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Did Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa cross a seventeenth-century line of decorum? Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Franco Mormando
The Ecstasy of St. Teresa is arguably the most controversial work created by the Roman Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). The debate surrounding the statue centers on the question: di...
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Suspending ekphrasis: Christopher Marlowe’s ‘Brazen World’ in Part 2 of Tamburlaine the Great and its influence Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Lucy Potter
I argue that Part 2 of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587; published 1590) upends the narrative operations of ekphrasis at work in Part 1 to expose Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘brazen world’...
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Plas Newydd’s poetics of exchange: portraiture, poetry, and the intermediality of eighteenth-century gift culture Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Freya Gowrley
This article uses eighteenth-century correspondence and daily writing to unpack the complex networks of emotional, artistic, and poetic exchange that surrounded Plas Newydd, the home of the so-call...
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A speaking silence: “universal language” and multilingualism in The Shape of Water Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Nina Elisabeth Cook
Framed by Guillermo del Toro as “a love letter to the cinema,” the academy award-winning feature The Shape of Water (2017) speaks to one of the core debates in film studies: film’s status as a “uni...
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Brutal analogies: multiplying Le Corbusiers across global architecture Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Keith Bresnahan
This article examines two instances of an analogical construction by which architects living and working outside of Western metropoles are identified as “the Le Corbusier of …”: Shiv Nath Prasad (1...
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Ikebukuro Montparnasse: an avant-garde community in the era of Taishō democracy Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Aida Yuen Wong
This article examines cross-national, geographical analogizing through the under-theorized example of an artist colony in Japan nicknamed the “Ikebukuro Montparnasse” (a title coined by the poet Hi...
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Fischer von Erlach and the Habsburg imperial historians Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Kristoffer Neville
Abstract The Entwurff einer historischen Architectur (Outline of an Historical Architecture, 1721), by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, architect to the Austrian imperial court, is often seen as a milestone in the literature of architecture, and as the first comparative and universal history of architecture. In part because it has been studied primarily as a work of architectural history, rather
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Performing palettes: Doni, Anguissola, and the origins of poeitic self-portraiture Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Philip Sohm
Abstract Agnolo Bronzino performs a visual experiment in Anton Francesco Doni’s I Marmi (Venice, 1552). “Do you see these pigments?” he asks as he shows his palette to a group of Florentine artisans. Bronzino had mentally dismantled a painting by Andrea del Sarto and loaded his palette with those pigments that Sarto would have used. With them, he painted a copy of the Sarto. How was this strange mind
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The birth of Masaniello: poverty, society, and the visual in Naples and beyond Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Graylin Harrison
Abstract This article demonstrates the role of the visual arts, alongside literature, in mythologizing Masaniello (d. 1647) as hero and martyr, despite the limited role he played in the so-called “Revolt of Masaniello” (1647–1648). In addition to printed accounts of the revolt in a variety of languages, Masaniello imagery circulated on paper and canvas, in marble and wax. His likeness was illustrated
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‘The Constantin Guys of the atomic era’: on the poetic reception of Robert Rauschenberg by Alain Jouffroy and Surrealism Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Gavin Parkinson
Abstract Robert Rauschenberg is not usually thought to have had much contact with Surrealism and even spoke openly about his disdain for the movement on some occasions. However, through the period 1958–69, the Surrealists showed great enthusiasm for the ‘poetic’, ‘metaphorical’ resonance of Rauschenberg’s work, a positive response that has since largely been lost. In place of that history, the interpretation
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Botanical symbolism in the Hypnerotomachia: botanical signifiers of a humanist handling of interior transformation Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 James Calum O’neill
