intricacies of production and importation of the supports. Technical examination reveals exact pigments and processes in a watercolor by Hendric Averkamp, and reinforces the artist’s interest in evoking a cold atmosphere. A welcome glossary includes new technologies for analyzing works on paper. View on Amazon

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3. Lewis Carroll’s photography and modern childhood
Waggoner, Diane. Princeton, 2020

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), commonly known as Lewis Carroll, took up photography in the 1850s, when it was considered one of the four or five most important inventions ushering in the “modern age.” Photography was also a fashionable hobby among the British professional class to which Carroll belonged, and he continued to make amateur photographs—mostly portraits and costume portraits of children—for almost 30 years. Among these were a few nude portraits of young girls, and these have always troubled critics of Carroll’s work. There exists a large and contradictory body of critical writing on Carroll’s literary and photographic practices, and Waggoner (curator of 19th-century photographs, National Gallery of Art) addresses this in her thoroughly researched, carefully written description of Carroll’s photographic production. She discusses his complete work in the context of the events of his own life and activities, of the practices of his fellow photographers, and of the art practices of his day.
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4. Metropolitan fetish: African sculpture and the imperial French invention of primitive art
Monroe, John Warne. Cornell, 2019

This book discusses the unique sociocultural situation that allowed France to leap to the forefront of the Western fascination with African art. Monroe (history, Iowa State Univ.)—whose previous work includes Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France (CH, Feb’09, 46-3481)—endeavors to explain why African sculpture in particular gained such a foothold in France in the period from the 1880s to 1940. The answer, he writes, is twofold. First, the artistic climate of France was particularly receptive to the compelling “primitive” art form. Surrealism, cubism, and other art movements drew inspiration from African art forms, and art dealers actively bolstered its fashionableness though auction and gallery sales. Second, African art was useful as a political tool in the colonies to promote colonial ventures and to quell local unrest. Monroe also examines the French contribution to the development of a formal African art history, which was at first essentially cobbled together facts and misconceptions and evolved into meticulous connoisseurship.
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5. Freemasonry and the visual arts from the eighteenth century forward: historical and global perspectives
ed. by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020

In her contribution to this beautifully produced collection (her subject is Paul Revere), Nan Wolverton writes that Freemasonry, the world’s oldest and largest fraternity, has been dedicated from its beginnings to “promoting the enlightened belief that men could create a better world through reason, harmony, and right conduct” (p. 120). The 11 essays, together with the comprehensive introduction by Wolf (SUNY, New Paltz) and Luxenberg (Univ. of Georgia), illustrate the significant impact the fraternity has had on the visual arts from the Enlightenment to the present in England, Continental Europe, and the US. The collection is an example of a recent upsurge of scholarly interest in Freemasonry, which has taken the “craft” from the obscurity of esoterica to a legitimate subject of interest for cultural, historical, and sociological study. Covering an impressive range of arts, essays touch on Meissen porcelain, etchings and engravings by Hogarth and Paul Revere, paintings by Goya and Copley, photographic portraiture of African American masons, and even masonic folk art in contemporary Haitian voodooism.
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