A. Gutkind Bulling

"The Guide of the Souls Picture in the Western Han Tomb in Ma-Wang-Tui"

- describes painted garment in tomb of Lady Dai at Ma-Wang-Tui

- lower portion depicts subterranean region, middle portion depicts man/earth, upper region depicts heavens/cosmos

- yin and yang symbols

- depicts Lady Dai

- thought to represent soul's journey to join the cosmos after death (depicts the rites, myths, and ceremonies that accompany death)

- maps journey of soul (breath) to heaven and body to earth (polarity of journey after death)

- attempts to reunite soul and body using images of unity, joining of beings

Eugene Wang

“Why Pictures in Tombs? Mawangdui Once More"

- explores possible reasons for the elaborate imagery used to decorate tombs

- Lady Dai is blindfolded in tomb (could not have been for her enjoyment)

- art covered by undecorated outer black coffin (could not have been for enjoyment of those involved in funerary procession)

- silk garment wrapped around innermost coffin evokes "soul-summoning" ceremony (reunites soul with lodging of its owner)

- images on garment attempt to represent a more unified experience after death (as opposed to the separation of spirit and body)

- diagrams regeneration of Lady Dai

- regeneration of deceased intended to comfort the living

Erwin Panofsky

"Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art"

- primary (natural) subject matter: basic, pre-iconographic description of imagery (requires practical experience)

- secondary (conventional subject matter): narrower iconographic analysis, including interpretation of images, stories, and allegories (requires knowledge of context, cultural setting)

- intrinsic meaning/content (symbolic values): deeper iconologic interpretation (requires synthetic intuition combined with knowledge of cultural context and tendencies of human mind)

Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

"David’s Sabine Women: Body, Gender and Republican Culture under the Directory"

- makes contemporary political/moral statement by referring to historical situation

- represents moral superiority of unity, peacekeeping, compromise

- gender organizes and distributes meaning (female body represents peace, unity, family; male body represents strength, heroism)

- displayed using psyche mirror (includes viewer in scene, implicates viewer in didactic purpose of painting)

Wolgang Kemp

“The Work of Art and Its Beholder”

- a work of art has two meanings (the artist's intention and the viewer's interpretation/reception)

- the role of the viewer should not be underestimated in establishing the cultural/aesthetic significance of a work of art

Richard Meyer

"Warhol’s Clones"

- Thirteen Most Wanted Men commissioned for NY Pavilion @ 1967 World's Fair, Moses (President of the World's Fair) ordered its removal fearing that it would offend Italian-Americans or that the Fair could be sued for libel (some of the men pictured had since been aquitted)

- Buchloh dismisses Moses's reasoning, attributing his censorship to the fact that the piece is a subversive critique of state power and popular culture (twisted notions of celebrity, the conflation of fame and notoriety, a perverse fulfillment of the American dream)

- Meyer points out another element of subversiveness (combines classical notions of masculinity with criminality and homoerotic desire)

- Warhol uses differentiation and repetition to indicate a subject worthy of seeing many times over (hints at overwhelming nature of celebrity)

- repetition of male figure as suggestion of homoeroticism

Irene Winter

"The Body of the Able Ruler”

- 5 factors can identify a Mesopotamian statue as a Gudea: height indicates capacity for leadership, breadth indicates power/fullness of life, muscular arms indicate heroism as ruler, broad face/wide ears indicate attentiveness/wisdom, large eyes indicates reciprocal attention to gods and purpose of statue as subject of viewer's attention/focus

- articulates Gudea's right to rule, illustrates the qualities that make him fit to rule

- statue has 3 functions: animate body (representation of an actual person), archetype (fictional/idealized symbolic representation of a set of values/qualities), object of offering/sacrifice (has a cultural presence within Mesopotamian society)

- specific expressive qualities are culturally contingent, but they values they represent are not

Irene Winter

"Idols of the King"

- while European images are “representations,” Mesopotamian images are “manifestations" (rituals neccesary for the provision of context, endowment of image with power/significance)

