Artists Need Art Historians Pilot Edition Acknowledgement

Dear Readers,

Diana Nway Htwe (BAAH ’20) and I started Artists Need Art Historians in hopes of incubating interdepartmental conversations on Art at SAIC and creating a platform for academic writing to be shared. We thank our faculty advisors Jennifer D. Lee, Nora A. Taylor, and Claudia Hart for their generous support and encouragement.

Despite the obstacles that COVID-19 brought and the times of political uncertainty our team built a community and collaborated from five di‹erent time zones throughout the summer to showcase student works. These represent students from multiple departments across SAIC and investigate a diverse range of topics.

Our publication would not have been possible without our genius design team, hailed from the Visual Communications Department, who pushed the aesthetic boundaries of what an academic journal can be. I personally thank Charlie Kang, Solbi Park, Jinny Soojin Kim, Emilija Worthington, Audrea Wah, Justine Guzman, Stella Kwoun, and Jiarui Wang for their time and dedication in making ANAH.

I am excited to share with you the Pilot Edition of Artists Need Art Historians.

Sincerely,

Ye-Bhit Hong Founder of Artists Need Art Historians table of contents

Virtual Installations

Ye-Bhit Hong with 5 Claudia Hart & cohort

The Game of Art History: A Re-centralizing Art History: Critical Inquiry into Digital A Case Study of Google Arts Relevance and Culture

Emilija Worthington 11 Aishan Zhang 15

Technology for Post- Defining “Western”: the Anthropocenic Ideology indiscreet definition of “Western” within Art History Discipline Cyrus Hung Hau Ng 23 Barbie Kim 27 The Politics of Asian Hip Hop

Megan Lim En 31

An Examination of the Cubist La Pointe Courte: A Film in Influence in Chagall’s The History Praying Jew Charlie Miller 37 Jessy Lembke 35 Théodore Géricault on His Deathbed

Jin Charlie Kang 45

An Archive of Production: Tainted Objects, Modern Looking out from Petrus Spaces: Display of Material Culture in the Progressivist Joshua Plekkenpol 49 Encyclopedic Museum

Manuela Uribe Arango 51

Encountering a Church in a The 3-in-1 Buddha: A Church: Shape of Reliquary of Conversational Essay on St. Thomas Becket the Tripartite Union of the Buddha, the King, and the Ziqiao Wang 59 Bodhisattva

Diana Nway Htwe 65 5 Ye-Bhit Hong

Virtual

Scan to view works live.

InstallationsDuring high school, I was working on an assignment to nd artworks that made a reference to Gertrude Stein’s works. One of the rst images that popped up was Still Life with Funyun (2011) from Claudia Hart’s show When a Rose is Not a Rose (2011). I was entranced by the visual juxtaposition between what is real and fake and added the .jpeg le into a folder. Little did I know that ve years later, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), I would be in a class taught by Snow Yunxue Fu—one of Hart’s protegees. On the rst day of class, Snow showed the class artworks made by digital artists and Still Life with Funyun (2011) made a reappearance. A few months later, Hart commented on a Facebook post stating, “scans catch features but not the heart. So there are no beautiful realistic scans. Realism is a lie. Šis is the problem we have to overcome in simulations-land: no heart. Digital art tends to move between the poles of empty eye candy and grotesquerie... It’s important to think and to deconstruct and understand the meaning of our tools rather than passively consuming them.”

Tehamana (00:31) Audrea Wah BFA 2020

Gauguin, Paul. Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana Has Many Parents or Še Ancestors of Tehamana). 1893. Oil on jute canvas. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Y. Hong 6

Cameras, including but not limited to augmented and virtual The augmented-reality medium, conceptually reality technologies, are monoscopic while humans are hybridizes virtual space stereoscopic. However, it is easily mistaken that photography and non-physical virtual portrays objective reality with no subjectivity and does not reality with the physical present the world as the eye sees it, yet we accept it as a true objects of the real world. It is a brand new medium representation. In our minds, we do not experience space as and has been little used, homogeneously because we look through our screens, which and for the most part, with only rešect numbers of interlaced pixels. People now believe they little success in terms of can envision the world through accurate scientic scans which making sophisticated, rich, augmented experiences or is a belief that excludes the idea that our cultural imagination real/unreal hybrid objects. of the world changes historically and so, over time, this is rešected in the visual representations and objectications that we produce. Art is the objectication of our aesthetic experience and not necessarily a recording, index, or impression of it but a re-representation in an essential way. Realism is not how the world is naturally but is a distillation of the essence of reality.

At the Moulin Rouge (00:11) Bun Stout MFA 2020

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de. At the Moulin Rouge. 1892-1895. Oil on canvas. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

In no way is it intended to do away with imagination rather it provides viewers with an essence of reality in visual art and literary realism—in this sense all art is realist. I messaged Hart and she invited me to join her Virtual Installations class, a group project to produce e Romantic App, an augmented-reality application, using the Art Institute of Chicago’s Impressionist, Post Impressionists and entire nineteenth century painting and decorative arts collection as augmented trackables.œ Še objective goal of the class was to curate and intervene with the canonical works in collaboration with the long-dead creators and bring revitalized meaning to the people of the twenty-rst century.

Še Art World in the nineteenth century was in perpetual morphosis. As the world was imbued by scientic revelations and tabulations, Romantic artists sought to tell stories of mythology, 7 Y. Hong

Feminine Paradigm (01:27) Justine Guzman BFA 2021

West, Benjamin. Še Death of Procris. 1770, retouched 1803. Oil on panel. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

morality, and responsibility. Še burgeoning of the camera made  David Raskin, “Why Fauvist?” ARTHIS traditional academic paintings “obsolete,” as allegorical gures Adv Survey Modern/ were intended to represent abstract ideas, with actual facts Contemporary Art & becoming obscured by fantasy. Salons, in France, were no longer Architecture (class lecture, exclusive to the elite two percent, but had expanded into a public School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL spectacle for the masses. Napoleon III, in 1893, set up the Salon February 04, 2019). of the Refused to showcase rejected artists who did not conform to the values of academic standards. Še artists’ job evolved. Šeir task was to reveal a reality that could not be objectively captured by a camera.¢ However, it must be claried here that what we tend to reify is technology. To come to a conclusion that photography altered our perception of the world and that it changed our view of painting is a Deus Ex Machina.

Bathers Innity (01:15) Parinda Mai Waniwat MFA 2021

Cézanne, Paul. Še Bathers. 1899-1904. Oil on canvas. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.. Y. Hong 8

Culture was not suddenly struck by lightening! Še camera  Christopher Cutrone, ARTHIS Adorno on Culture obscura had been used as a tool to design paintings for centuries, Industry (class lecture, but it did not rešect a meaningful vision or an image of the School of the Art Institute world. One must therefore critically evaluate why it made sense of Chicago, Chicago, IL for humans to invent photography when they did, and why February 19, 2020). they then identied photographic images as a medium What  Clement Greenberg: changed about our subjectivity such that photographic images Modernist Painting [1965], would make sense to use, and the paradigm of capturing our reprinted in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison eds, imagination of the world in a way that painting no longer Modern Art and Modernism: could?ª Art ultimately is an interrogation process as criticism is A Critical Anthology built into the object to see if it is internally viable. As Clement (New York, NY: Harper & Greenberg argues, “the essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in Row 1982), 5. of Chicago, Chicago, IL February 19, the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the 2020). discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more rmly in its area of competence.”« Both Modernist and Contemporary traditions anchor themselves to the idea of precedent, and transforms when it gains authority from history. Greatness therefore lies in a trans-historic category of whatever happens to matter at any one moment.

e Event will Tell (00:05) Yshao Lin BFA 2020

Goya, Francisco José de y Lucien- tes. Nothing. Še Event Will Tell, plate 69 from Še Disasters of War. 1812/20 published 1863. Etching, burnished aquataint, lavis, drypoint, and burin on ivory wove paper with gilt edges. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Our class session began with in-depth discussions on readings curated on a weekly basis ranging from classics such as Walter Benjamin’s e Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) to Hito Steyerl’s In Defense of Poor Image (2009). In the context of our project, museum became a formalized liminal space where the audience could place and interact with a virtualized augmented reality within the real world. Due to the global pandemic, COVID-19, the world has been forced to go fully digital. Šere was a national stay-at-home order, university campuses had shut down with classes transitioning to zoom or asynchronous modules, and great uncertainty loomed in the air. 9 Y. Hong

Cottage (01:38) Max Reber BFA 2021

Sohlberg, Harald. Fisherman’s Cottage. 1906. Oil on canvas. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Še Virtual Installations cohort adapted the setting change with vigor as we transitioned to developing a meta-virtual installation utilizing images from the Art Institute of Chicago’s website as our AR trackables. Še following artists instigate the audience to rešect, investigate, and critique institutional pedagogy, the political climate, economic accessibility, and philosophy of the art that we consume.

She’s the Collector (00:23) Ye-Bhit Hong BAAH 2022

Daumier, Honoré Victorin. Še Print Collector. 1852-1868. Oil on cradled panel. Še Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

11 Emilija Worthington e Game of Art History: A Critical Inquiry into Digital Relevance

Squ are Enix, Just Cause 3 I was once told by my mom that I played the video game "Just Cause 3" as "Just Cause", while (December 1, 2015). my brother played "Just Cuz".¹ At once critically opposed, our playing styles dictated that  Alexander R. Galloway, while I played to overthrow the fascist regime on the ctional island of Medici and nish the Eugene Thacker, game, my brother played to jump out of airplanes and blow up homes, bridges, statues, etc. and McKenzie Wark. Excommunication: Three just because he could. Simultaneously exhibiting our fundamental di±erences, this example Inquiries in Media and demonstrates something much more telling of games on a larger scale. As hermeneutics Mediation (Chicago: The maintains a spotlight in digital media analysis, di±ering interpretations of the parameters of University of Chicago Press, something like a videogame could be transposed onto any activity within or on the fringe of 2014). the contemporary digital eld.² One of these activities, I argue, is art history which in its own  Alexander R. Galloway, specialized sense can be analyzed as a formulaic game, and treated as such in attempting to Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture place its present and predict its future in the ever-digitizing world. Reconceptualization of (Minneapolis: University of this kind requires an analysis of the denitions of all aspects involved, which will include a Minnesota Press, 2010), 1. denition of "game", "hermeneutics", "art history", and "global". Še denitions given will also touch upon the question of whether or not this reconceptualization makes a global art history  Jonne Arjoranta, “Game Definitions: a possible, and whether or not a global art history would ever truly be "global" in the imagined Wittgensteinian Approach.” way. As games take an all-encompassing place in the digital world, perhaps it is time for a eld Game Studies 14, no. 1 like art history to adopt similar interfaces and formulaic qualities. (August 14, 2014). http:// gamestudies.org/1401/ Denitions of a "game" are typically xed under relations to "play" determined by sociologists articles/arjoranta. Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois in the mid-20th century. Most succinctly summarized by  Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Alexander Galloway in his book Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, their denitions have Algorithmic Culture, 1. boiled down to conceptions of games as "an activity dened by rules in which players try to reach some sort of goal".³ Šis is a denition of a "game" that allows for a bit of leeway in what gets categorized as a game, and what does not. In most discussions of an essential denition, especially in the digital media realm, analyses take a hermeneutic approach.

Hermeneutics, in the way that I will use it, allows for this leeway-it denotes the concept of perpetually shifting one's own denitions because relativism dictates that there be an endless reconceptualization based on context.« Relative denitions of this kind diminish the need to categorize, and in e±ect makes it possible to blur the lines of what has previously been thought of as a game, and what is not. Games can thus be thought of in a more conceptual eld-like that of art history.

With a denition of "game", and that denition rmly placed in hermeneutics, art history can be molded into conceptual game mush. Games, although texts on them tend to avoid this word, err on a formulaic side in their rules and objectives. In a similar sense to that of games, art history has these rules and objectives-these objectives are subject to the will of the player no doubt (the art historian), but also subject to the wills of all other players (other art historians). Še "rules" of successful art history may be as follows: 1. You need to be able to read and write. 2. You need a subject (an object, an artist, an event, etc.) 3. You need an analysis. 4. Etc.

Moving to a more specic kind of game for an art history analysis, Galloway denes video games as "a cultural object, bound by history and materiality, consisting of an electronic computational device and a game simulated in software".µ Where art history ts more or E. Worthington 12

less into the rst half of Galloway's denition of video games, more and more, the eld of  Ibid, 2. art history is becoming digitized and subject to the digital world of messaging and  Brendan Keogh. A Play of databanks. Although the source material of art history is not necessarily contingent upon Bodies How We Perceive the digital (artists, the art itself ), the supporting code, so to speak, can largely be found Videogames (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018), 17. in the digital realm.  Galloway, Gaming: Essays on What I am more interested in, however, is Galloway's recalibration of an analysis of video Algorithmic Culture, 17. games to Huizinga and Caillois' rst denition of "game" directly in relation to "play". He  Ibid, 7. writes, "If photographs are images, and lms are moving images, then video games are actions... without the active participation of players and machines, video games exist only as static  Elkins, “Art History as a Global Discipline,” 22. computer code".¶ Similarly, Brendan Keogh writes on the phenomenological study of video games, dependent on the physical attributes of the activity.¸ Art history is not just a noun, it Larissa Hjorth. Games and has the character of action-the actions taken may include writing, reading, seeing, listening, Gaming: an Introduction to New Media (Oxford, NY: just doing art history, etc. Galloway goes on to describe the categories of gamic action: operator Berg Publishers, 2011). and machine, diegetic and nondiegetic.¹ Operator and machine action is fairly self-explanatory: the action the operator takes in playing, the action the machine takes in running the game. Diegetic and nondiegetic take a more conceptual side, where diegetic are the actions that move the narrative forward, and nondiegetic are all other actions like pausing, menus, etc.º

Šese four "gamic actions" can in one way or another be found in art history, although the "machine" is not a coded machine in the video game sense. It is important here to note that I am not interested in creating a binary of action in art history-as in gamic action, all actions are intertwined and dependent on each other. I am merely attempting to form a credible connection for a humorous reconceptualization. For example, the "operator" can be found in the art historian, the "machine" in the interfaces art historians come across (art, computers, other art historians, databanks). "Diegetic" in art history would be the narrative equivalent: previous art history texts and the direction an art historian may want to go. "Nondiegetic" may fall into formatting: Chicago style, footnotes, certain ways of writing on a subject, scholarly sources.