Abstract This article focuses on the botanical specimens and their symbolic purpose in the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). It examines the questions as to why certain plants are positioned at certain narrative stages, and how the relationship between their aesthetic, medical, literary, and symbolic purpose fits with the narrative. It also examines how this ratiocination of reflecting
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Woman in a turban: Domenichino’s Sibyl, Staël’s Corinne, and the image of female genius Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Emma Barker
Abstract The heroine of Germaine de Staël’s Corinne, or Italy (1807) makes her first appearance in the novel ‘dressed like Domenichino’s Sibyl’, wearing an Indian shawl wound into a turban. The aim of this essay is to highlight the contribution that the tradition of Sibylline iconography made to the characterization of the heroine of Corinne by locating Staël in a long line of artists, writers, and
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Indigenous image theory Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Barbara E. Mundy
Abstract Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which contains an account of the origins of painting, offered sixteenth-century European artists a gift as they struggled to advance the status of painting as an intellectual rather than a mechanical art. The Roman authority was also read by Indigenous intellectuals in New Spain; they described their autochthonous painting practice in an account written in
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Introduction: Iconographiae. Writing images in the medieval world Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Beatrice Daskas, Giovanna Targia
Published in Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry (Vol. 39, No. 1, 2023)
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Speaking sign or acting device? Reading and using the Christogram in Byzantium Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Henry Maguire
Abstract The Christogram, the sign combining the letters chi with a rho, an iota, or a cross, became extremely common in Early Christian art, in both the East and the West, where it was freighted with multiple and overlapping meanings, whether theological, imperial, or both. The Christogram’s capacity to create meaning through letters and words was elaborated upon in later medieval art in the West
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Writing in gold: on the aesthetics and ideology of Carolingian chrysography Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 David Ganz
Abstract Writing in gold has almost completely escaped the attention of art historical manuscript studies. Whereas the semantics and the materiality of gold used in works of goldsmithery as well as in illuminations and panel paintings have been frequently discussed, the fact that gold has been also applied to embellish texts, be they single initials and titles or entire chapters and volumes, has drawn
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Allusion and elusion: writing on the Cloisters Cross Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Vincent Debiais
Abstract This article focuses on one of the most intensely ‘graphic’ artefacts produced during the Middle Ages in Western Europe: the so-called Bury St Edmunds Cross or Cloisters Cross. As this fascinating object has been thoroughly studied in many aspects, especially epigraphically, it can seem presumptuous to go back to one of the best-known artefacts of medieval art and epigraphy. This article,
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Writing in the sky: the late antique astronomical illustrations of MS Harley 647 Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Fabio Guidetti
Abstract This paper engages with MS Harley 647 in the British Library, London, a manuscript produced probably at the imperial court in Aachen during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40 CE), which contains the surviving portion (about four hundred and eighty lines) of Cicero’s Latin translation of the Greek poem Phaenomena, written by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BCE. The poem is a description
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‘The chicken or the egg?’ Exploring the dynamics of an ekphrastic cycle Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Allegra Iafrate
Abstract This article explores some of the dynamics related to ekphrasis between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing particularly on the often problematic, but always fruitful, interplay between the object and its description. My interest lies, more specifically, in what has often been called ‘reverse ekphrasis’, that is, the process through which the figurative arts engage in producing an
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Competing ‘iconographies’: Hagia Sophia, ideology, and the construction of a cultural icon then and now Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Beatrice Daskas
Abstract Besides their undoubted aesthetic value, monuments possess an ideological function. They are meaningful forms built to commemorate significant deeds or events or to celebrate individuals who are prominent within a community. Monuments become essential for the articulation of cultural identity and memory, through which political powers and intellectual élites seek legitimation and support.
