Research and Innovation

This article looks at the history of the University of Cambridge's ancient coin collection.

This is a review of a publication of a late Roman coin hoard.

This article discusses the water systems of the Great Temple in Petra, Jordan.

The fifth volume in “The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art,” Keith Morrison showcases and explores the painting of the Jamaican-born artist from the early 1960s through 2004. Tracing the development of Morrison’s multifaceted career, Ater outlines the styles and complexity of his work. She considers the ways in which Morrison exploits color, humor, ethnicity, and the sacred and profane to render work ranging from abstract compositions to figurative narratives centered on the African diasporic experience.

In this book, I discuss Augustine’s influence on thinkers and humanists, such as Petrarch (1304-1374), as well as his representation in works of art. Augustine fascinated writers and artists in the period; they perceived him to be a conduit of classical and Christian truths and an example of the life of the intellect reconciled to a life of faith. The religious order who claims him as their founder sponsored several major fresco cycles portraying the saint’s life while, in single portraits, artists alluded to Augustine’s aesthetic theory as it was manifest in his concept of divine illumination. The Sistine Chapel represents the fulfillment of his theological and philosophical legacy, one that extended through the completion of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

The Japanese Creative Print (sôsaku hanga) movement, which had originated in the early twentieth century in opposition to traditional ukiyo-e prints, came to worldwide prominence between 1945 and 1970. Forging ties with artists, scholars, museums, and collectors overseas, Japanese printmakers brought their artistic innovations into fruitful interaction with a global art scene. Americans had long considered imported objects labeled “Made in Japan” as shoddy and inferior in quality, but they warmly welcomed Creative Print artists and prized their work for its consummate craftsmanship, inclination toward abstraction, and sometimes exotic subject matter. Benefiting from government-sponsored exchange programs, Japanese printmakers performed an important role as cultural ambassadors and helped smooth tensions between the peoples of two nations that had recently been enemies at war but that were now allies in peace. The prints documented in Made in Japan range widely in treatment and medium, embracing woodcut, stencil, lithography, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, and screenprint. Essays outline the history of the Creative Print movement and its American patronage from the Occupation through the 1960s, and consider its relationship to the earlier tradition of ukiyo-e prints. With nearly one hundred color illustrations, the book is the first to narrate the Creative Print movement in all its diversity and constitutes a major reappraisal of one of the twentieth century’s most important moments of cultural and artistic exchange.

Illustrated with masterpieces from Japanese collections by Matisse, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Corot, Cézanne, and Monet, Japan and Paris explores the history of collecting Western art in Japan and its influence on Japanese modern art. In particular, it addresses the development of Western-style modernist impulses as Japan's early interest in the Barbizon School extended to include modes of expression such as Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, and Fauvism. In addition to showcasing works by some of the best-known French and European painters, works by Japanese artists who were instrumental in the introduction of Western modes of expression to Japan are included, such as Kojima Zenzaburo, Kume Keiichiro, Maeta Kanji, Mitsutani Kunishiro, and Fujita Tsuguharu.

An analysis of early twentieth-century Japanese “creative prints” (sôsaku hanga) as a new vehicle for modernist expression by the hands of oil painters.

This introduction to an exhibition for modern Korean artist Young Na Ahn places the work in the context of traditional and modernist movements.

In a close analysis of Katsura Yuki's transwar work and practice, I argue that her representational strategies allowed her to engage with gender difference while liberating her from its traps.