Šus there are inherent gamic action qualities in art history, however what might be the trickiest to create an equivalent of is the concept of an all-encompassing objective in art history. In all games, there is a goal-although in my introduction anecdote, I exhibited how di±erent people may treat that objective as primary or secondary to the actual playing of the game. In a similar way, art history has personal objectives for each art historian. One may do art history to shed light on previous unknown artists, or use art history to write critiques for exhibitions, or use art history to critique and poke at art history. Šere are a number of di±erent goals within the main objective, however, and I would posit that the main intention of art historians is to (and I intentionally beg the question here) do art history.

In reconceptualizing art history as a kind of action-based game, it becomes possible for anyone to "play" it, dependent on their ability to learn/maintain the "rules", and have access to necessary resources. With this, its globality seems a bit more attainable. On the subject of a global art history, James Elkins writes, "at the same time I don't mean that it would be bad if art history divided into local practices: in fact it should be a matter of concern if art history does not divide into local practices".¹» Šis is critical for reconceptualizing art history. Similarly, Larissa Hjorth believes that, "gaming, like play, is informed by various factors such as socioeconomic, political, techno-national, cultural and linguistic inšuences. Global gaming is characterized by divergent localities, communities and practices."¹¹ Perhaps the most fruitful reason for considering art history a game is to analyze it for its disseminative qualities-as a widely circulated and popular medium, this may be one of the most contemporarily relevant ways to reconceptualize a discipline. 13 E. Worthington

An endeavor like this presents considerable di¼culties in implementation and concept. First, video games are historically a kind of activity that denotes excess resources like time and money. Art history, in a similar way, frequently denotes the same thing, meaning that the reception of those that do art history outside of art circles is often critical. In returning to my discussion on dissemination, this issue is relevant but also presents a challenge to the world-should this issue be taken seriously, then perhaps resources will be circulated with information as inseparable entities. Furthermore, to adopt the kind of mindset attributed to games is to adopt an unfamiliar mentality for a large portion of the world (until everyone gets to play video games). Generally speaking, most people that are "good" at games have been playing them since childhood or are trained to do so. I would argue that art history is already like that-in order to be "good" or "successful", one is typically trained.

What I have attempted to do here is redene and reconceptualize art history as a "game" of sorts. In doing so as a video game more specically, art history is brought into the digital realm as a contemporarily relevant discipline. As digital media critique and analysis depends on hermeneutics, my argument similarly depends on the relativism of such, which in turn dictates its reception. In tracking the historical perception of a "game," and its current connotation among those like Alexander R. Galloway, I seek to extend the denition into disciplinary territories perhaps not previously considered. Art history, as an activity and a noun, I believe is best dened as an action like video games are. In making art history into an action, it is brought into the attainable physical realm as well as the digital realm— the inherent and necessary realms for a video game. My main concern is in the future of art history as a discipline which thinks itself as relying on its potential globality. Šis globality, however, is rather ambiguous in intention. I argue that a sense of globality could perhaps be remedied by suggestions from the likes of James Elkins, which toy with the idea of locally organized versions of art history. Local organization and community is already implemented in video games, but still holds the main goal of the video game as the focus, which could be how art history is reconceptualized in the digital world.

I conclude with the risks of such a reconceptualization, of which there are critical points on exclusivity, resources, and logic. Perhaps even more critically, in bringing up the reconsideration of art history as a game, I am more in line with arguing for its contemporary relevance, and its potential future as a digital enterprise. Is my concern in coming up with ways to reconceptualize art history-especially as a video game which as of now takes up a large portion of the digital realm and its interconnectedness through eSports and the like— just delaying art history's inevitable failure as a eld as the digital realm comes to dominate the informatic world? Yeon Ji Chung, The Bedroom in November 2019, 2019, Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in. 15 Aishan Zhang Collecting e World: e Heterogeneity of Content on Google Arts and Culture

“About the Google Cultural Google Arts and Culture (GAC, former name: Google Art Project) is a not for prot program Institute”, Google Cultural Institute, Accessed on under Google Cultural Institute, providing open-access online exhibition for users and sharing December 9, 8:15pm, 2019 free technical tools with cultural institutions across the globe.¹ Še name of GAC implies that https://www.google.com/ the platform contains a mixture of di±erent categories of culture-related subjects that is not culturalinstitute/about/ just art by denition of the period, style and location. According to Jason Brush, who worked partners/. in the user experience sector of the GAC project, the images of artworks used by GAC are  Brush, Jason, Interviewed by based on an image organizing software, Picasa, which is the predecessor of Google Photos.² Mediati, Nick. 2011. "Google's Šeoretically, this type of image belongs to the neutral medium, and carries no additional Art Project: The Tech Behind the Scenes." PC World artistic meanings and purposes. "Powered by a broad, connected suite of Google technologies, 29 (4): 16. Notes: Picasa Art project [Google Arts and Culture] is a Java-based Google App Engine Web application. is an image organizing Še site exists entirely on Google's infrastructure, and was built using Google APIs."³ Šis software Google acquired technology creates a space that can organize all information into one place. Še platform in 2004. In 2015,Google launched Google Photo, and presents museum collections in the same spatial and time order through digitalization, terminated its support to which is not a traditional practice of curatorial discipline. Picasa in 2016. More details can be found in Sabharwal, My essay shows that digital museum platforms serve as an addition to the study of art by Anil (February 12, 2016). introducing possibilities of new accessibility, visibility, functionality and diversity. Šis does "Moving on from Picasa". O€cial Google Picasa Blog. not, however, mean that GAC adopts a diverse practice of global art. Še framework of Google Google. Retrieved February Arts and Culture still follows the tradition of enlightenment education, but the internet based 4, 2017. platform enables access of information for the masses. Še technology is a medium, but at  Ibid. the same time a method of art history. In the light of what Arjun Appadurai suggested, the landscape of global culture as "ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, nancescapes and  Appadurai, Arjun. ideoscapes",¿ the hyper-communicative characteristic of internet allows multiple types of art to “Disjuncture and Di©erence in the Global Cultural exist inside the internet, therefore this model breaks di±erent presentation and valuation to the Economy.” Theory, Culture distinction between art and artifacts. However, the pictorial based digitalization cannot escape & Society 7, no. 2–3 (June from its western perspective, which comes from the medium itself. Even Šough GAC provides 1990): 295–310. a necessity to achieve conšation of all arts and culture, digital technology can only provide  Ibid. pp.295. open access, but it fails to resolve what Appadurai remarked, the main conundrum of the global culture, that is a "tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization."À  Malraux, André. Museum Without Walls. [1st ed. in the U.S.A.]. Garden City, N. Y.: In Museum Without Walls, André Malraux observed the departure of artworks and their original Doubleday, 1967. pp.148-160. context from some retrospective exhibitions in museums during 1960s, and he pointed out that function of the photography of artworks is to "reveal or develop the creative act," and "to make the history of art primarily a continuing succession of creations", which directly resulted in the intellectualization of art as ideas and the overarching boundaries of heritage beyond walls.¶ Four decades after the book's publication, Malraux's vision has become the reality of the museum practice. Photography enables not just the artwork's mobility, but also its context. Še walls of museums are falling down through ever expanding globalization, digitalization, and computerization. Beyond traditional walls of museums, GAC mixed ne art with cultural studies, and the range includes but is not limited to cuisine, fashion, architecture, and natural history. When the objects are physically shown, they are usually placed in their own context. Technically, mediums have their own specicities that are practically and conceptually di¼cult to be aligned with other mediums. In a museum, a painting will not be placed next to food A. Zhang 16

unless there is a contextual relationship between them. On Google Arts and Culture, although  Willis, Anne-Marie. 1990, Digitalization and The Living many objects are not well correlated with each other, they are still represented as works in a way Death of Photography in that contemporary museums do not. Hayward, Philip. Culture, Technology & Creativity in Še essential technology for placing multiple objects together is the digitization process. the Late Twentieth Century. According to Anne-Marie Willis, "Digitalization is a process which is cannibalizing and London: J. Libbey. pp.199. regurgitating photographic (and other) imagery, allowing the production of simulations of  Ibid., pp.200. simulations."Á When digitalization emphasizes on the formal presentation of the work, the  Sekula, Allan. "The Tra®c in art, design, and decorative objects are reduced to šat images that can be put on the same Photographs." Art Journal wall of the website. Willis believes that the representation of photography is "rested upon 41, no. 1 (1981): 15-25. the empiricist assumptions and understandings of its operation," and the digitalization doi:10.2307/776511. pp.15-25. removes the former, focusing on the latter. Šis idea is a supplementation to Alan Sekula's  Manovich, Lev. Principles argument that photography is hunted by bourgeois science and bourgeois art , and indicates of New Media in The the dominance of science over art in the process of digitalization. As such, photography has Language of New Media. binary identities -- the one symbolizing a neutral medium that is no di±erent from oil paint 1st MIT Press paperback edition. Cambridge, or marble, the other representing artistic possibilities, that is a piece of painting or sculpture. Massachusetts: MIT Press, In museums, both categories of photography exist. Digitalization belongs to the scientic 2002. pp.47. function of photography, which is often used as a major method for archives and preservation. Ibid. pp.89. In the language of media studies, this transformation from one material to another is called 'transcode', means "to translate it [content] into another format."œ» Šis concept elucidates the  “Homepage”,Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on change of content, "both on the level of content and form."œœ Digitalization takes the subject December 7, 3:04 PM, 2019, away from an ever changing environment to a motionless world that is composed of pixels. https://artsandculture. google.com/.  Steichen, Edward, Introduction by Edward Steichen in Steichen, Edward, Carl Sandburg, and Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). 1955. The Family of Man: The Greatest Photographic Exhibition of all Time— 503 Pictures from 68 Countries—. New York: Published for the Museum of Modern Art by the Maco Magazine Corp. pp.5.

Figure 1. Google Arts and Culture website, Homepage, Accessed on 2019, December 7, 3:04PM.

As shown in the current version of the home page (Fig. 1), it features content that can be consumed within ve minutes, such as A Bitesize History of Japanese Food, e Refugees Who Became Museum Guides, Zoom into Charles-FranÇois Daubigny, and A Pyramid With a Di‹erence.œ¢ Šis approach of collecting di±erent content from diverse cultures , has very much coincided with Edward Steichen's e Family of Man in 1955, an exhibition of "503 photographs from 68 countries" by "273 men and women" who are "famed and unknown amateurs and professionals."œª In the exhibition catalogue, Steichen expressed his view of photography, and the goal for this exhibition is to be "a mirror of the essential oneness of 17 A. Zhang

 Ibid.pp.4. mankind throughout the world."œ¿ In this  Barthes, Roland, 1957, La exhibition, cameras captured the most basic and grande famille des hommes intimate moments in their life, such as family (The Great Family of Man) gatherings, children playing, eating meals (Fig. in Mythologies, Paris: editions du seuil, pp.173-176. 2), and dancing. Še images of ordinary people from developed and developing countries  Sekula, Allan. "The Tra®c in Photographs." Art Journal represents a humanistic spirit. Roland Barthes 41, no. 1 (1981): 15-25. criticized this attempt as a "conventional doi:10.2307/776511. humanism."œµ Skula also was disgusted at Steichen's approach, commented that the use of  Sontag, Susan, 2008, America, Seen Through photographs in this exhibition is an "epitome Photographs, Darkly in On of American cold war liberalism."œ¶ Similarly, Photography, London; New Susan Sontag condemned the exhibition because York: Penguin. pp.33. it "denies the determining weight of history—of  Manovich, Lev. Principles genuine and historically embedded di±erences, of New Media in The injustices, and conšicts... universalizing human Language of New Media. 1st MIT Press paperback conditions into joy."¹Á edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, Likewise, the way GAC is organized shares the 2002. pp.47. notion of conšation, bringing all arts and culture into oneness. According to Media scholar Lev  Non-Western art served Figure 2. Še Family of Man, pg. 90, [6 photographs as ‘primitive’ objects, Manovich, "Cultural categories and concepts on page]. representing collectible are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or evidence for natural language, by new ones that derive from the computer's ontology, epistemology and pragmatics" science in comparison in human computer interfaces.¹Â After this process, all culture and arts are represented together to the advanced western civilization in pre- in the same medium though an upgraded PowerPoint style of presentation on GAC. On the modern society. More one hand, this stable form of aesthetic experience creates an equalness, that moves away from details can be found in bias and partiality in the angles or gazes from a privileged group to the others. Še Cli©ord, James (1988) standardized format of representation of all arts and culture on the website is vastly di±erent ‘On collecting art and culture’ in Cli©ord, James from the problematic display and valuation that singles out non-western arts and cultures in (1988) The predicament of many Western museums, in particular encyclopedia museums since the pre-modern period.¹Ã culture: twentieth century ethnography, literature and art. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, pp 215–251.

Figure 3. Google Arts and Culture website, Mediums, Accessed on 2019, December 8, 10:21AM. A. Zhang 18

Moreover, GAC also has a page (Fig. 3) that is dedicated to medium, which is one of 12 sub-  “Mediums”, Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on categories that GAC designed to lead website users to explore, which contains 198 mediums 2019, December 8, 10:21AM. of arts and culture.¢» In this section, some traditional art mediums are included, such as https://artsandculture. ink, watercolor painting, oil paint, oil pastels, tempera, photograph, etching, pencil, bronze, google.com/category/ ceramic, marble, and acrylic paint. Šere are also some unusual art materials, including wool, medium?tab=pop. hair, skin, pearl, olive, sapphire, and sand. Šis way of representation on GAC challenges  Belting, Hans, What Is a the conventional aesthetic value in relation to the materials. Although art materials have Symbolic form?, Florence undergone the renovation of mediums since the birth of modern art, and the shift has become and Baghdad, Renaissance Art and Arabic Science, The more radical after the ready-made concept was a¼rmed by Marcel Duchamp, there are a lot Belknap Press of Harvard of pieces in those categories that would now be University Press, 2011, pp.13- grouped into ne-art, and dened as artifact 26. or designed object by most of institutions, or  “The Art Institute of museum experts. For example, ceramic jars and Chicago organized by dishes are often conceived as decorative arts Color”, Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on 2019, in Western context. In most Asian countries, December 8, 10:21AM. such as China, ceramic wares are considered as one of the main categories of ne art. Since the denition of art and material vary from one place to another, a singular denition of ne art and decorative art does not t into global art history. By transforming all mediums into digital Figure 4. Pair of Dragon Pendants, Chinese, 4th- images, the biases between high art and artifacts 3rd century B.C. Še Art Institute of Chicago. are resolved.