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Invoking, seeing, and touching God during Byzantine Iconoclasm Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Francesca Dell’Acqua
Abstract This article focuses on pectoral crosses, which functioned as relic containers and amulets and were characterized by a blend of figural imagery and inscriptions. Arguably produced between the late eighth and the early ninth centuries, the geographical origins of the crosses are still contested between Byzantium and Rome, while other alternatives have yet to be fully considered. Some of these
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Writing images as an act of interpreting: notes on Erwin Panofsky’s studies on medieval subjects and the problem of language in and of art history Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Giovanna Targia
Abstract The linguistic and discursive dimensions of art theory and art writing are currently attracting renewed critical attention. This article analyses some of the constructive strategies employed by Erwin Panofsky in shaping his own language, challenging a reductionist understanding of his alleged ‘logocentrism’ and of the verbal and visual as categorically distinct media. I focus mainly on Panofsky’s
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How to write about images from the medieval world: André Grabar and his Byzantium—the case of L’Empereur dans l’art byzantin (1936) Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Ivan Foletti
Abstract This article investigates how one of the most eminent Byzantinists of the twentieth century, André Grabar (1896–1990), constructed his own methodology in a balanced dialogue between texts and images. At the very core of this study is his monograph L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (1936), which can be seen as emblematic of Grabar’s approach. However, this article investigates not only Grabar’s
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Put yourself in his shoes: embodying the archive in Joe Sacco’s The Fixer Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Ivana Ancic
Abstract This article interrogates the notion that comics that engage with history do so primarily within the scope of the archive. I argue, instead, that drawing and seeing/reading comics are embodied practices that generate meaning and memory in ways that exceed the discursive logic of the archive. Building on existing scholarship on embodied acts of memory within performance studies, I suggest that
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‘This Lotus Spell is Intenser’: sources and selections in Emma Stebbins’s The Lotus-Eater Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Melissa L. Gustin
Abstract Emma Stebbins’s untraced statue The Lotus-Eater (c.1857–60) purports to illustrate Alfred Tennyson’s poem of the same title, in turn derived from an episode in the Odyssey of Homer. This essay addresses the tension between Stebbins’s sculpture and Tennyson’s text. It brings to the discussion a body of antique visual and literary material to which Stebbins had access, images of and references
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Uroscopy diagrams, judgment, and the perception of color in late medieval England Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Carly B. Boxer
Abstract Late medieval English uroscopy diagrams depict twenty colors of urine in bright, often garish, colors and gold leaf, arranged in correspondence to digestive states. This article argues that the use of color in these diagrams reveals medieval ideas about the perception of color more broadly, and that the images themselves could train practices of comparative looking and visual judgment. Appearing
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‘The word’s challenging opposite’: the visual language of Lorcan Walshe’s The Artefacts Project and Museum Pieces Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Melanie Otto
Abstract The work of Dublin-based painter Lorcan Walshe is particularly concerned with the relationship between inscription in its broadest sense and the visual image. His two related series, The Artefacts Project (2007) and Museum Pieces (2008), engage with Ireland’s precolonial past in search of personal artistic, as well as broader cultural, roots during a period when national narratives were being
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Socio-metaphysical void: Yves Klein’s textual and imagistic performance of Théȃtre du vide Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Daphna Ben-Shaul
Abstract Yves Klein’s conceptual project Theatre of the Void is associated with two well-known works: the single appearance of the newspaper Dimanche, which Klein published on 27 November 1960 with a declaration that the world is voided for twenty-four hours; and the iconic image Leap into the Void, which appears in it for the first time. This article reframes the project—by offering an inclusive,
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Capturing images: Baudelaire’s account of Meryon’s etchings Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Timothy Raser
Abstract Letters written over the course of 1859–60 tell of an effort on Charles Baudelaire’s part to republish Charles Meryon’s Vues sur Paris, augmented with descriptive texts by the poet. The collaboration failed and, ever since, readers have wondered what would have come of it. At the same time, Baudelaire was “courting” Victor Hugo, sending him new and not-quite-new poems dedicated to him. At
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‘Both a poet and a painter’: typography and textual images in Christopher Logue’s War Music Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Megan Dyson
Abstract The work of the British poet Christopher Logue is characterized by variation, collaboration, and intermedia projects. His output includes poetry set to jazz, printed poster-poems, public poetry performances, film scripts, collaborations with artists, and translations from Portuguese, German and, most significantly, ancient Greek. War Music, an ‘account of Homer’s Iliad’ according to its subtitle
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Illuminating the sunbeam through glass motif Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Maile s. Hutterer
Abstract In the Middle Ages, the image of a sunbeam passing through glass or crystal was a popular metaphor for explaining Mary’s perpetual virginity. One of the most frequently repeated quotations that employs this metaphor has long been attributed to the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux, which might suggest that the emergent Gothic style contributed to its contemporaneous
