Art ramblings

Duncan Phillips was the founder of The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. The Phillips Collection is a collection of modern art (in the eyes of someone living in the 1890′s) and later works that influenced the French impressionists and post-impressionists.

Duncan Phillips was born in 1886 in Pittsburgh. The Phillips collection began in 1895 when Duncan Phillip’s father and brother died. It was a memorial collection that started out with only a few works in one of the rooms of the Phillips home. The home was converted into the museum that now stands in 1930 when the collection got too large for the family to occupy the space anymore and they moved. The families need to collect art was only added to when Duncan Phillips married Majorie Acker in 1921 who was a noted artist.

The Phillips collection houses many impressionist works, the most famous of which being Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir in 1881. Artists of The Phillips collection include Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Cezane, Picasso, O’keeffe and other modern artists of the 20th century

Reviews are important for art history students and scholars when they are doing research because reviews give the researcher different views about the book in question and may point out any incorrect points of the book.

When reading a review it is important to consider the audience that the review is intended for. My group read a review of Marry Garrard’s monograph Artemesia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art written by Sheila ffolliott for the Woman’s Art Journal that had a definite feminist lean to the piece. The review celebrated Garrard’s monograph as a work about art and women’s studies, which caters to its audience very well, and the reader can see how it differs from reviews by Cropper and Pollock. Cropper’s review, which is intended for the readers of the Renaissance quarterly, is more of a classic book review. Cropper deals with the set up of the book and how Garrard focused the aim of the book away from Artemesia’s rape and towards her artistic achievements. Special mention is made of the essays that go over the iconography of some of Artemesia’s most used iconographies (Cleopatra, Susana, Lucrecia, and Judith) which include works pre and post Artemesia’s.

Cropper does mention that some of the translations in the book may be a bit off. This is very important for a researcher to know because then they may want to cross-reference that information to determine if it should be used in their paper.

The Pollock review for the Art Bulletin is much more scholarly than the other reviews and extrapolates on feminist ideals that are mentioned in the book. It is not so much a review of the monograph but a review of the ideals it displayed.

We as researchers can gather a lot from reviews because they give us professional views on the content and organization of the work in question.

What does art history mean to me? To me the study of Art history is the study of the psychological, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic beliefs of a time period in addition to the personal lives of the artists. I see it a a study of dual purposes, where the artist is changed by his environment but at the same time through his perceptions records differences in his environment that are unique to his experiences.I love art because of the fallibility of people. When artists creatively express what they see or what they are through art one gets a clear picture on how that person perceives the world. Their perceptions may be incorrect, ignorant, transcendent, or beautiful but they are unique to themselves and so a side of their soul that would be nearly impossible for a biography to capture.While individual perceptions are very important the role that culture and movements have on shaping the art of the western world is also very interesting. Art history differs from more traditional history classes to me because it spends a lot less time talking about war and more time discussing the changing identity of the human spirit. The relationships shown in art between people and their world display a unique quality of their culture that the historian is not able to understand until they can see it. Until you can see through an artists eyes how they viewed their world it is more difficult to understand the culture and tradition of the artists time. Why is this my major?As a senior in high school I had an art history teacher named Mr. Evans who was the best teacher I have ever had in my entire life. He was able to weave art with its culture, religion, and artistic meaning seamlessly. I love art because he was able to show us exactly what it’s significance to the world was, how it touches every one of us, and how we all have that need to create. I know my description of my high school art history teacher is not exactly necessary but it would feel fake if I didn’t mention him at all.Even after that amazing class it still took me a lot of time thinking about it before I declared Art History because my family is from a stringent scientific background (my father is still pushing for me to become a hydro-geologist). I am currently an art history major because there was no way for me not to be. I would take one art history class every semester and was taking all the classes I needed to graduate with a chemistry degree but I wasn’t happy, I needed more art history. It got to the point where I was jealous of Art history majors, that was about when I realized it would be smart to switch.I have always loved to create (sewing, beading, knitting,photography and sculpture) and the idea of studying other peoples creations was incredibly enjoyable for me. I love looking at art and thinking about the motivation the artist had, or wondering how they even did it. I am addicted to human creation. I guess I am a humanist by Panofskys terms because I always want to recreate in my head what the artist is feeling and why any great work was created.Art shows the side of humans that justifies all the horrible things that we have done to each other. Art is our great redeeming achievement. What do I want to do with it?  (There is more where this came from … )

kittens for everyone

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video. Silly history lesson