On the other hand, the digitalization are impartial to non-pictorial art. According to Hans Belting, the concept of perspective is a Western principle that specically ts the pictorial-based history of Western civilization.¢¹ To be more specic, paintings since the Renaissance along with other works of art based on a šat surface have the privilege of being digitized. For example, in the collection section of Google Arts and Culture, artworks are divided and grouped by their popularity, color, time and subject. If we use Še Art Institute of Chicago's collection page on GAC platform, and select color, it provides 16 colors of choice. Pair of Dragon Pendants from China (Circa 4th-3rd century B.C) (Fig. 4), Portrait of Emperor Hadrian from Roman Empire (2nd century A.D.)(Fig.5), and Equestrian and Four Figures from Egypt (Circa. late 12th/15th century) (Fig.6) are among many artworks to be Figure 5. Portrait of Emperor Hadrian, Roman 2nd century A.D. Še Art Institute of Chicago. grouped together only because they are all photographed with black backgrounds.

In contrast, black and white photographs and oil paintings work well in digital transformation since they are pictorial based, and can be e±ortlessly recognizable through the lens of the camera. Še examples include Rembrandt's Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631) (Fig.7), Grant Wood's American Gothic (1930)(Fig.8), and Piet Mondrian's Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Grey (1921)(Fig.9).¢¢ Among them, only the works of Rembrandt and Wood have street view feature (Fig.10). Powered by Google Maps, this feature allows website users to view the work in the context of the museum. However, none of the other listed 19 A. Zhang

 Malraux, André. Notes, works have alternative images nor street Museum Without Walls. [1st ed. in the U.S.A.]. Garden view technology to provide full dimension City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. view, which is crucial for viewing sculptures, pp.148. especially when the scale, material and color are not represented as accurate as the real  Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, experience o±-cite. In Malraux's opinion, Remediation: the "depth" is still absent in photography of Understanding New Media. art.¢ª After forty years, digital technology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT including image recognition through articial Press, 1999, pp.19. intelligence still does not fully translate the  McLuhan, Marshall, materiality of the art. Še obstacles of ancient and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding Media: The and non-pictorial art in the process of Extensions of Man. First digitization reveal the failure for those objects MIT Press edition, 1994. Figure 6.Equestrian and Four Figures, late 12th/15th to accommodate digital technology. Še Cambridge, Mass.: MIT century, Mali, Še Art Institute of Chicago. absence of street view feature shows Press, 1994. the ignorance to the problems, which aggravate the inadaptability of non-pictorial art. Since many non-Western art is not based on the pictorial formats, they are more likely to be a±ected.

Homogenization of culture is happening through the process of digitalization. By removing the characteristic of the medium that rests inside of the object, Digitalization produces new medium that encapsulates western perspective. On GAC, all the listed and represented mediums are mediums inside of digital images. Še process is based on what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin described as the medium's capability to "remediate" one thing to another.¢¿ GAC is a powerful mediator between pictorial Figure 7. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Old Man culture and non-pictorial culture. As Marshall with a Gold Chain,1631, Še Art Institute of Chicago. McLuhan states, "Še medium is the message."¢µ Še way that art is displayed determines the accessibility and visibility of that object. Še problem of visibility is ignored by this medium of digital image. Photography and the internet platform both o±er šexible geographic location of the image, but it fails to o±er the šexible perspective of viewers when looking at artworks.

GAC works the best for pictorial based art and culture. Naturally, the art that ts in this format is in a better position to be read, interpreted and disseminated, becomes the ideal standard and representation of all arts and culture worldwide. For example, as an extension of GAC to mobile devices, the GAC application launched the Art Sele project in 2018. By using facial recognition technology, this feature in the application allows users to match their seles with the large amount of portraitures are in the GAC database that look like them. After being matched, they can share the result to social media platforms. Še product manager of GAC, Michelle Luo explained the purpose for this project:

Še Google Arts & Culture platform hosts millions of artifacts and pieces of art, ranging from prehistory to the contemporary, shared by museums across the world. But Še prospect of exploring all that art can be daunting. To make it easier, we dreamt up a fun A. Zhang 20

solution: connect people to art by way of a fundamental artistic pursuit, the search for the  Luo, Michelle, Exploring Art (Through Selfies) with self... or, in this case, the sele.¢¶ Google Arts & Culture, Arts and Culture, Outreach & Še Art Sele swept mainstream social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Initiatives, Google Blog, Twitter. As a marketing strategy to the website, this project was very successful. It was unique, Accessed on December 16 interactive and massive. According to Luo, "more than 30 millions of seles" were taken and , 2019 https://www.blog. google/outreach-initiatives/ matched with portraits by January, 2018.²Á Šis project introduced the GAC to the masses arts-culture/exploring-art- and prompted people to install the app on their mobiles. Šis project reveals that the pictorial through-selfies-google- reproduction of art are utilized as a part of marketing arts-culture/. materials. Although it is helpful in encouraging  Ibid. the study of art. Under the limited perspective of technology, all contents are selected and dened by  Benjamin,Walter and its ability to be matched and consumed. Michael W.Jennings 2010. "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological According to Walter Benjamin, there are two values Reproducibility [First in art: one is "cult value", and another is "exhibition Version]." in Grey Room 39 value".¢Â In the age of digital reproduction, "exhibition (39): 11-38. pp. 17 value shows its superiority to cult value".²Ã Even if  Ibid. pp. 20 the content is low exhibition value, this value will be produced through the digitalization. In our society,  Ibid. pp. 34 such value can be easily transformed as commercial  Belting, Hans. "Image, value. In Benjamin's opinion, "mass reproduction is Medium, Body: A New especially suited to the reproduction of the masses".ª» Approach to Iconology." Critical Inquiry 31, In the case of Še Art Sele, portraiture is used no. 2 (2005): 302-19. in service of mass consumption. Še reason for not doi:10.1086/430962.pp.317 Figure 8. Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, having a program that matches with the object or Še Art Institute of Chicago.  Google, Cultural Institute, landscape is simply because of the popularity of seles Accessed: 27-10-2019 on social media. In this marketing campaign, non-pictorial works are lagging behind, and 08:09 UTC, 23. https:// eventually can disappear in the sea of pictorial perceptive. www.google.com/ culturalinstitute/about/ According to Belting, "the global dissemination of visual media, however rooted they are in partners/. Western culture, will cause a worldwide spread of Western images or, even less so, of Western  Jennings, Justin. imagination".³» Še rise of the internet, personal computers, and mobile devices contributes to Globalizations and the the growing Western domination. From 17 Ancient World. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge partner organizations at its initiate period University Press, 2011. pp. in 2011 to 1,000 museums and cultural 132. institutions by 2016, the new technology used by Google culture institutes has o±ered an online cultural experience for the masses.³¹ Digitalization increased the mobility of the artistic content, and the computer interface o±ers accessibility of all art and culture. Nonetheless, this medium still speaks for a hierarchy of pictorial representation since the Renaissance. Overtime, the diverse practice of art can face a risk of being bundled and restricted by digital representation, lead to what Justin Jennings described as the collapse of the di±erence between cultures.³³ Not only the attempt in dening art and non-art Figure 9. Piet Mondrain, Lozenge Composition with are made in the process of re-making the Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Grey , 1921, Še Art Institute medium into pixels, there is also a notion of of Chicago. 21 A. Zhang

 Jameson, Fredric. 2015. "The Aesthetics of Singularity." New Left Review (92): 101.

Figure 10. Street View of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Old Man with a Gold Chain, Google Arts and Culture.

pictorializing all arts and cultures and a tendency to overlook rich aspects of art other than the image of it. Še crux of GAC, e Family of Man and many other international exhibitions comes from the singular representation of the globe, which is a perceptive of digital device.

Šrough the singular process of digitization of all arts, GAC levels culture integrates di±erent cultures in the same way.³¿ However, this selective angle can also be an invasion to the arts and culture from the non-pictorial based tradition, where the technology is considered a foreign perspective. As a platform that has a large number of users, GAC should have more awareness on the limitation of its content, and the danger to overlook those issues. Indeed, heterogenization can not be solved by a technology company alone. It has existed long before the digital technology was invented. Šerefore, my essay does not attempt to nd a solution to heterogenization. Instead, it aims to bring up the issue as a rešection of the current practice of digital institutions. Še distinctive monochromatic mediums that are presented and the hegemony of the content creates a vast contrast in pixellized world. While GAC is celebrating the globalization, its service has resulted in a homogenization of all arts and cultures. In the long term, art making will follow pictorial representation in pursuit of being be digitally accessible. In the future, the world may become a visual album without arts.

23 Cyrus Hung Hau Ng

Technology for Post-Anthropocenic Ideology

Concepts can be Še toolset built up in prior modules facilitates my exploration of how the material reality of understood as objects of the mind, the first execution of technology impacts the past, present, and future of the Anthropocene. I begin with ideology an idea to be explored and which creates cohesive bodies of concepts¹ by isolating them from an expansive context, matured before its execution determines the composition of assemblages, and manifests as technology—thereby providing in the physical world. the “how and why” of technological development. Technology is an interface, serving the  Elizabeth Grosz, “Chaos. role of mediator between subjective human experience and the external objective-spatial Cosmos, Territory, world; as a result, technology cognitively a±ects the perception of subjects. Šis notion Architecture.” In Chaos, would be neutral if not for the instrumentalisation of ideology by State apparatuses which Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, derive their power from hegemonic structures such as nationalism, imperialism, and 11. Columbia University colonialism. A product of this phenomenon is the current techno-industrial paradigm, Press, NEW YORK, 2008, whose inherently exploitative, alienating, and extractive character generates technology JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ which negatively mediates the relationship of its users with the physical world. Hegemonic stable/10.7312/gros14518.4. Accessed 28 Feb. 2020. ideologies maintain old social relations (understandings of the self, others, and nature) through technology, in turn preventing new technologies which may arise from alternate  Pauline von Bonsdor©, “Building and the Naturally paradigms of production from developing. Unplanned.” In The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, [...] edited by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, I decided to use one of the oldest, fundamental, most essential, and universal forms of Columbia University Press, technology for my case study: architecture. A primary technology all humans intimately New York, 2005, pp. 81. interact with, architecture is fundamentally a spatial territorialisation² whose primary JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/10.7312/ligh13502.9. use is human occupation. Architecture is sensual: it serves as the visual background and Accessed 28 Feb. 2020. context of urban life, a±ects the movement of sound and other types of vibration, interfaces haptic perception, and channels the šow of its inhabitants, facilitating or obstructing  Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State social interaction. As the substrate upon which human experience plays out, architecture Apparatuses.” In Lenin is inherently aesthetic—a bridge between pure utility and the seemingly hermetic realm of and Philosophy, and Other art. Just as art is a rešection of life, architecture rešects the wants and needs of an audience Essays, edited by Ben whose ideological subjecthood must be spatially and temporally contextualised. Buildings Brewster, 85–120. Monthly Review Press, 2001. are, among other things, a concrete articulation of a culture's relation to nature³. Šus, the modern architecture standardised in cities around the world serves as immanent criticism, symptomatic of the alienation of subjects from both socioeconomic conditions and the objective material world.

Consequently, the architecture I am analysing will be sourced from urban environments— after all, the city is the milieu of most globalised populations. Cities are sites of interpellation¿ and homogenisation, accumulating people and capital alike. Individuals populate urban environments as anonymous quantities—their reied existences are dened by the condensation, acceleration, and distillation of production, consumption, and its continual evolution. Še boundary between human and object blurs as commodities produce and are produced, varying only supercially within their categories. Capital—thus resource and political power—is focused and circulates in the metropolis, setting cultural and ideological precedents to be emulated by smaller satellite cities and towns. In our current moment, the city serves as a record of the modern techno-industrial paradigm, a curated C. Ng 24

collection of buildings rešecting an international formula uniform in intention, material,  Michelle Addington, “Contingent Behaviours.” and organisation. Še infrastructural composition and spatial arrangement, construction In Architectural Design: materials, and maintenance needs are determined by and rely on international standards Energies, 14. Vol. 79, no. of production, trade, and aesthetics. Manifesting an unchanged ideology, the universal 3, May 2009, doi:10.1002/ presence of such buildings in cities normalise and maintain outdated sensibilities rather ad.882. than represent cutting-edge technological possibilities.  Ibid., 14. One object of study is the James R. Šompson Center, a building in Chicago which houses  Design principles which are taken for granted by the Illinois state government o¼ces. A tall glass and steel building with a 17-story open International Style. atrium, the imposing structure is an image of the government’s grandeur, transparency, and rationality. Exemplifying modernist principles in its construction, structure, aesthetic,  J Scott Turner, “Beyond Biomimicry: What Termites atmospheric envelope, and consumptive footprint, the Šompson Center combines Can Tell Us about Realizing thermally conductive materials, superabundant scale, and an impermeable and unbreathable the Living Building.” In First air envelopeµ without regard to Chicago’s climate and geographical situation. In order to International Conference maintain a stable and comfortable climate in such an excessive amount of space, processes on Industrialized, Intelligent Construction (I3CON), 5. 14 of heating in the winter and cooling in the summer are overburdened and thereby consume May 2008. massive amounts of energy. Typical of 20th century applications of HVAC systems, the Šompson Center’s impermeable envelope is designed as a barrier between the exterior and interior in order to cultivate a homogenous, ideal interior environment.¶ Perhaps conceptions of the building as an impervious membrane is a principle derived from erroneous historical understandings of skin, assumed to indiscriminately protect interior from exterior instead of as a mediating system as we know it now. Še modern building’s delineating character can also be understood as a microcosmic model for cities, in which a similar conguration of interior and exterior occurs both economically and sociopolitically. Such an inšexible HVAC system is unable to adapt to the extreme and constantly šuctuating temperature of Chicago; the Šompson Center serves as an immanent critique of the rigidity and inability of the government (as well as urban society macrocosmically) to be attentive and e¼ciently respond to concrete conditions.