- images of ruler introduced during his lifetime

- rulers viewed as dieties

- mutually-reinforcing relationship between divine image of rulers and temples/sacred images created of ruler (help shape his divine image)

Ron Grimes

"Breaking the Glass Barrier: The Power of Display"

- museums are designed to serve the general public, but are also political institutions (display the power of a specific group, tend to display certain cultures as "other," power of display is an active enforement of status)

- contoversy surrounding excavation of Native American burial sites (desecration for Native Americans, ritualization for Americans)

- American indifference toward the dead is unique

- excavating burial grounds is a practice, and allowing that pratice empowers archaeologists over Native Americans

- most conflicts resolved locally

- tension between archaeologists' duty to serve/inform entire public and respect Native American cultures

Marcel Duchamp

"The Creative Act"

- discusses relationship between artist, artwork, and spectator

- artist is an extension of the medium

- artist's decisions are intuitive, not conscious (he is therefore not qualified to judge his own work - spectator must judge work)

- value of a work of art comes from the reverence it is afforded by its viewers (not by its creator)

- viewer transforms piece from raw/inert matter into a work of art, thereby participating in the creation of the artwork

- "art coefficient" = difference between the intention and its realization

Pierre Nora

"Between Memory and History"

- "lieux de memoire" (sites of memory) exist because there are no longer "milieux de memoire" (real environments of memory)

- the media has transformed memory into history

- "memory" = unadulterated social memory (living, evolving, subjective); "history" = memory influenced by the media (reconstructed, didactic, generic, incomplete)

- history is suspicious of  memory, aims to overpower/destroy it

- history is more powerful than memory, links memory to notions of heroism/myth

- split between history and memory can be seen in the emergence of a history of history (historiographical awareness - history begins to write itself in the absense of true memory)

- what passes for collective/cultural memory today is not true memory (more like history)

- lieux de memoire are more self-referrential (don't point to real objects/events, making them more open to interpretation)

Maya Lin

"Vietnam Veterans Memorial"

- most memorials focus on images of strength/heroism, but the Vietnam Memorial focuses on loss, reflection, peace

- links Lincoln Memorial and Washinton Memorial (unites past and present, links country's symbols)

- no generic images of soldiers, descriptions of war (just names on a flat surface)

- more personal, introspective, participatory

- apolitical

Neil Levine

"The Temporal Dimension of Fallingwater"

- blurring of boundaries between architecture and nature, attempt to meld the two (building emerges from/blends with/is an extension of its surroundings)

- multisensory experience (processional element of architectural experience relies on more than just sight)

- house evokes natural cycle of growth, decay, regeneration (reflects water cycle symbolized by waterfall)

John Ruskin

"The Lamp of Memory"

- in architecture, beauty is inconsistent with preservation (value emerges from ruin/decay)

- restoration destroys a building's value, creates a dishonest image

- preservation eliminates the need for restoration

- must not obliterate buildings created by those who have since passed away

- buildings do not belong to those who destroy them

James Marston Fitch

“Conceptual Parameters of Historic Preservation”

- field of historic preservation expanding (scale of artifact increasing to include entire geographic regions and decreasing to include small segments of sites, more types of artifacts considered worthy of preservation)

- shift of concern from isolated object to its physical context, which raises issues concerning original inhabitants of a location (relocation, gentrification, need for new levels of sociocultural awareness and organization)

- levels of intervention: presevation (maintenance of the artifact in the same physical condition in which it was received), restoration (returning the artifact to a previous physical condition), conservation (physical intervention in the fabric of the object in order to ensure its continued integrity), reconstitution (reassembly of the object), adaptive use (adapting an old building to the requirements of new tenants), reconstruction (recreation of vanished artifacts on their original site), replication (creation of a copy of an extant artifact)

James Beck

"Sistine Chapel"

- restoration of Sistine Chapel ceiling significantly sharpened Michelangelo's imagery