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The terminus in Late Byzantine literature and aesthetics Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Justin Willson
Abstract In medieval Greek manuscripts, scribes often compared their completion of the transcription of a codex to a ship reaching a harbor. Scholars have noted that this nautical imagery shaped how poets conceptualized their work as authors, but the harbor metaphor also carried over to metaliterary and ekphrastic passages theorizing the affect of images and the built environment. Thus, a technical
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Poetic matters: Giovanni Aurelio Augurello (1441–1524), materiality, and the visual arts Word & Image Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Chriscinda Henry, Matteo Soranzo
Abstract Historians of Renaissance art have long been familiar with Giovanni Aurelio Augurello’s interest in painting and sculpture, while historians of alchemy are aware of his lifelong dedication to the gold-making art immortalized in his masterpiece, Chrysopoeia (1515). Yet the problem of how these interests intersect in the poet’s work has either been disregarded or framed within outdated categories
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Mark Twain’s undictionarial Italian: the politics and visual humor of mistranslating newspaper scraps, c.1900 Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Jennifer A. Greenhill
Abstract Can a writer be considered a visual humorist? If words are the writer’s primary material, can they be bent into caricatural or grotesque formations? Through what filters must words be processed or mediated for comic pictures to emerge? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusing on an understudied short story that Mark Twain wrote in Florence, Italy: “Italian Without a Master
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A New Sun Emerges: the Aztec New Fire Ceremony in word and image Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Catherine R. DiCesare
Abstract This study attends to the historical dimensions of the Mexica (or “Aztec”) festival known as the New Fire Ceremony, a ritual that took place every fifty-two years in pre-Columbian central Mexico. The New Fire Ceremony is most often discussed in terms of cosmic renewal and calendrical cycles. This article seeks to situate its cyclically recurring rites within the web of Mexican history, as
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Flavius Josephus and the frieze of the Spoils from the Temple in Jerusalem on the Arch of Titus Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Steven H. Wander
Abstract The participation of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the imperial triumph of 71 CE at Rome, following the subjugation of Judaea, is a matter of debate; but his account in the Bellum Judaicum along with the relief on the interior south wall of the Arch of Titus document the event for posterity. While Josephus wrote immediately following the Flavian triumph, the completion of the monument
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Rendering visible through language: writing drawings and the literary portrait in Anne Carson’s Men in the Off Hours Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Arturo Cisneros Poireth
Abstract In 1992, Anne Carson published Short Talks, her first book of poetry. According to her, the book was initially conceived as a collection of drawings. In the process of its being creafted, however, the titles for these drawings gradually expanded until they became forty-five prose poems that ended up displacing the drawings from the final publication. Such displacement not only marked the beginning
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Chronicles of light and sound: the film-poems of Alfonsina Storni Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Aleksander Sedzielarz
Abstract One of South America’s most popular poets, Alfonsina Storni is primarily known for verses of love and passion. During her lifetime, Storni also wrote as a newspaper columnist under the pseudonym Tao Lao. Storni’s association with film has primarily been discussed as part of her friendship with author and cinephile Horacio Quiroga but translations and analyses of Storni’s film-poems, mainly
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The text inside us: text on screen and the intertexual self in Bakemonogatari Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Christopher Smith
Abstract Bakemonogatari (Monster Story) is a 2009 television anime (Japanese animation) produced by Studio Shaft and directed by Shinbō Akiyuki. To the plot and clever dialogue of the novels on which the show is based, the anime adds several striking filmic elements which create an entirely new layer of expression. Most notable among these elements is the profuse and reflexive use of text on the screen
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Médium du portrait, portrait du médium: Les spécificités du pastel dans les discours sur l’art au XVIIIe siècle Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Isabelle Masse
Abstract Le présent article expose comment les discours sur l’art de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle édifièrent une conception canonique du pastel. Offrant un cadre conceptuel qui historicise la notion de spécificité des médiums, il détaille les propriétés que les écrits techniques, critiques et encyclopédiques attribuèrent au pastel autour des années 1750–1790. À la fois exploration méthodologique
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On the (un)seeable in Wassily Kandinsky’s Klänge Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Elissa Watters
Abstract In 1912, Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866–1944) published a limited edition of Sounds (Klänge), an illustrated book of poems that applied many of the theories discussed in his publication On the Spiritual in Art (Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911). In Sounds, Kandinsky strove to train readers to sensorially perceive images hidden in visual and verbal abstraction. In both word and image
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Lydgate and the Lanterne: discourse, heresy and the ethics of architecture in early fifteenth-century England Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Gabriel Byng
Abstract At the turn of the fifteenth century, architectural ethics acquired renewed prominence in England. A long-established discourse that had been developed by major figures in Europe’s intellectual history, and that threatened to reject all but the most utilitarian church-building projects, was given new energy, as well as a new English vocabulary and a newly extensive application, in heretical