Še automated climate adjustments of the Šompson Center are inept at answering the needs of its inhabitants, producing only disproportionate waste—it is an architectural example of technology which serves as a barrier, rather than a mediator, failing to healthily integrate its users with the environment. Šis calls for a higher standard of sensitivity, design, and wisdom concerning materials, ultimately requiring designers to be better informed about global causation. From a Deleuzean perspective, the assemblage of cities must follow a rhizomatic paradigm in its development and production of architecture and infrastructure in order to be healthily integrated into the environment. In order to have cities which operate ethically and sustainably, architectural technology should serve as true mediators: listening and adapting its design and production through referencing the environment.

[...]

By contrast, the architectural achievements of Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce signicantly deviate from current norms of HVAC and building membrane non- permeability. As the lead architect, Pearce wanted his buildings to rešect two tenets of his philosophy of “tropical architecture”—rst, that design principles developed in the temperate northern hemisphereÁ are ill-suited to tropical climates like Zimbabwe’s; and second, that e±ective design should draw inspiration from local nature. While temperature regulation and constant airšow in conventional International Style buildings are accomplished actively through the resource-consumptive process of air conditioning and heating, Pearce’s buildings are designed so that similar e¼ciency is achieved passively through spatial organisation and informed material choice. For the Harare Eastgate 25 C. Ng

 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Centre, Pearce studied the architecture of termite mounds to devise alternate ventilation Guattari. “1730: Becoming- Intense, Becoming-Animal, and circulation methods; his becoming-termiteà aided the realisation that the principle Becoming-Imperceptible...'' of induced airšow could be utilised to ventilate interior spaces. While fresh, cool air was In A Thousand Plateaus: drawn in through openings placed at the bottom of the shopping center, rising hot air Capitalism and trapped in the high-thermal-capacity walls during the day would be released by the cold Schizophrenia, 232-309. nighttime temperature.¹» A further iteration of this system was realised in his design of the Continuum, 2004. undulating ceiling panels of Council House 2, which simultaneously collects and releases  Turner, “Beyond hot air from the building during the day. Biomimicry: What Termites Can Tell Us about Realizing Pearce’s innovations are powerful indicators of how the innate knowledge developed by the Living Building”, 5 non-human animals can inform contextually and materially appropriate designs. However, Ibid., 12 contemporary research of environmental scientist Scott Turner on termite architecture indicates that Pearce merely scratched the surface:

In most building designs, walls are erected as barriers to isolate spaces...Yet spaces, if they are to be occupied and used, cannot be isolated. Resolving this paradox is what forces building designs to include infrastructure—windows, fans, ducts, air conditioning, heating etc—all essentially to undo what the erection of the walls did in the rst place. In short, the paradox forces building design toward what we call the “building-as-machine” paradigm. Living systems...resolve the paradox in a di±erent way: by erecting walls that are not barriers but adaptive interfaces, where šuxes of matter and energy across the wall are not blocked but are managed by the wall itself.¹¹

Regardless of how informed Pearce was of the possibilities of termite architecture, his ideas point in the right direction for the usage of passive and structural technologies. Še further study and emulation of termite architecture, for example, can fundamentally change how buildings are designed and function, further encouraging intentionality and attentiveness to both physical and social contexts. Še principles of healthy mediation between users and the physical world may be abstracted from architecture and applied to technology in general, consequently changing how we interact with the earth and one another in radical ways. Charlie Kang, Tay, 2019, Oil on canvas, 31.5 x 40 in. 27 Barbie Kim

Dening “Western”: the indiscreet denition of “Western” within Art History Discipline

Elkins, James. 2010. Chinese “Western” has become a frequently mentioned issue within the art history discipline. Landscape Painting as Western Art History. Hong Globalization leads to stress the “Western” root of the discipline. Generalist art historian Kong; London: Hong Kong James Elkins argued that, “all possible narratives—indeed, any writing that appears to the University Press. 9. reader as art history—is Western”.¹ Art historian Hans Belting similarly argued that, “art  Belting, Hans. 2009. history...was a local game that worked only for Western art and only from the Renaissance "The Global Art World: onwards.”² Še inšuence of the term “Western” within the discipline is evident. While Audiences, Markets, and the discourses continue to initiate new theories and arguments, the term itself was rarely Museums."Hatje Cantz. 45. elaborated with specication. Geographical, historical, or sociopolitical context was often  Harris, Jonathan. 2006. Art neglected. “Western” is commonly being automatically assumed as a geographical indication History: The Key Concepts. of European or Euro-Americans. Šis assumption is reinforced in a contemporary setting London; New York: Routledge.336. where globalization has deeply impacted the art history discourse. Consequently, “Western” is being criticized by default. Še issues regarding generalization and lack of specication  “Art of Europe.” Wikipedia. of the term “Western” leads to a false fundamental information delivery and risk to cause Wikimedia Foundation, November 23, 2019. https:// sociopolitical controversies. Šis article will show the ambiguity of “Western”s’ denitions en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_ and the indiscreet uses of the term without any intellectual consideration, and willultimately of_Europe. argue that the term so frequently mentioned is essentially a term unable to be dened.  Belting, Hans. 2003. Art History After Modernism. Še incoherence of the term’s denition is the result of the varying responses made under Chicago: University of di±erent discourses. However, there is the risk of creating false cultural and historical Chicago Press. ix. assumptions, if the denition is not unied with historical context. Art historian Jonathan Harrison published a book which provides dictionary denitions of art historical terminology, Art History: e Key Concepts. In the book Harrison indicates the complex sociopolitical shift even within the general understanding of “Western,” which “has a history of change and struggle located within it - and competition between the United States and the Western European countries has characterized this history since 1776 as much as the decisive moment of collaboration.”³ Šerefore, the denition of the term “Western” drastically shifts even within the agreed geographical borders.

Še online encyclopedia Wikipedia dened Western Art, as “Še art of Europe, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe.”¿ Šis denition provided by Wikipedia holds no credibility as an academic citation, however is a great example of irresponsibility dening the term “Western” within art history that leads to general misunderstanding. Šis is an example of a wildly accessed encyclopedia portraying “Western” art as European art without any proper research or explanation. As a result, the denition from Wikipedia is creating a general assumption and degrading any discourse of the cultural and historical context, especially, in which the United States has engaged in post-World War II. Art historian Hans Belting considered that the United States led the way in cultural as well as in other matters post Second World War.µ If one takes texts by art historians such as Elkins, Harris, and Belting as reference, the term “Western” within art history is more commonly understood as “Euro-American” in a contemporary art historical setting. However, this common reference is also incoherent and šawed if engaging with a closer look. B. Kim 28

Harris pointed out that on the surface, “Western” seems to be a clear idea that represents  Harris, Jonathan. 2006. Art History: The Key Concepts. as a United States and Western European perspectives.”¶ Harris’s concept rešected the 337. geographical complexity when dening the term “Western.” Šis concept indicated the inconsistency and lack of a unied geographical idea when mentioning this. Harris’s concept  Belting, Hans. Art History After Modernism. 53. of “Western” is being limited to Western Europe rešected the main contradictions and issues being raised. Šis specication is inconsistent and neglected by the art historians  Ibid. 54. who considered “Western” as Euro-American. Belting pointed out in his book Art History  Ibid. 54. After Modernism that “the unity of Western Art, which has become uncertain, gained its  Manthorne, Katherine. common prole from the contrast to that of East European art.”Á As indicated, there is a "Remapping American neglection between the drastic distinction between Western-Europe and Eastern-Europe. Art." American Art 22, no. 3 Šerefore, not specifying or acknowledging this di±erence leads to creating assumption (2008). doi:10.1086/595811. and generalizing Europe. 112. Elkins, James. 2002. Še neglection of Eastern Europe can lead to delivering false information and reinforces the Stories of Art. New York: exclusivity. It is crucial to point out this neglecting of discourse regarding Eastern-European Routledge. 19. art, and the generalization of “Western” as Eurocentric further diminishes the cultural and national value of each country. Art historian Hans Belting indicated that, “for the greater part of the twentieth century, East and West (Europe) had no shared art history. Belting further elaborated that, “we usually ignore the degree to which we have imposed a Western view on the East by recognizing only Eastern traditions and by writing art history such as to exclude Eastern Europe.”à Šerefore, conducting a larger geographical or cultural discourse within art history, this assumption and generalization ultimately risk discarding sociopolitical history context.

Art history as a discipline has arrived at a moment of self-critical re-examination. Art historian Katherine Manthorne, in her article Remapping American Art, rešected that, “Še discipline of art history is in the process of reinventing itself to take mobility and the intersections with the global into better account.”¹» Manthorne’s studies showed the critical issues between globalization and nationalism. As a result to the fading nationalism and increased focus on globalization, an increasing number of art historians critiquing the “Western” of art history is evident. Elkins indicates how deeply “Western” the discipline of art history still remains. He stated that, “the overwhelming majority of art historians think in terms of major western periods and mega periods.”¹¹ Šis showed the rising awareness of creating a unied tendency within art historical studies which many labeled as “Western.” However this critique of “Western” can cause even more šawed information delivery due to the evident lack in specication of what is considered as “Western” in these discourses. If following Harris’s indication, what is being considered as “Western” requires a revisit.

Še issues of generalizing the term “Western” expand beyond art historical studies, it also initiates social-political, and anthropological controversies. Even when the discourse is limited to the discipline of art history’s idea of “Western”, the social-political and anthropological factors remain crucially associated. Še complex shifts of sociopolitical history will not allow this paper to simply close or conclude any questions on the issues. An examination of the historical shifts within the denition of “Western” is only provided for context. Although there is no agreed or concluded denition of “Western”, there is an evident general tendency of the rejection towards the term “Western” driven from decolonization. Seeking for inclusivity and diversity, a rejection of the dominate “Western” tendency is formed within the discipline and the entire art industry as globalization makes drastic impacts.

Although art historians have been critically attempting to point out the issues of ‘Western”, this self-rešection has many limitations. As Belting pointed out, “We are still so much involved in an internal view on Western art that we have little in looking at it from the 29 B. Kim

 Belting, Hans. Art History outside…”¹² It is important to acknowledge the unavoidable issues even this paper holds After Modernism. 169. through the examination of “Western.” Še approach and discourses is still within the larger  Ibid.vii. art historical discipline, which is being argued as showing the “Western” tendency. While the rooted “Western” inšuences will not be easily removed, the need for contextualizing the term “Western” remains. In fact, the impossibility of disregarding “Western” should emphasize the need to investigate the complex denitions of the term itself.

Belting stated that, “willingly or not, we are confronted with the dissolution of the universal signicant of western art and historiography.”¹³ It is fair to say that whatever one might dene as “Western,” it is a larger system which art historians within the art history discipline as a collective cannot avoid. Šerefore, by not addressing the issues in denitions and predispositions of “Western” is to risk the colonialism within the term to expand. In addition, without specication of what “Western” can easily lead to unnecessary sociopolitical conšicts within and beyond art history discipline. While it is agreed by art historians that art history is inšuenced by globalization shifting its approach, it will always be “Western” to an extent. Art history will always be in the process of breaking the “Western” predisposition. Yet it should not be blindly categorized as an issue but rather an observation. Accordingly, without specifying and contextualizing the term” Western” and its issues, the issues will not be improved or eventually solved. Še indiscreet denition of “Western” will lead to various consequences, hence for a more informed discourse the specicity is required.

31 Megan Lim En

e Politics of Asian Hip Hop

Hae-Kyung Um, “The Poetics I know this foreign, and if you fuck wit it, you keep it true of Resistance and the Politics of Crossing Borders: But if you don’t, we come in peace, love, we hope that you keep it you. Korean Hip-Hop and No Hook - Bohan Phoenix (feat. Še Higher Brothers) ‘Cultural Reterritorialisation”, Popular Music 32, no. 1 Hip hop is a musical genre that originated in African American and African diasporic (2013), 52 communities in inner-city New York in the 1970s. It is “quintessentially (an) African  Amy X Wang, "America American cultural form and diasporic expression, especially in the contexts of subcultural, Isn't Ready for Asian underground resistance against the dominant hegemony.”¹ Rappers. They're Taking Over Anyway", Yet, recently there has been a surge of music reporting on a phenomenon uno¼cially termed Rolling Stone (August 19, 2019), http://www. the “new wave of Asian hip hop.”² However, the inšux of Asian hip hop should not come as rollingstone.com/music/ a surprise to Western audiences. As Genius writes, “for others, it was an important step in an music-features/88rising- emerging movement that has been steadily gaining momentum over the past few years—enter joji-kris-wu-asian-rap- the Asian hip-hop wave.”³ Še roots of Asian hip hop run deep and have ties to the growth takeover-727420/. of multiculturalism and globalisation in the 1980s. Many countries in Asia have developed  Kevin Loo, “Inside The New thriving underground and “over ground” hip hop scenes and have adapted and hybridized the Wave of Asian Hip-Hop”, African American music genre with their domestic culture. Genius (June 13, 2017), genius.com/a/inside-the- new-wave-of-asian-hip-hop. Še power of American culture in the currents of globalisation is undeniable. It is almost inevitable that elements from the hegemonic culture will expand globally. Mitchell’s Global  Noriko Manabe, Noise makes the claim that although hip hop was a form that originated from African “Representing Japan: ‘National’ Style among American communities, it has become a global style. In particular, the rapid economic and Japanese Hip-Hop DJs”, social development of countries in Asia in the 1980s and 1990s opened up the countries to (Popular Music, vol. 32, no. 1, a greater šow of culture, information and technology. It is in this period of economic and 2013) pp. 35–50. political stability that youth culture became increasingly liberal, idealistic and consumerist.  Andrew Bennett, Cultures In many circumstances, this inšuence on popular culture is seen as a result of the of Popular Music, (Open westernisation of Asia, which can be attributed to many factors such as the alignment of University Press, 2001), 94. certain Asian countries (South Korea, Japan) with the West post-WWII. For example, it is often claimed that the introduction of hip hop into Japanese youth culture was due to the popularity of the 1983 American lm Wild Style.¿ Ultimately, it can be seen that the forces of globalisation, be it in terms of ushering in socio-economic stability or proliferating aspects of the hegemonic culture of the West, resulted in the transmission of hip hop into the youth culture of Asia.