- some believe that Michelangelo coated the fresco with a glue-paint (secco) to create more muted tones, deepen shadows, and strengthen three-dimensionality (restorers would have removed this coating, thereby changing the image that Michelangelo intended to present)

- debate over whether restoration was necessary and whether it altered Michelangelo's orignal work

Jennifer L. Roberts

"Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History"

- Spiral Jetty relates to Golden Spike

- Smithson chose location because he was interested in historical reference

- Smithson doesn't trust traditional (idealist, progressive) notions of history and the passage of time (very aware of the presence of time and the past)

- relates history to geology (entropic, working toward a static state of being)

- Golden Spike represents single, punctual moment in history (opposite of the Spiral Jetty, which has a processional element to its experience and evolves over time in response to nature)

Robert Smithson

"Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities"

- describes process of designing/building Smithson's Spiral Jetty

- explains importance of worker's understanding of the piece (not just laborers, must comprehend artist's intentions)

Walter S. Gibson

"Hieronymus Bosch"

- discusses Bosch as a moralizing artist

- center panel contains images of abundance, nature, sexuality/sensuality, beauty, purity

- sexuality considered proof of man's fall (between Eden, the origin of sin, and Hell, the consequence of sin, Bosch represents the sin of sexuality)

- traditional "love garden" transformed into a scene of lust/sin

- perversion of God's will

Fraenger, Wilhelm

"Hieronymus Bosch"

- Bosch's work can be broken into two bodies: conservative and reformist

- some theorists suggest that The Garden of Earthly Delights was created for sect members rather than mainstream Christians (intentionally obscure and meant to be understood be insiders only?)

- this interpretation would imply that the painting is not meant to be moralistic (could instead be a celebration of sensuality)

James Snyder

"Bosch in Perspective"

- Bosch's paintings not meant to be heretical

- represent man's inner nature (as opposed to outer appearance)

Michel Foucault

"This is Not a Pipe"

- representation of an object is not equal to the object itself

- definition of an object is not equal to the object

- describes calligrams as an intersection between the verbal and the visual

- discusses types of symbols/ indexes and their functions in visual art

E.H. Gombrich

"Illustration and Visual Deadlock"

- with the advent of photography, the accurate representation of objects lost its significance as the primary focus of painting (painters began to symbolic meaning/other forms of representation instead)

- conviction that artist knows more about "seeing" than the average person emerged (interest in more than visual appearance)

- representation becomes self-conscious in the 20th Century (different order of reality than that which is produced through photographic representation)

Richard Krautheimer

“The Hagia Sophia and Allied Buildings”

- extensive analysis of Hagia Sophia's design, architecture, building process, and use

- Emperor chose engineer/scientists rather than architects to construct the building

- interior decorations as elaborate as possible (intended to be visually overwhelming, unprecedented size and degree of decoration)

- Hagia Sophia represented melding of two halves of God (Emperor and Patriarch)

- techniques come from many different schools of thought

Liz James

"Light and Color in Byzantine Art"

- light and color are essential (yet often overlooked) elements of Byzantine mosaics

- color manipulated to create very smooth gradations (considering the fact that they are constructed from single, solid-colored stones)

- mosaics installed unevenly to take advantage of external light sources (in addition to representing light within the images themselves)

Cyril Mango

"The Art of the Byzantine Empire"

- selections from Procopius and Paulus Silentiarius

- emphasize faith in God, faith in the Emperor God chose, and in the architects the Emperor chose

- citizens were awe-struck at temple's dome

- Emperor as God's mediator

- discuss role of external light in creating Hagia Sophia's image

Leonardo da Vinci

"Introduction on Sculpture and Whether it is a Science or Not"

- sculpture is a shallow, mechanical process while painting is a delicate science that requires skill and introversion

- sculpture simply replicates objects, but painting tranforms them into 2D representations, which requires additional artistic skill

Philip Johnson

“Whence and Whither: The Processional Element in Architecture”