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Catherine of Siena’s chest stigma: ambiguities between the textual and visual traditions Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-10-03 Diana Hiller
Abstract After the Early Christian period, the practice of depicting Christ’s chest stigma on the right-hand side of his upper torso was an established component of stigmata iconography. Thereafter, this tradition was consistently followed in painted images of stigmatic saints—most notably in representations of St Francis of Assisi. St Catherine of Siena (1357–80) also bore the stigmata, and when her
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‘An Hour before the Day’: the dismembered Book of Hours in Elizabeth Siddal’s Clerk Saunders Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Nat Reeve
Abstract In 1855, the Pre-Raphaelite artist–poet Elizabeth Siddal was invited to examine John Ruskin’s collection of medieval manuscripts. Two years later, a manuscript—a Book of Hours, the popular late medieval prayer-book—appeared in Siddal’s painting Clerk Saunders. Siddal’s decision to include a Book of Hours in a scene from a medieval ballad encourages us to explore the painting’s creative strategies
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Intermedia poetics in and out of Detroit’s Alternative Press Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Rebecca Kosick
Abstract This article addresses the experimental Detroit-based publisher known as the Alternative Press, which published eccentric works of art and poetry—in the form of bumper stickers and postcards, among other useful objects—between 1969 and 1999. While the Alternative Press is largely unknown to scholars, this article traces its influences on poets, including Victor Hernández Cruz, Robert Creeley
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Production and design of early illustrated herbals Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Andrew Griebeler
Abstract This article examines how early herbals were produced and illustrated, with a focus on the relationship between the design of the page and that of the production system. It shows that most surviving ancient illustrated herbals were illustrated prior to the copying of the text and thereby privileged the transfer of visual over verbal content. Over the course of the sixth century, however, we
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Photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Geoffrey Hill’s The Triumph of Love Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Hannie Phillips
Abstract Geoffrey Hill’s approaches to memorializing the Holocaust in his poetry have been widely examined for his innovative, self-conscious, elegiac practice and their embodiment of the anxieties of the postmemorial witness. His 1998 book-length poem The Triumph of Love attempts to bear witness to the trauma of the Holocaust through numerous cross-cutting and argumentative sections which meditate
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Where there’s everything: Pistoletto, the Gruppo d’Arte “l’Arlecchino,” and localist internationalism in Presenze Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Tenley Bick
Abstract Recent scholarship on journals produced by postwar Italian avant-gardes has focused on artists’ use of publications to engage with aesthetic constructions of international and global modernisms after Fascist isolation. This scholarship, however, has not yet accounted for the different models of internationalism articulated in these publications, especially in those based outside of Italy’s
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At home with the artist: exploring the Louise Bourgeois Archive Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Léa Vuong, Julie Bates
Abstract This special issue on French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) brings together essays by curators and scholars who have spent time in her Archive, located next to the artist’s home in New York. This article presents the special issue and how it regroups contributions by authors who share the same object of study but who are rarely brought into dialogue with each other. They range
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Interview with Maggie Wright, Louise Bourgeois Archive, The Easton Foundation Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Léa vuong, Julie bates
Abstract The Louise Bourgeois Archive (LBA) was established by The Easton Foundation, a charitable and non-profit organization put in place more than thirty years ago by the artist Louise Bourgeois. Since her death in 2010, the Foundation exists as two spaces that are simultaneously distinct and interlinked: one is the former artist’s home and studio and the other, housed in the building next door
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Les archives de Louise Bourgeois: ‘J’ai besoin de mes souvenirs. C’est ma documentation. Je veille sur eux’ Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Marie-Laure Bernadac
Résumé Cet essai offre une vue d’ensemble des archives de Louise Bourgeois et développe une typologie des différents documents qui s’y trouvent. Des journaux intimes, que l’artiste Louise Bourgeois commence à utiliser à l’âge de onze ans et qu’elle continue à écrire durant toute sa vie, aux écrits psychanalytiques des années 1952–1966 découverts au début des années 2000, aux papiers administratifs
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Les journaux de Louise Bourgeois: perspectives nouvelles sur le féminisme et l’érotisme Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Adam Evrard
Résumé L’ouverture des archives privées de Louise Bourgeois aux chercheurs a joué un grand rôle dans la découverte de l’influence de la psychanalyse sur son œuvre. Mais ses archives offrent des possibilités de découvertes en dehors du champ psychanalytique. En effet, dans les nombreux entretiens qu’elle accorde à partir des années 1980, Bourgeois racontera beaucoup d’anecdotes sur son enfance et sa
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The edition of Louise Bourgeois and Robert Goldwater’s letters: work in progress Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Ulf Küster
Abstract This essay focuses on a current project: to publish a selection of letters between the artist Louise Bourgeois and her husband, art historian Robert Goldwater. A detailed account is provided of an archival object of study, describing a corpus of letters in quantitative and material terms, as well as reporting on the various personal circumstances and historical events to which they refer.