When discussing the introduction of hip hop into Asia, a relevant concept is the idea of cultural reterritorialisation, where elements of popular culture, when produced in local contexts “can be inscribed with new meanings related to the particular local contexts within which such products are appropriated”.µ Taking this into consideration, we can see how the global inšuence of American culture produces these malleable cultural forms that are then brought into the local contexts of Asian countries and merged with local sensibilities to create a form of Asian hip hop. Še idea of hip hop undergoing cultural re-territorialisation also rejects Asian adaptation as being purely an imitation of hip hop, but instead a hybrid of various elements of hip hop culture and the local culture. Understanding this also allows us to see how hip hop has evolved as a global form that is able to draw attention to local specicities. M. En 32

“Hip hop scenes have rapidly developed from an adoption to an adaptation of US musical  Tony Mitchell, Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside forms and idioms”. When adapted by artists in other regions, there is “an increasing the USA (Wesleyan Univ. syncretism and incorporation of local linguistic and musical features.”¶ In examining the hip Press, 2001) hop music emerging from the region of Asia, we see how the artists adapt the hip hop form and customize it to include elements from their own domestic culture and personal identity.  Manabe, “Representing Japan”, 38. 1. Musical Qualities  Interview with DJ Krush, September 2008. One of the most direct forms of adaptation is the incorporation of local music instruments  Angel Lin, “Independent Hip in hip hop tracks. For example, Seo Taeji’s Hayeoga incorporates the traditional Korean Hop Artists in Hong Kong: instrument, Taepyeongso, in a solo performed by Kim Deok-su. Another example can be Cultural Capitalism, Youth seen in MC Sniper’s use of šute, sither and Buddhist wooden percussion in Buddha Baby. Subcultural Resistance, and Alternative Modes of In the DJ scene, Japanese DJ Krush furthers the use of instrumentation by simulating Cultural Production.” Mobile and Popular Culture: "Mobile heterophony in his tracks. With many Asian instruments, music is played heterophonically and Pop in Asia", vol. 1 “where each voice or instrument plays a variation of a basic melody; performers need not be (2006). in synchronization”.Á DJ Krush often employs this concept by overlapping musical samples on  Noriko Manabe. di±erent timelines, as seen in his track Parallel Distortion. In an interview, DJ Krush explains “Globalisation and that his decision to incorporate Japanese instruments and musical concepts came about from his Japanese Creativity: collaboration with American hip hop artists, “I didn’t want to imitate American hip-hoppers”. Adaptations of Japanese Language to Rap” By utilizing the postmodern quality of hip hop that allows for sampling, mixing and (Ethnomusicology, vol. 50, no. 1, 2006) pp. 1–36. hybridization of di±erent musical qualities, Asian hip hop artists found a way to incorporate distinct musical sounds and concepts from their own culture. Šis allowed artists to create a musical sound that deviated from American hip hop, and to assert an identity that would be meaningful to themselves and their domestic audience.

2. Language

Another unexpected challenge faced by Asian artists attempting to adapt the hip hop genre was the transposing of language into the genre of rap. Rap relies heavily on rhythm and rhyme scheme, which are not features inherent in many East Asian types of music or poetry. With many East Asian languages having complicated phonology, such as the 9 tones of Cantonese, many artists had initial di¼culties in constructing raps that were both meaningful and rhythmic.Ã

One main example is the adaptation of the Japanese language to the form of rap. When starting out, many hip hop artists had to rely on simplistic text repetition. One of the pioneering hip hop artists, K Dub Shine, was the rst to break Japanese syntax and recongure sentences to incorporate a rhyme scheme into his use of the Japanese language. Following that K Dub Shine opened up a world of opportunity, many artists followed suit, discovering other techniques such as using Sino-Japanese compounds, borrowed words (katakana) or English words.¹»

Šis process of discovery is mirrored in many other Asian countries, such as Hong Kong, where the pioneering hip hop artists experimented with the construction of language in order to develop a new vocabulary and grammar for the use of the national language in rap. Asian artists begin to deconstruct American conventions of hip hop and their own native language, creating a synthesis of the two forms.

Asian hip hop artists often have to contest with the long-held perception that Asian hip hop is merely an imitation of the West. However, it is evident that the adaptation of hip hop by Asian artists has been a conscious one: with continual attempts to redene the genre in accordance to their own musical sensibilities and national language. Šere is an added pressure on these Asian artists to negotiate the multiple consciousness that is held of them: 33 M. En

Um, Poetics, 58 the expectations of the West, the preferences of the domestic audience, an awareness of hip  Ethan Harfenist, hop trends globally and the artists’ own cultural identity and musical strengths. “Censorship Doesn't Keep Vietnam's Rappers from Hip hop in America is fundamentally political, emerging from a disenfranchised community. Speaking Their Piece” (Los With rising “Asian hip hop” labels like 88RISING, it can be easy to regard Asian hip hop Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 13 July 2015), www. simply as an aestheticisation of American hip hop. However, doing so would deny the way latimes.com/world/asia/ that hip hop has begun to function in the same manner in Asia—as an expression of youth la-fg-©-vietnam-hip-hop- culture and political sentiment. Asian hip hop artists wield the genre as a tool for political 20150712-story.html. commentary or activism, localizing the function of hip hop in its domestic context.  Hannah Beech, “A Rap Challenger to the Thai In countries like Korea and Japan, it has been observed that “hip hop embraces aesthetic and Military Junta” (The New ethical themes rather than political controversy”.¹¹ Še era of rapid economic development York Times, The New York and pragmatism, coupled together with the conservative values of East Asian societies, has Times, 15 Feb. 2019), www. nytimes.com/2019/02/15/ created excessive societal pressure on the younger generation. Hip hop is then embraced as world/asia/rap-video- an outlet for the articulation of these pressures and discontentment. Šis can be clearly seen thailand-liberate-p.html. in Seo Taiji’s Classroom Ideology, which features the lyrics:

Every morning at 7.30am we are forced into a little classroom… Enough already. We don’t need that kind of learning anymore.

Še song was hugely popular amongst youth and Taiji’s popularity is even credited with opening up discussion in Korea about non-traditional paths. Although Taiji raps from a personal perspective (he was a high school dropout), his story resonated and embodies the qualities of hip hop as an instrument of empowerment.

In other countries such as Vietnam and Šailand, hip hop is not just a tool for self-expression, but a subversive form of political expression. Vietnamese rapper Suboi’s ĈͥL references an instance where Vietnamese military police ransacked her home in the middle of the night. In a country where censorship is strongly enforced, hip hop evolves from the aggressive and direct manner it is known for in America to one that operates in subtext and idioms. In an interview, Suboi stated, “"I write everything [so people] can read between the lines, let's just say I keep it poetic”.¹² Hip hop has become an underground expression of discontent that can evade the iron st of the government.

Še mainstream appeal of hip hop also allows for youths to reclaim their political voice. In 2018, Šai rap group Rap Against Dictatorship released ࡒ࡚ࡧࡳࡎ࡟࠸ ࡰࡘ. ࡬ Še song’s lyrics challenge the military dictatorship that currently runs Šailand:

e country whose capital is turned into a killing eld Whose charter is written and erased by the army’s boots e country that points a gun at your throat Where you must choose to eat the truth or bullets

Še direct manner of the lyrics led to the government desperately attempting to ban the song. However, the music video quickly went viral, making it impossible for the government to control its proliferation. Še main rapper, Nutthapong Srimuong, hoped that the song would galvanize the population to assert their political voice amidst a political climate of crackdown and brutality.¹³ For hip hop artists in these countries, the hip hop genre has evolved beyond an export of American culture. It has become an integral tool not just for self-expression, but for the voice of a generation to be heard. Sam Oh, Chair II, 2018, Oil on canvas, 22 x 23 in. 35 Jessy Beth Lambke An Examination of the Cubist InŠuence in Chagall’s e Praying Jew

Marc Chagall, The Praying In Marc Chagall’s e Praying Jew , the stark color palette and careful balance in composition Jew, 1923 (one of two versions after a 1914 creates a representation of Hasidic Judaism that goes beyond just documentation to the composition), oil on canvas, creation of it as symbolic. Chagall most noticeably used a very limited color palette that strays 46 x 35 3/16 in., Chicago, very little from the gray scale, with heavy emphasis on black and white. Šere is only The Art Institute of Chicago. departure when it comes to the depiction of the gure, the man in Hasidic prayer clothes,  Margherita Andreotti, “The where light šesh and blue is used to emphasize the body. Še choice of color is one that is Joseph Winterbotham very predominate when considering this piece as it is drawn from the tallit and phylacteries Collection.” Art Institute of that the man wears, adopting “the white and black color scheme and geometric patterns Chicago Museum Studies 20, no. 2 (1994), 148. characterizing this ritual garb as the basis for a dazzling composition of highly abstracted shapes.” Še geometric shapes that are utilized along with the heavy use of black white  Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham create a very bold look as most areas are dened by value or color rather than a contour line. Collection.” Art Institute of Overall this leads to a very smooth, nished feel to the piece that is also emphasized by Chicago Museum Studies 20, the technique Chagall uses in the application of the paint itself since brushstrokes are not no. 2 (1994), 148. obviously visible.  Douglas W. Druick, Master Paintings in the Art Institute Šis rather smooth look leaves any texture in the piece left in how the colors are blended. of Chicago, (Chicago: Art While the palette is limited, it also explores the full value of the colors utilized. Šere’s not Institute of Chicago, 2013), stark color-blocking of pure shades but rather a utilizing of blending which creates a balance 121. between abstraction and realism. Šis can indicate the many inšuences on Chagall’s work that ultimately leads to it being very distinct from any possible classication. Chagall places the man who is the subject of the portrait amidst a background of abstracted geometric shapes, playing with proportion and rhythm to the a±ect that the man feels both a part of the background but distinct from it all at the same time. Še heavily abstracted background being in this black-and-white are all “bearing witness to his assimilation of early modernist movements (such as Cubism, Orphism, and Expressionism)”, Margherita Andreotti writes. e Praying Jew especially seems to visually associate with Cubism the most distinctly. Še shading of the model is very geometric and crisp, emphasizing the planes of the face in a way that is somewhere between the loose boundary between Proto-Cubism and full Cubism as there is still some elements of realistic depiction. Full abstraction of the model is not utilized, instead creating a tension between the almost simple background and the more complex rendering of the gure. Še choices Chagall makes in his execution are all deceptively simple as they may seem immediately referential to his subject, the portraits “striking patterns, abstract background, and slightly distorted features of the model demonstrated Chagall’s absorption of modern trend, especially Cubism.”

Še idea of merging strong but straightforward choices with Cubism can almost seem at odds as Cubism can often be marked by more greatly utilizing repetition than Chagall employs in this portrait. While Cubist inšuence seems to the most evident, it would greatly under-describe the piece by only associating it with the Cubist movement alone. Katharine Kuh describes Chagall’s work in a 1946 exhibition bulleting in a way that captures the many inšuences Chagall worked under and transformed: J. Lambke 36

Whether his medium is oil, water color, gouache or print, his idiom remains his own. He  Katherine Kuh, “Marc Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art is never a Cubist though he borrows at times the Cubists’ method of transparency and Institute of Chicago (1946), 90. simultaneity. Likewise he is not a Surrealist, though his art is psychological in its evocative combinations of unrelated objects. Perhaps, if we must label, Chagall is best dened as a  Katherine Kuh, “Marc  Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art Romanticist who has founded no school but none the less inšuence contemporary art. Institute of Chicago (1946), 90. While Chagall’s formal borrowing of Cubist forms is worthy of discussion as it is still relevant  Douglas W. Druick, Master to the reading of the work, it seems like only the beginning of comprehending Chagall’s formal Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, (Chicago: Art choices in regard to the content of the piece. Še idea of the “Cubists’ method of transparency Institute of Chicago, 2013), 121. and simultaneity” interacts with Chagall’s discussion of his feelings that “the traditions in which he had grown up were fast disappearing and that he needed to document them” as well  Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham as bringing this world into his modern day. Še abstracted gures that tie into this discussion Collection.” Art Institute of of Cubist techniques also allow for Chagall’s portrait to take on a life beyond documentation. Chicago Museum Studies 20, Šat by capturing this life that he found dying in a space that was no longer real and in a non- no. 2 (1994), 148. naturalist manner, the portrait of a Hasidic man praying became a representation of this  Katherine Kuh, “Marc Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art culture outside of space and time itself, creating “an icon or symbol for an entire world, the Institute of Chicago (1946), 90. Jewish world of Chagall’s youth” that could not die away in a modern world. In this way, Chagall’s utilization of Cubist forms, as well as color palette and composition, speak to the ideas that Kuh presents: that his formal choices are not just Chagall being inšuenced by whathe’s observed in art but taking these techniques and making them unique to him and his world.