- argues for significance of processional experience of an architectural work

- a good architectural design has a logical processional element, allows visitors to experience building and get where they are going without confusion

- visitors should experience architectural design without being overwhelmed by it

- elevators ruin procession

Andy Warhol

"Interview by G.R. Swenson"

- links art world to consumer culture, emphasizes art as a commodity

- discusses Pop Art's self-conscious obsession with commodity/consumption

- dismisses Pop Art as a fad

- emphasizes mechanical elements of artistic process (and his own attempts to make art entirely mechanical, eliminate notions of the artist's hand/crafstmanship)

Frank Zollner

"Leonardo's Portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo"

- explores context of creation of Mona Lisa

- discusses tradition of female portraiture (fits standards of typical portraiture)

- painting commissioned by sitter's husband (typical middle-class marriage)

- potentially motivated by couple's new home and son

- contains some religious references (potentially moralistic?)

- direct references to female virtue (links beauty and virtue, idealizes femininity)

Rudolf Wittkower and Margot Wittkower

“From Craftsman to Artist”

- transformation in perception of artist has happened twice (Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy)

- artists previously considered craftsmen/manual laborers, come to be considered creators/intellectuals

Barnett Newman

"The First Man Was an Artist”

- artistic creation as a primal urge

- creation as an emulation of God, which is an attempt to revert to pre-civilization

- man has an instinctual need to explore/discover, which leads to the creative urge

Ovid

"Pygmalion"

- artist as creator

- artists brings life to work, creates new forms of life

Andy Warhol

"The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again"

- Warhol embraces corporate side of art world

- artist as businessman

Robert Hillenbrand

"The Iconography of the Shanama"

- considers context of commission, attempts to identify significance of scenes that were given illustrations

- edition of Firdausi's epic painting, commissioned by Shah Ismail and continued by his son, Shah Tahmasb, presented to Ottoman Sultan Selim II when he came to power

- an unexpected commission because shorter lyric poetry had become more popular (requires fewer illustrations, making it less expensive to commission)

- emphasizes Persian/Turkish conflict, celebrates new dynasty and political stability (could be considered political propaganda)

- most illustrations focus on elements of the story that highlight battles, enthronements, negotiations (central themes are war and the expression of royal authority)

- commentary on contemporary political themes, expresses hope for the future

- vindicates the divide right of Iranian kings

Alice Friedman

“People Who Live in Glass Houses:  Edith Farnsworth, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Philip Johnson”

- describes controversy surrounding Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House

- Farnsworth was a single professional woman who sought to build a house in the woods (as much of the American Dream as she could acquire as a single woman)

- allowed van der Rohe to spend a lot of time on the design, didn't demand details

- developed a very close architect/client relationship (Farnsworth became more of a patron)

- van der Rohe aimed to create a house that commented on modern life (ignoring the needs of the resident in doing so)

- the house is very open (mostly made of glass, the only private space is the bathroom)

- aims to incorporate the architecture with nature, but ends up being impractical

Walter Benjamin

"The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media"

- a work of art posesses value by virtue of it's "aura" (uniqueness, hand-crafted nature, evidence of the artist's hand, spaciotemporal singularity)

- mechanically-produced art lacks "aura" (not touched by artist's hand, not unique, usually exists in many places at once, easily distributed)

- cult value replaced by exhibition value

- began with advent of photography, new art forms continue to work with mechanical reproduction

Lance Bertelsen

“Icons on Iwo”

- explores 4 elements of Joe Rosenthal's photograph that contribute to its fame: the event itslef, the public's reception of the photograph, the socioideological implications of the photograph, and the relationship of warfare to the concept of heroism

- historical event represents a practical and symbolic goal

- public questioned whether it was posed (the fact that it is not conveys that men can achieve perfection/heroism spontaneously and that life surpasses art)

- conveys anonymity, unity, strength, symmetry, heroism

- widely distributed/reproduced

- became a national icon