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Parodying girlhood trauma in Louise Bourgeois’s writings Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Natasha Silver
Abstract Critics have become increasingly cognisant of the limitations of interpreting Louise Bourgeois’s artworks through the lens of autobiographical and psychoanalytic narratives, preferring a focus on their form. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the function of these narratives in her œuvre altogether, for a study of the archival material reveals a different use of narrativity that is
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There is a poet underneath here: Louise Bourgeois’s Unknown Masterpiece1 Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-02-25 léa vuong
Abstract Through a focus on ‘Moi, Eugénie Grandet’, one of the last exhibitions Louise Bourgeois worked on before her death in 2010, this article explores the artist’s writings, both public and private, and her interactions with writers, to assess the potentially literary nature of her written and visual works. Arguing that Bourgeois’s dialogues with Honoré de Balzac’s novel Eugénie Grandet is a contemporary
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Hungry minds: the visual and verbal language of taverns and coffee houses in early American periodicals Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Lauren Freese
Abstract Eighteenth-century American periodicals utilized depictions of taverns and coffee houses to aid subscribers in their navigation of complex political environments. Many eighteenth-century artists and publishers drew upon public knowledge of the significance of small variations in drinking habits, imported beverages, and tavern life as a communication strategy. Public knowledge of, and interest
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Before the altar: a Kafkan study in analytic iconology Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Adam Y. Stern
Abstract This article reads Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial in parallel with Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–16). It sets the novel within the context of the Grünewald revival in France and Germany during the first part of the twentieth century. The revival culminated in a wave of veneration that turned the altarpiece into a symbol of national suffering in the closing days of World War
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Confronting premature death: Cluny, Arthur Kingsley Porter, and the tomb of Alfonso Ansúrez Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Elizabeth Lastra
Abstract Since the early twentieth century, the carved sarcophagus of Alfonso Ansúrez has been considered a central work of Spanish medieval art. Nonetheless, its singular imagery remains enigmatic and its contentious modern history largely unexplored. The late eleventh-century sarcophagus of the young noble Alfonso Ansúrez is both exceptionally clear and frustratingly enigmatic. Inscriptions label
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The Joys of Yiddish in the work of Mel Bochner Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Sunny S. Yudkoff
Abstract This article explores the evolving manifestations of Yiddish in the work of contemporary artist Mel Bochner. A founding figure of American conceptual art, Bochner has continuously re-examined the unstable nature of language. Yet, as the following paper will argue, Bochner’s postvernacular invocation of Yiddish calls into crisis this central contention of his work. Beginning with an analysis
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‘Art of confinement’: Samuel Beckett, Alberto Burri Word & Image Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Erika Mihálycsa
Abstract The essay attempts to draw a parallel between the ascetic, negative late modernist aesthetics of Samuel Beckett and Alberto Burri, tracing their post-humanist poetics and artistic practices of impoverishment, achievementlessness and their responses given to the crisis of humanist European culture and of a modernist ethos of mastery in the wake of WW2. It attempts to show how Burri’s works