In the conclusion of her writing, Kuh remarks, “But it is best to accept Chagall’s work without laborious probing’s. He tells us his paintings are to be looked at – not interpreted.” Chagall’s pulling from his background may be obvious in some cases and puzzling in others. In e Praying Jew where the content matter may seem straightforward the formal choices lend a deeper look into how the subject is personally interpreted by both the artist and then the audience. Šis once again leads to the question if art can really be subjectively viewed without interpretation if every decision has some weight and intention? 37 Charlie Miller

La Pointe Courte: A Film in History

Brown, Royal S. “Le Beau Upon the DVD release of Claude Chabrol’s rst two features, critic Royal S. Brown wrote Serge/Les Cousins.” Cineaste 37, no. 2 (Spring that his style “does not challenge the norms of standard narrative lmmaking in ways 2012): 54–56. Accessed April that we associate with the output of his New Wave colleagues such as Godard, Resnais, 15, 2020. Rivette, and even Rohmer.”¹ To modern audiences it may be seen as stylistically conservative  Le Beau Serge - Claude compared to his cohort, but at the time of release of his rst feature, Le beau Serge, it was Chabrol: NEW WAVE lauded by mainstream critics as well as the Cahiers du cinéma circle. François Tru±aut, upon CLASSICS Review & seeing the lm at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, remarked that “Technically the lm is as Analysis. Accessed April 15, masterful as if Chabrol had been directing for ten years, though this is his rst contact with 2020. a camera. Here is an unusual and courageous lm that will raise the level of French cinema  Ra©erty, Terrence. “Le Beau this year.”² In its apparent tameness, Terrence Ra±erty is quick to point out that Serge: Homecomings.” The Criterion Collection, Le beau Serge is a picture that can be imagined otherwise, as a far more conventional, and September 19, 2011. Accessed April 15, 2020. much less a±ecting, work. Somehow, the profound di±erences between the Tradition of Quality manner and Chabrol’s approach to his material seem especially striking from Sardent for Chabrol, much  this perspective: if the principles of the nouvelle vague could transform this rural drama like Sète for Varda, was a town to which he had fled so decisively, then they were capable of anything.³ during the Vichy occupation of France during WWII, and Set in the town of Sardent, we follow François (Jean-Claude Brialy) as he returns home to spent much of his boyhood recover from a serious illness.¿ Upon his arrival, a canted high-angle shot à la Hitchcock there. reveals an old friend, Serge (Gérard Blain), as he drunkenly stumbles across the town square  Weiler, A. H. “France's Angry with his father-in-law, Glomaud (Edmond Beauchamp) (g. 1). François is bothered when Young Men; ' Le Beau Serge' Serge doesn’t recognize him, and becomes preoccupied by how he became a lout and the Opens at the 55th Street.” village drunk. Še majority of the plot centers on François’ vision of taking Serge up as a The New York Times, August 3, 1959. Accessed April 15, pet-project to “x” into a well-adjusted young man. As the lm progresses, major tensions 2020. emerge as Serge and the townspeople push back on François’ disruptive homecoming, and in a latent homosexual tension between Serge and François. Šroughout this comes a  Ra©erty, Terrence. “Le Beau Serge: Homecomings.” romantic subplot between François and Marie (Bernadette Lafont), Serge’s sister-in-law. The Criterion Collection, Šeir burgeoning romance is condemned by her adoptive father, who secretly wants her for September 19, 2011. himself. Ultimately, the lm aims to explore the purpose, both psychological and social, Accessed April 15, 2020. of homecoming—as A.H. Weiler puts it, the lm is an “illustration of the idea that you can’t,  Ibid. or shouldn’t, go home again.”µ Filmed over the course of eight weeks with an inheritance from his rst wife, Chabrol’s rst turn as director made use of its small budget by employing  Harper, Dan. “Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge.” natural lighting, hiring his friends as collaborators, and lming on location.¶ Upon its Senses of Cinema, June 4, theatrical release, Chabrol’s spendthriftness and stylistic choices proved to be viable in both 2014. Accessed April 15, critical and commercial realms.Á Še French New Wave is oft-cited as beginning with this 2020. 1958 lm. Šough rst screened in ciné-clubs three years earlier—and using many of the same production techniques as Le beau Serge, Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte was made outside of the French lm industry, without licensing from the Ministry of Culture, which did not allow for the lm to be released theatrically. Compounding this, the lm was made during a decade ripe in bureaucracy and competing cinematic trends, where a lm like Varda’s could easily fall through the cracks. C. Miller 38

 Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson, and Je© Smith. Film Art: An Introduction. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2020. pp. 461. Accessed April 15, 2020.  Neupert, Richard John. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. pp. 60. Accessed April 15, 2020. Bénézet, Delphine. The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism. Wallflower Press, 2014. pp. 49. Accessed April 15, 2020.  Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema. pp. 45. Accessed April 15, 2020.  Ibid. pp. 45.  Ibid. pp. 3.  Ibid. pp. 8.

Figure 1. Shot from Le beau Serge (1958), revealing François’ drunken friend Serge.

La Pointe Courte came at a transition point in both French and larger European cinematic trends. Preceding the lm by three years, the Italian neorealist movement is widely considered to have ended in 1952 with the riots following the release of Vittorio de Sica’s Umberto D.à Much has been written of the similarities between La Pointe Courte and Italian neorealist cinema, particularly with respect to its “open story structure; location shooting; nonprofessional actors; anecdotal, slice of life scenes; and a sensitive portrayal of the poor shing village’s existence.”¹» Even more, the lm’s editor Alain Resnais found many points of connection between the lm and neorealist cinema, particularly from Luchino Visconti’s La terra trema (1948).¹¹ La Pointe Courte also preceded the New Wave by several years.¹² As will be investigated, several production techniques from the lm were elaborated upon and implemented in New Wave cinema.¹³ If we can picture La Pointe Courte as engulfed in a cyclonic and temporal relationship with both Italian neorealism and the New Wave—that is, they precede and succeed the lm in time and who found artistic and pragmatic niches to ll—then we can imagine “Tradition of Quality” cinema as a specter which hung over all of these movements in the 1950s. Šese lms were the dominant mode of cinematic production during the decade—state-sponsored a±airs which discouraged lmmakers from sensitive subjects and made use of large sets and large budgets. In many ways both a reinvention and continuation of classical cinema of the pre-World War Two era, “Tradition of Quality” was derided by the Cahiers du cinéma circle and came to be widely perceived as out of touch with cultural mores and artistic integrity. La Pointe Courte—which according to Varda, was made with a naïveté to wider cinematic trends—also sat within a moment in French cinema which was poised to reinvent itself, coming during a period of immense economic change within France and Europe as a whole.¹¿ Še French economy was rapidly rebuilding itself after World War Two, and the public was investing more in consumer goods like televisions and automobiles—both of which profoundly changed movie audiences and attendance.¹µ French economics is important in situating La Pointe Courte in history because of how bureaucracy a±ected an artist’s viability to become a director and the distribution of lm throughout 39 C. Miller

 Cardullo, Bert. “What Europe and the world. As stated earlier, since Varda worked outside industry pathways, she Is Neorealism?” In André Bazin and Italian was unable to distribute her lm theatrically and thus was denied the monetary capital that Neorealism. pp. 19. has always been tied to cinema. Šis essay is invested in exploring the ways in which these Accessed April 15, 2020. movements appear in the lm, how the lm operates as an encapsulation of wider European  Ibid. pp. 19. cinematic modes of production, and the e±ect of Varda working outside traditional models of cinema production within France. I will rst briešy discuss the impact of Italian neorealism  Fieschi, Jean-Andre, & Ollier, Claude. “A Secular upon Varda’s work before moving on to a discussion of “Tradition of Quality” cinema and its Grace: Agnès Varda.” From linkages to the French economy. Cahiers du cinéma, no. 165, April 1965, included in In André Bazin and Italian Neorealism, Bert Cardullo writes that the term neorealism was Agnès Varda: Interviews. rst applied to Luchino Visconti’s 1942 lm Ossessione and quickly became a widespread University Press of phenomena in Italian cinema.¹¶ He goes on to describe the points of connection between Mississippi, 2014. pp. 24. Accessed April 15, 2020. these lms, writing that  Ibid. pp. 24. Šese pictures reacted not only against the banality that had long been the dominant  Ibid. pp. 26. mode of Italian cinema, but also against prevailing socioeconomic conditions in Italy. With minimal resources, the neorealist lmmakers worked in real locations using local Ibid. pp. 26.  people as well as professional actors; they improvised their scripts, as need be, on site; and their lms conveyed a powerful sense of the plight of ordinary individuals oppressed by political circumstances beyond their control. Šus Italian neorealism was the rst postwar cinema to liberate lmmaking from the articial connes of the studio, and, by extension, from the Hollywood-originated studio system.¹Á

Šis draws many obvious comparisons to La Pointe Courte and Varda’s production techniques. First, Varda worked on location, using natural lighting and locals’ homes, which was a relatively uncommon practice in French cinema at the time. Additionally, she employed both professional and non-professional actors. Šis, like with neorealism, produced a sense of documentary. As Varda later said, “[Še lm] isn’t really a documentary, but the relationships are authentic: the parents really had a daughter and didn’t want her to get married.”¹Â As such, straddling the divide between ctive and documentary subjects, La Pointe Courte directly recalls the e±orts by the neorealists to rešect the ordinary citizens, those identities who were perhaps forgotten in lms created in European studios. As opposed to studio lms at the time, and like the neorealists, Varda wanted her lm to rešect the sociopolitical reality that many French citizens were living in. She says, “...as in the lm, the shermen were trying to get together and form a union to struggle against the unjust restrictions that had been imposed on them.”¹Ã Šis was precisely the goal of the neorealists, who wanted to use the mass media appeal of cinema to expose the injustices and di¼cult political reality they could see around them. Še lm’s visuals also recall the work of Italian neorealists. In the same interview, Varda remembers that “...Resnais kept saying to me while we were editing the lm, ‘Hey, that reminds me of La terra trema,’ or else, ‘Here’s a shot that reminds me of Chronique d’un amour.’”²» Her camera is mobile, constantly seeking what comes to be a delicate balance between documentary-like footage and shots which rešect the lmmaker’s background as a professional photographer. Neorealists too attempted to blend these two seemingly contradictory styles—one which aims for a sort of non-ction, the other for the realm of ction. Šese elements combine not to give the work the sense of being derivative of neorealism, but simply that of being heavily inšuenced by their works. Še validity in Varda’s claim that “Obviously [she] hadn’t seen Voyage in Italy” is perhaps challenged by this purported lineage between La Pointe Courte and the Italian neorealists.²¹ In order to further understand where to locate La Pointe Courte within French cinema of the 1950s, we must rst start at the beginning.

Since the Lumière brothers’ rst screenings of their short lms—like Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895)—cinema in France rapidly popularized and was expanded upon C. Miller 40

by the formation of two lm companies, Gaumont and Pathé Frères.²² Šese studios were  Abel, Richard. The Ciné Goes to Town: French instrumental in expanding the form and distribution of cinema throughout Europe and the Cinema, 1896-1914. world. As Emilie Bickerton writes, “France had the largest output of any nation in the Berkeley, CA: University world up to 1914, contributing 90 per cent of all lms distributed internationally.”²³ As the of California Press, 1998. French lm industry was out-competing other national cinemas year after year, they also Accessed April 15, 2020. began to shift the tides in cinematic form from comedic shorts and féeries to narrative  Bickerton, Emilie. A Short storytelling, as well as bureaucratize the production process by splitting the creation of a History of Cahiers Du lm into its constituent parts: the screenwriter, director, studio head, and the like.²¿ Cinéma. London: Verso, Bureaucracy likewise extended to advancement within the lm industry, and would 2011. Accessed April 15, 2020. require lm professionals to commit years of experience before being able to direct, which was still in place during the 1950s.²µ For a young artist, this made it practically impossible  Green, Pamela B., director. to direct lm projects and release the lm theatrically. Once an artist became viable to Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. direct, they would have to work with rigid constraints upon the form and content of their Be Natural Productions, lm, which became known as “Tradition of Quality” cinema. 2018. Amazon Video. Accessed April 15, 2020. “Tradition of Quality” is a term which began to be applied to the lms made after the creation  “Agnès Varda on LA of the Centre nationale du cinéma et l’image animée (CNC) in 1946, “an arm of the French POINTE COURTE.” The Ministry of Culture dedicated to maintaining a coherent national cinema strategy, to describe Criterion Channel. Accessed the kind of lmmaking that the French government wanted to promote in the postwar era.”²¶ April 15, 2020. As cited in Rodney Hill’s essay “Še New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques  Hill, Rodney. "The New Demy’s ‘Še Umbrellas of Cherbourg,’” Alan Williams writes that “‘Quality’ meant, rst of Wave Meets the Tradition all, that the lms could not be inferior to the best American products, either technically… of Quality: Jacques or materially.”²Á Of critical importance in the emergence of “Tradition of Quality” cinema Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"." Cinema was the deal signed between French and Italian governments which gave certain advantages Journal 48, no. 1 (2008): 27- to French-Italian co-productions. With a consistent nancial base and wider distribution 50. Accessed April 15, 2020. audience, lms began to be made with large-scale sets and classical narrative structure in  Ibid. pp. 30. the same vein as American lms of the same period. Over these lms loomed the threat of censorship by the CNC if they veered too much into sensitive economic events or the  Tru©aut, François. “A Certain Tendency of the political sphere, populated in the 1950s by the uncomfortable aftermath of World War Two, French Cinema.” In Cahiers the Cold War, and massive imperialist endeavors and decolonizations playing out in wars in Du Cinéma: The 1950s: Algeria and Indochina. As François Tru±aut writes, “One sees how competent the promoters Neo-Realism, Hollywood, of the ‘Tradition of Quality’ are in choosing only subjects that favour the misunderstandings New Wave. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, on which the whole system rests.”²Â Šat is, the CNC approved of lms that aligned with 1985. Accessed April 15, France’s national branding. Šroughout the 1950s the CNC did not actively censor so much 2020. as e±ectively create a programmatic self-censorship in directors and writers for the screen.  Foucault, Michel. Discipline Šis Cerebus of cinematic power operated in the Foucauldian sense of the apparatus, in that and Punish. New York: it was a “thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, Vintage Books, n.d. architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures… philosophical, Accessed April 15, 2020. moral and philanthropic propositions.”²Ã Indeed, the formation of a state-sponsored agency  Kuhn, Annette. Cinema, of cinematic production whose signifying body of work consisted of that which corresponded Censorship and Sexuality: with the a±ective sensitivity of the state resulted in a monoculture of lms unable to exist 1909-1925. London: beyond the realms of entertainment and propaganda. Following Annette Kuhn’s argument, Routledge, 1988. Accessed April 15, 2020. the “Tradition of Quality” lms o±ered a “determinism which [held] that lms are shaped by institutional practices and can be seen only in terms of their absences, of what has been  Hill, "The New Wave Meets actively denied expression in them.”³» Šis is all to say that the lms of this period, created the Tradition of Quality." pp. 30. roughly between 1946 and 1958, were rešective of the nationalist branding pursued by the French government, and projects would often be censored if they did not cohere to this. At the same time, this does not mean that “Tradition of Quality” lms were necessarily bad. “In all fairness,” Rodney Hill writes, “Richard Neupert and others have suggested that such a harsh assessment of the ‘Tradition of Quality’ overlooks a very real quality cinema to be found in that period, now somewhat neglected, of French lm history.”³¹ Še Cahiers du cinéma crowd would disagree, however. 41 C. Miller

