Research and Innovation

While few have questioned Basquiat’s status in the international art market, scholars have yet to determine the degree to which this has eclipsed his relationship to the critical “canon.” This lecture considers Basquiat’s engagement with the market, or more explicitly, his interrogation of the relationship between commercial and critical success. As an artist whose career closely followed the explosive trajectory of the 1980s bull market, Basquiat was caught on the wrong side of a critical debate that privileged the de-commodification of the art object. Through a careful analysis of the artist’s works and methods I frame Basquiat’s appropriative impulses and his obsession with the signs and symbols of commodification as part of a larger interrogation of the relationship between international market appeal and critical acclaim. Moreover, I argue that the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat encourages us to consider the specificity and the complexity of contemporary modes of recognition and success in a global art history whose parameters are increasingly defined by the art market.

Anthony Colantuono's article "Giorgione's Tempesta in Iconological Perspective: Pierio Valeriano, Giovanni Cotta and the 'Paduan Hypothesis' - shows that the famously problematic imagery of Giorgione's Tempesta is informed by a specifically political argument, probably conceived by the humanist Pierio Valeriano in the service of a member of the Vendramin family. Vindicating Paul H.D. Kaplan's seemingly forgotten 'political' interpretation (1986), Colantuono shows that the painting's imagery does indeed refer to the struggle between Venice and the Holy Roman Empire for control of Padua, in the context of the Cambrai wars. But Colantuono further demonstrates that the painting's imagery is composed of anti-Germanic tropes likening the invading imperial armies to Attila's Hunnish barbarians, who had similarly invaded the Venetian mainland in medieval times. it is shown that similar anti-Germanic imagery was employed by the poet Giovanni Cotta who, like Valeriano, was connected with the artist's patrons. Moreover, Cotta was connected with the Neapolitan poet Sannazaro, whose famous work, the Arcadia, probably provided Valeriano with the primary literary model for his iconographic invention. The larger point is that the correct application of iconological principles yielded a completely coherent interpretation of the painting's imagery, where other methods failed.

On Friday, March 13, 2020, the Lunder Institute for American Art hosted a research symposium on art by African Americans. This live-streamed, daylong event featured work-in-progress presentations by the six 2019-2020 Lunder Institute Research Fellows, discussions moderated by Distinguished Scholar Tanya Sheehan, and a roundtable with leading scholars focused on questions about the state of the field.

Dr. Gensheimer was awarded the 2020 Arlt Award for her book, Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae: Messages of Power and their Popular Reception at the Baths of Caracalla (Oxford UP, 2018). In Decoration and Display in Rome's Imperial Thermae, Gensheimer analyzes the decoration of the Baths of Caracalla (inaugurated 216 CE) and elucidates its critical role in advancing Roman imperial agendas. As Gensheimer notes,"This reassessment of one of the most sophisticated examples of architectural patronage in Classical antiquity examines the specific mechanisms through which an imperial patron could use architectural decoration to emphasize his sociopolitical position relative to the thousands of people who enjoyed his benefaction." "Elevating the exceptional work of early-career humanities faculty has never been more important, and Dr. Gensheimer's brilliant work contextualizes the cultural significance of the two-thousand-year-old ancient Roman Baths of Caracalla and the role art and architecture plays in advancing the politics of imperialism. We are honored to present her with this year's prestigious Arlt Award," said Dr. Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools.

Japan’s defeat in the Second World War represented an opportunity for radical reform of the institutions and practices of art and for rethinking the role of art and artist in the public sphere. Calls for change and revolution were couched in terms of “democratization.” Women were some of the earliest and most obvious beneficiaries of the Allied Occupation of Japan’s democratization policies. Focusing on Akamatsu Toshiko and Migishi Setsuko, two of early postwar Japan’s most successful female painters, this article asks how female artists sought to capture the potential of social and political change for women in particular and society in general at this transformative moment in Japanese history.

This study employs both archival and material evidence to offer fresh solutions for treating Roman sculpture and its interpretation. Beginning with an investigation of two of the most famous works to survive from Classical antiquity, the Farnese and Latin Hercules statues found in the Baths of Caracalla, this paper demonstrates how Roman sculpture acquires true meaning - not just aesthetic value - through precise context. Understood as part of an overall decorative program, these statues shed light on the material culture of Roman bathing complexes and the underlying rationale of imperial patronage. In comparison, this paper argues that the so-called Giustiniani Hercules statues said to be from the Baths of Nero, which lack archaeological documentation of their findspot, cannot be interpreted with the same degree of nuance as their securely documented comparanda from the Baths of Caracalla. This paper, then, not only proposes news insights into the four statues under review, but also a new framework for discussing both an imperial patron's intentions with regard to sculptural display and that sculpture's possible reception by the ancient viewer.

Book and exhibition review of the first major retrospective in over 30 years devoted to Charles White’s career and impact. Published in Art Journal.

Taking three recently published books on Japanese modern art as its starting point, this essay considers the relationship between art and war, and the aesthetics of beauty and violence, during the period of Japan’s modern wars from the 1890s through 1945.

The great painter Pieter Bruegel and the humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam each challenged their viewers, or readers, to look into themselves, to judge their own worth, and to consider how they comprehended others. Erasmus, more the humanist optimist, hoped to move people to strive for perfection, while Bruegel asked them to acknowledge the insignificance of humanity's place in the universe.

Learn about the life of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, from his start as part of graffiti duo SAMO to his rise as an internationally renowned painter. A Ted-Ed Video.