 Tru©aut, “A Certain In his essay for Cahiers du cinéma titled “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” Tendency of the French Cinema,” in Cahiers Du François Tru±aut rails against “Tradition of Quality” lms and its screenwriters, particularly Cinéma: The 1950s. Jean Aurenche and Pierre Kost.³² Largely informing American ideas about what “Tradition of Quality” is, this essay has loomed large in lm criticism since and has been retroactively  Ibid. pp. 30. considered a major step towards auteur theory.³³ Šis opinion about “Tradition of Quality” is  Neupert, A History of the largely informed by Tru±aut’s reputation as a lmmaker and his inšuence during and after French New Wave Cinema. pp. xxi. his time at Cahiers. While his critique was perhaps harsh, his ideas of “Tradition of Quality” as being restrictive and out of touch with the culture were at least partially true. Tru±aut  Ibid. pp. 21. considered the creatives working under the banner of “Tradition of Quality” to be hacks,  Ibid. pp. 8. selling their work to an industry which did not value individuality or originality—overall, he saw these lms to be lacking originality. As stated earlier, the limitations that the CNC Ibid. pp. 9.  put on artists trying to work in the industry did not allow young creatives to create their  Ibid. pp. 10. own original work right away, which was frustrating to many young people.³¿ In the 1950s,  Ibid. pp. 8. Accessed April the youth were creating a distinction between themselves and previous generations. As 15, 2020. Richard Neupert writes in A History of the French New Wave Cinema,

“[Še] nouvelle vague was initially a blanket term for fundamental social changes that dened an entire post-World War II generation, fteen to thirty-ve years old, who saw themselves as culturally distinct from their parents’ generation. By the time of the rst New Wave movies, the term ‘nouvelle vague’ was already being applied to everything from juvenile attitudes to a style of living, including wearing black leather jackets and riding noisy motor scooters around Paris.”³µ

Šere was a clear e±ort on the part of the youth to distance themselves from their parents’ generation, or pre-World War Two generations generally, as well as a strong desire for independence. Šis was in part in reaction to what was seen as obtuseness and restriction, a rising left political consciousness that disapproved of the French government’s imperialistic endeavors, and a massive change to the French economy.

As France was trying to recover from the massive damages from the war, the French economy saw a “dramatic increase in all forms of consumer spending related to the individual and to the home and it was those forms of spending related to public or community activities which showed decreases.”³¶ Two inventions in particular began to grow in popularity which fundamentally altered how the French went to the cinema: televisions and the automobile. While there was a much lower average of people-per-car in France than in the United States (nine versus three in 1961), the increase in car ownership was important in how the French interacted with the cinema because it dramatically changed how they could move through space.³Á With the automobile the public now had an immense array of options for how they could spend their days—they could move around quickly and thus had more access to more activities. Consequently, movie houses su±ered a decline in ticket sales. Television, however, became a much bigger competitor for cinema audiences than any other consumer product. While it took much longer to catch on in France than the United States, television broadcasting companies dedicated much of their early programming to showing lms, which “directly cut into the perceived need or desire to go out to movie theaters in a way that other consumer distractions did not.”³Â Indeed, as Colin Crisp argues, “Šis move away from a population which expects to go out for its services and entertainment, and toward a population which expects services and entertainment to be delivered to the home... was one of the essential factors in the steadily growing pressure on cinema throughout this period to transform itself.”³Ã Another e±ect of bringing the cinema into the home was that movie theatre audiences grew younger and more elite, with ciné-clubs popping up around Paris, in which lms were privately screened and discussed. Šese ciné-clubs were largely populated by a more discerning audience than a typical movie house, who often were readers of lm journals like Esprit and Cahiers du cinéma. An interest in the movies was developing C. Miller 42

among the youth, whose opinions grew increasingly critical of the national cinema (for  Streich, Birgit. "Propaganda Business: The Roosevelt reasons stated previously), save for a few heroic exceptions: Jean-Pierre Melville (sometimes Administration and referred to as a “spiritual father” of the New Wave), Robert Bresson, and Jean Renoir. A Hollywood." Humboldt high interest in American lms—which were decidedly darker in their themes—also were Journal of Social Relations inšuential to young creatives who too wanted to make lms about wayward youth and 16, no. 1 (1990): 43-65. Accessed April 15, 2020. unsustainable romance. Hollywood, after all, is not explicitly run or funded by the United States government.¿» Šese combined factors and interests imbued a real sense of purpose to  Fieschi & Ollier, “A Secular create a new, independent cinema, divorced from older generations’ ideas that French movies Grace: Agnès Varda.” Included in Agnès Varda: necessarily had to rešect a specic idea of French culture. La Pointe Courte was championed Interviews. pp. 25. Accessed by one frequenter of Parisian ciné-clubs, André Bazin, who fought for the lm to be April 15, 2020. screened out-of-competition at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival and in ciné-clubs throughout the city.¿¹ Še lm, because it could not be screened theatrically, had to be embraced by community organizations like the ciné-clubs. Šis set up a paradigm in which Varda’s lm was inaccessible to the economy—which has been inextricably tied to the cinema since its inception—and thus arguably existed outside of any traditional capitalist structure. Varda was clearly aware of this: she produced her lm with a modest inheritance and was unable to get any funding from the state because she wasn’t a licensed director.

What conclusions can be drawn from the relationship between La Pointe Courte and these competing cinematic trends? First, we can establish that there was a direct lineage between Italian neorealism and the lm, whether intentional or not. Even if Agnès Varda was unaware of what was happening in Italy in the late 1940s and early 50s, some members of her crew—and certainly her editor Alain Resnais—knew about it. Še signicance of this is that national cinema cultures informed each other and did not exist in a vacuum. Second, we can see that the specter of “Tradition of Quality” lms that hung over the decade is pushed back upon in La Pointe Courte. By working in a left-of-center mode of production and addressing subjects like workers’ rights and the injustices of poverty, Varda shows a France which would not have been the subject of a typical studio lm. Lastly, the economic and consumer boom of the 1950s allowed for Varda’s lm to be discussed and championed by a specialized group of French youth interested in changing the state of cinema in the country, and by screening it in their ciné-clubs allowed for the lm to exist outside the traditional distributional methods employed by the Ministry of Culture, and as such arguably outside a capitalist framework. Šese factors combine to create a lm that is stunningly di±erent from the other lms of 1950s France, at once in debt to neorealism and rebellious against the powers-that-be.

Varda’s lm perhaps shows how disadvantageous it is to describe lm movements in such distinct and nite terms as “beginning” or “ending.” By classifying in these constricting ways we nd an inherent inclusion (that of a lm belonging to a certain movement) and exclusion—those lms which exist outside of a movement. La Pointe Courte was made in a time of immense creative activity and societal change in France where new and youthful ideas were combining with and replacing the old. A malstrom of activity, inšuence, and access to material in the form of ciné-clubs made a creative atmosphere in Paris that was not limited by temporal or geographic constrictions like something as denitive as a “movement.” La Pointe Courte lives as a fundamental outsider to formal conceptions of movements-as-such, and because of this has remained notoriously debated over. Še discourse about whether or not the lm was the rst lm of the New Wave is perhaps not the conversation that needs to be had. Perhaps, instead, we may use this lm as an example of the fact that theoretically a lm is composed of many ideas, movements, art pieces, images, philosophies—pieces from everywhere that are stitched together to create a whole. In the creation of an art object, it is perhaps duplicitous to say we do anything but glean.

Taylor Augustine, Guide, 2019, Oil on panel, 24 x 18 in. 45 Jin Charlie Kang

éodore Géricault on His Deathbed

His name varies in sources: Še oil on canvas painting done by the French artist Charles-Émile Callande de Champmartin Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin, Charles Emile (1797-1883), simply shows a deceased head, its eyes closed peacefully, nestled in white fabrics.¹ Callande de Champmartin Še painting is situated in the Art Institute of Chicago, next to Head of a Guillotined Man or Charles Champmartin. (1818 or 1819) which depicts (as one can guess from the title) a guillotined head. While sitting I will address him as in front of those two paintings, I had a conversation with Larissa Borteh, an instructor at the “Champmartin” from now on for the convenience. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She mentioned that the painting on the left, éodore Géricault on His Deathbed, is depicting the head corpse of the artist who painted the painting  The Art Institute of Chicago, on the right, Head of a Guillotined Man and that this beheaded painter, Šéodore Géricault Théodore Géricault on his Deathbed: Provenance (1791-1824) was obsessed with collecting and studying dead body parts. (Fig. 1) At the time, History (The Art Institute of I merely thought “what karma, that the head of an artist who is so infatuated in painting dead Chicago Database). limbs and heads is painted in the same manner.”  C. Simon Dickinson, Theodore GÉRICAULT : Further scavenging of the work’s attribution and provenance unraveled the mystery, conrming Portrait of a man, probably the gure in the painting to be Géricault from Géricault’s death mask. Nonetheless, it failed the engraver François to fully answer the most critical question of its proposition. Both the painting and the artist Godefroy, on his deathbed, are not evaluated exclusively, but are mentioned with a lack of interest throughout the art (Catalogue from Simon C. Dickinson LTD, London). historian’s previous conversation of Géricault. Art Historian Bruno Chenique, who discovered Géricault’s presence in the painting, argues that Champmartin’s imaginative painting of his  Ibid, 165. friend has become a caricature despite his intention. Šis statement disregards the culture of  The Art Institute of Chicago, death that Champmartin and his contemporaries, including Géricault, shared and undermined Théodore Géricault on his Champartin’s artistic capacity. Champmartin, who remained an intimate friend throughout Deathbed: Provenance History. Géricault’s life, utilized the strong stylization and purposeful ambiguity of éodore Géricault on Eitner. Géricault’s Raft of the His Deathbed to reveal Géricault through multiple facets. Medusa, 165. Conrming the Figure of the painting  The Art Institute of Chicago, GÉRICAULT, Théodore, Še painting’s jumbled history of attributions did resolve my pessimism but brought about a AFTER DEATH (An older label from object file in the new inquiry: Art Institute of Chicago). Art Institute of Chicago. In 1884, the painting was revealed to the public for Champmartin Sale.² Even though the label An Illustrated Guide to found with the painting, “Géricault (Š) / 69 – Téte d’homme sur son lit de more, provident the Collections of the Art de la coll. Champmartin.’”, seemingly conrmed its provenance, art historians such as Lorenz Institute of Chicago, 32. The Art Institute of Chicago, Eitner strongly defended Géricault’s attribution.³ She claimed that the compelling painting Dead man’s head (An object had no reason to be Champmartin’s, but its “energy of conception and vigour of execution is File from the AIC European strongly marked by the mind and hand of Géricault.”¿ In 1937, the Art Institute of Chicago Painting and Sculpture acquired the After Death (Study), thought to be made in 1818 or 1819 by Géricault – as part Department). of the A. A. Muger Collection from Paris J.Rosner, an agent for Richard Goetz.µ Še painting  Dickinson, Theodore was considered part of the artist’s study of decapitated heads and limbs in preparation for his GÉRICAULT : Portrait of a masterpiece, e Raft of Medusa¶. In 1978, Philip Grunchec doubted the attribution “on the man, probably the engraver François Godefroy, on his grounds that the drapery, in particular, bore no resemblance to other works” by Géricault.”Á deathbed. Grunchec’s suspicions were conrmed in 1985: the institution nally cleaned the painting and found a signature in red, “E. Champmartin”, in the upper left corner of the painting. (Fig. 4)  Ibid. Še painting became After Death, Study of a Severed Head by the lesser known contemporary of Géricault, Charles-Emile Champmartin in 1818 or 1819. In May 27, 2003, the chair of the J. Kang 46

European painting department and Gloria Groom, the curator in the institution, “noted that  Title changes made by the European Painting and the subject is not a ‘Severed Head’ and that the title needed more research and changed it to Sculpture department and After Death (Study).Ã Just a year ago, September 6, 2018, the current curator of the department, noted in the Art Institute Emerson Bowyer, changed the title and the date of the work: éodore Géricault on his of Chicago collection Deathbed, 1824 (the year Géricault died).¹» database., Email from Devon Lee Pyle-Vowles, the Collection Manger of the European Painting and Sculpture department.  Ibid. Ibid.  Eugène Delacroix, The Journal of Eugéne Delacroix (trans. Walter Pach. Grove Inc., 1961).

Figure 1. Charles-Émile Callande de Champmartin, éodore Géricault on His Deathbed, 1824. Oil on canvas, 17 15/16 x 21 7/8 in (45.6 x 55.6 cm). A. A. Muger Collection, Art Institute of Chicago.

During the meeting, Bowyer raised the possibility of the subject referenced from either a death mask of Géricault or the artist himself on the deathbed. From him, I acquired an excerpt of Géricault: Images of Life and Death, published in 2003, the year when Groom noted the painting’s subject and title.¹¹ In his book, Bruno Chenique describes his discovery of two bridgeworks of Champmartin to the painting: an oil sketch almost identical to the painting, and sketches of Géricault’s death mask. (Fig. 5) (Fig. 6) Še nished work of Champmartin di±ers from the death mask and may be closer to the dead body of Gericault (with his beard shaven to cast the death mask). However, the account of Champmartin’s witness to Géricault’s death mask, not the body itself, only exists in the journal of Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), both artists’ contemporary.¹² Šus, Chenique’s newly found evidence and Delacroix’s journal conrms the gure reference of the painting to be Géricault’s death mask but leads to a crucial question: what is the intention of the painting?

Existing Conversation of éodore Géricault on His Deathbed

Unfortunately, both Champmartin and his painting has not yet been reviewed individually, but only appeared in the catalogue or academic journal of Géricault. Before the painting was attributed to the correct artist, art historians such as Lorenz Eitner as well as the Art Institute 47 J. Kang

 The Art Institute of of Chicago introduced the work as part of Šéodore Géricault’s collection of dead limbs Chicago, An Illustrated Guide to the Collections of and corpses paintings to prepare for his masterpiece, e Raft of Medusa.¹³ After the correct the Art Institute of Chicago, attribution, the painting became Champmartin’s study of a “severed head.” In her academic 32. journal, art historian Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer argues that Géricault’s corpse paintings The Art Institute of are more than just preparation for his masterpiece. She insists that they are in fact, nished Chicago, A Label use by the Art Institute of Chicago products themselves that sympathetically observe the victims of France’s governmental turmoil before 1986. and the use of the guillotine.¹¿ She briešy mentions Champmartin’s painting as a product Dickinson, Theodore of his participation in Géricault’s “candlelit sessions with severed limbs.”¹µ Similarly, Linda GÉRICAULT : Portrait of a Nochlin, in her book e Body in Pieces: e Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity, briešy man, probably the engraver François Godefroy, on his observes Champmartin’s horizontal placement of the “severed head” in After Death, Head of deathbed. a Dead Man in order to make a comparative observation to Šéodore Gericault’s placement of severed heads in his paintings to expose the gore of decapitation.¹¶ Nonetheless, previous  Nina Athanassoglou- Kallmyer, Géricault’s conversations about éodore Géricault on His Deathbed are hardly accountable as scholars Severed Heads and Limbs: have only acknowledged the gure of the painting as a “severed head”, not as Champmartin’s The Politics and Aesthetics contemporary on the deathbed. of the Sca¤old (The Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 4, After presenting his discovery of two bridgeworks, Chenique briešy observes the painting. December 1992), 599-618. He notes that the stylization of the painting and “the suggestion of a shoulder or a nightshirt  Ibid, 614. visible between the pillow and the sheet,” are solely built from the artist’s imagination.¹Á He  Linda Nochlin, The states, “despite his [Champmartin’s intent], his over-dramatisation of the subject turned it Fragment as a Metaphor [the artist’s imagined portrait] into a kind of caricature.”¹Â While Chenique is aware of the of Modernity (Thames and Hudson Inc. 1995), 20-23. ambiguity and over-dramatization of the work, he argues that the e±ects of these qualities are not likely Champmartin’s intention of creating a commemorative scene of his friend on the  Bruno Chenique, Max deathbed. Šis argument underestimates Champmartin’s talent following the historical trend Hollein, Gregor Wedekind, Russell Stockman, and of overshadowing the artist due to his lesser fame. It also overlooks the intimate relationship David Wharry, Géricault: and culture both artists shared. Šrough particular style, Champmartin meticulously creates an Images of Life and Death ambivalent condition of his friend. Šis truly commemorates Šéodore Géricault as both an (Frankfurt : München: artist and a mortal being. Schirn Kunsthalle ; Hirmer, 2013), 140.  Ibid, 140. Sam Oh, Corduroy, 2019, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in. 49 Joshua Plekkenpol

An Archive of Production: Looking out from Petrus Christus' A Goldsmith in his Shop

Charles Sterling, Maryan Inside the goldsmith's shop is an assortment of wonder: bourgeois garments in the ring being W., Charles Talbot, Martha Wol©, Egbert Havenkamp- weighed on a balance, shelves of wrought objects and materials of the goldsmith's trade, Begeman, Jonathan counter supporting an elaborately entwined girdle, weights and a box to store them in, coins, Brown, John Hayes, The and a mirror rešecting a view outside of the picture space-two fashionably dressed strollers Robert Lehman Collection supporting a falcon and a row of houses. It is indicated that the counter is a shopfront through II: Fifteen to Eighteenth Century Paintings: France, the mirror and understood that it belongs to a goldsmith by the nature of the goods inside Central Europe, The of the space. Netherlands, Spain and Great Britain, (New York: Šere is an peculiarity: why would Christus, as noted in the Robert Lehman Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue, depict a goldsmith without any tools of the craft?¹ Še iconography begins to unfold in association with Princeton University Press, 1998), 65. with the popular history of the work: recognition of the subject as St. Eligius, patron saint of goldsmiths. After the removal of the subject's halo, the single attribute characterizing him ² Ibid, 65. as a saint² characterization was of the work as a vocational altarpiece; the possible portrait of ³ Zs P Pach, “The Shifting of Willem van Fluten, a Bruges goldsmith. Še discontinuities in the understanding of this work International Trade Routes call for further investigation of Christus' imagery. Contextualizing A Goldsmith within Central in the 15th-17th Centuries”, Europe at the mid fteenth century develops the work as an archival object-elucidating both Acta Historica Acedemiae Scientiarum Hungarica, Vol. political and economic relations. 14, No. 3/4. (Institute of History, Research Centre for Še organization of the painting is akin to a Wunderkammer: each crevice stores a curiosity the Humanties, Hungarian that begs to be explored. I am arguing to examine the signicance of this work from the inside Academy of Sciences, 1968), out. Following the subjects and objects within this painting, from their position within the 292 work outwards, Petrus Christus' 1449 A Goldsmith in his Shop is placed at the center of an ¿ Ibid, 292. evolving speculation of Flemish history. Še fteenth century as a point of change in the economic history of Europe has been primarily understood through the change of international trade routes. Šis thesis obfuscates the internal growth of Europe's economy. Which, Zs. P. Pach notes, "hastened a change of the character and of the commodity structure of international trade," a transformation, "that led, in turn, to the shifting, and the change of direction, of the routes of international trade."³ And yet these changes, primarily occurring in Western Europe, created and economic gap between Western and Eastern Europe, which was not taking part in the so-called global "discovers," in colonization, and in long-distance maritime trade. Eastern Europe would consequently fall behind in the progress to the capitalist development of Western Europe. Pach notes that these projects were capable because of the "internal growth of European economy, the unfolding of commodity production and division of labor."¿ Reading Petrus Christus' A Goldsmith as an archive, we observe the changing social relations, containing the rudiments of the development of a capitalist global economy.

Frederik Buylaert, Wim De Clercq and Jan Dumolyn have brought attention to construction of value in saying "the meaning of objects is fused with social relations that make those objects circulate." Guilds" construction of the terms by which their labor would be appreciated, or collect capital, both economic and symbolic, consequently challenged changing labor and trade relations occurring outside of the region. "In a market-oriented society that was late medieval Flanders, all elements that historians often associate with noble identit ... were commodied J. Plekkenpol 50

objects in the sense that they were purchasable by the economic elite of that society. However, µ Boylaert, Clercq, Dumolyn, “Sumptuary Legislation, much suggests that seigniories were 'enclaved commodities,' objects which it was deemed Material Culture, and improper to subject frequently to commodity exchange."À By constructing the appreciation of the Semiotics of ‘Vivre their labor, the Bruges goldsmith guild created a fetish for specic objects by accelerating Noblement’ in the country their role within passing of property and power. Šis shared motivation between Philip of Flanders (14th-16th centuries)”, pp. 416. the Good and the Bruges goldsmith's guild provided a symbiotic solution to each of their respective agendas. ¶ Velden, “Defrocking St. Eloy: Petrus Christus’s ‘Vocational To expand this further, an analysis of the restrictions guilds placed on changing interregional Portrait of a Goldsmith’”, 258. trade that stimulated the capitalist industries of Western Europe is due. Še upper left portion of the painting consists of two shelves, each containing elements of a goldsmith's trade. I would Á Ibid, 257. like to draw attention to the curious vessel on the bottom shelf: a murky, grim vessel for the Eucharist. Še vessel is veiled by the shade of the green cloak dividing the page insofar that it covers the leftmost portion of the vessel. Še visual signicance of this vertical line disorients the vessel's aesthetic value. Šis vessel does not arrive in any scholarly analysis, to my knowledge, in support of the previously acknowledged saintliness, or later, with an ulterior defense of secularism. A third option could relate the vessel to an experience of collectivity-a practice that could be symbolized through holy elements, through experience in public and private spaces outside of the church. Christus perhaps included the vessel to pay homage to the space in which he and van Vlueten would have likely known each other.Ñ Šis point lacks scholarly support, but I believe that it is less likely to function as an object of the goldsmith's trade-why would Christus include an object crafted with normalcy in a work displaying the artistry and craftsmanship of van Vlueten?

Šus far this essay has examined the marriage of Mary and King James II and the personal gift prepared by Philip the Good as conditions for the production of Chistus' A Goldsmith in his Shop. I would now like to turn and examine the signicance of preparing Philip the Good's personal gift, by way of Willem van Vlueten's commemoration of the event in the commissioning of this painting. As it has been noted, Christus' painting aims to serve the interests of the goldsmith. It has also been noted that obeying the rites of marriage, particularly one of noble character, was in the political interest of Philip the Good. And further noted that the synthesis of the goldsmith guild's interests, understood through A Goldsmith, and the interests of the duke, were among the forces that regulated the terms of interregional trade in Central Europe. Šrough this we are able to access the gravity of the gift as a case study for the restrictions guilds placed on terms of trade. Van der Velden notes the fact that van Vlueten would go on to achieve a position on the Dukes payroll, following this commission, as well as the "public interest that this single event must have aroused."Á Še achievement of a career long professional relationship with the duke would undoubtedly e±ect the Bruges goldsmith's guild positively.

I believe that the characters rešected in the mirror contribute to the speculation that has surrounded this painting throughout history. Še thin necklace that the man wears resembles the thin halo previously accompanying the main character. It has been noted that van Vlueten's commission by Philip the Good would have gained public interest, and I believe that the Queen of Scotland visiting a Bruges goldsmith's shop would have also gained attention by those passing by-as I have argued that the goldsmith was certainly startled. Which leads me to question, why are these characters so unamused? I have insisted on looking outward from this painting, reading it as an archive of production, in attempt to discover new meanings within the work. All the while, wonder exists from outside of the cabinet looking in. 51 Manuela Uribe Arango

Tainted Objects, Modern Spaces: Display of Material Culture in the Progressivist Encyclopedic Museum

All are terms that I have I. Introduction come across in varied discourse as labels for the civic museum – large-scale, In an ever more politically sensitized, conscious, reformative public sphere, the public, government-funded Encyclopedic museum is at risk of becoming obsolete. We form part of a sociopolitical institutions. climate where skepticism reigns supreme and questioning of authority is expected and  Michael Baxandall, “Exhibiting even encouraged. Identity politics are at the centerfold of public condemnations of acts Intention: Some Preconditions of racism, sexism, segregation and identity-based exclusion, and the colonially-inscribed of the Visual Display of history of the Western public museum makes it a natural target for such criticism. For Culturally Purposeful Objects,” these Encyclopedic, comprehensive, ethnographic institutions¹—those relics of centuries- in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of old colonial interests and Eurocentric principles—relevance in today’s world means Museum Display, ed. Ivan accommodating for a new set of values centered around cultural sensitivity and inclusivity, Karp and Steven D. Lavine while contending with the colonial vestiges of their past. (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 33-41. As one such museum, the Art Institute of Chicago houses thousands of objects from a  “Land Acknowledgment,” myriad of cultures, periods, and contexts. Including that which is deemed ‘art’ within the The Art Institute of Chicago, canon of Western art history, but also material culture or “culturally purposeful objects”² accessed February 9, functioning decidedly outside of this schema, the Art Institute necessarily becomes a site of 2020, https://www.artic. edu/about-us/land- tension, with its traditionally Eurocentric framework competing against the desire to acknowledgment. modernize its infrastructure, both in architecture and public image. Already, the museum has attempted ingratiation with local indigenous communities through a Land  Steve Johnson, “Art Institute Postpones Major Native Acknowledgement ceremony, held late last year in commemoration of the Native American American Pottery Exhibit tribes forcibly removed from the territory that it now sits on.³ Not incidentally, this was over Cultural Insensitivity closely preceded by the indenite postponement of an upcoming exhibition of Mimbres Concerns at the Last pottery only months before it was slated to open in May 2019, a widely publicized incident Minute,” Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2019, https://www. that foregrounded the lack of contemporary indigenous input in the show’s formulation chicagotribune.com/ and, more problematically, the museum’s failure to realize that a majority of the objects to entertainment/museums/ct- be displayed were actually grave goods looted from Mimbres burial sites. Amidst public ent-art-institute-postpones- statements and quasi-apologies, the Art Institute acknowledged wrongdoings and native-american-pottery- exhibition-0402-story.html. expressed a desire to rectify these mistakes, with director James Rondeau declaring that “our message is positive […] I think this is: We’re trying our best and we need to do better.”¿

A less blatant but equally convincing e±ort at ideological reformulation is the update and redesign of several Art Institute galleries in recent years. Še most notable of these are the reinstallation of the galleries of Indian, Southeast Asian and Himalayan Art and African Art within the last two years and, the focus of this thesis, a 2011 redesign of Indian Art of the Americas (Fig. 1). It is signicant that all of these exhibits comprise collections of non-Western artifacts and cultural property, in many cases pre-colonial, the accession and existence of which has been central to the critique of museums in recent decades; beyond pragmatic, operational and nancial terms, these spatial overhauls can be read as a symbolic modernization of an institution seeking to retain notability by dissociating its holdings from their historical associations with Western imperialist domination. But the message seems to be nevertheless embedded in the exhibits themselves, and their M. Arango 52

anomalous state in the repertoire of the art museum—concerning as they do material culture  Victoria Newhouse, Art and the Power of Placement that is topographically and often temporally removed from the Western articulation of art (New York: The Monacelli history—is not diminished by white-pedestalled and sleek-surfaced attempts to the contrary. Press, 2005), 8-42. Rather, the perpetual existence of this cultural property within the Art Institute’s colonially- conscripted walls betrays its very Eurocentric framework.

Figure 1. Layout and design, Arts of the Americas at Še Art Institute of Chicago (Photograph by Manuela Uribe, 2019).

In comparison to its more recently renovated counterparts, Indian Art of the Americas is relatively dated in design: it was last reinstalled almost a decade ago at the hands of then- curator Richard Townsend, who has since been replaced with Andrew Hamilton. But, considering the previously mentioned a±airs between the museum and Native American groups, not to mention the continual relevance granted by the geographic, historical and cultural proximity between Amerindian cultures and this locale of their display, the space certainly merits revisiting. In the following discussion I will argue that, as it presently stands, Indian Art of the Americas is emblematic of the contested state of the Encyclopedic institution entering contemporaneity: a push-and-pull between the forward-thinking imperative to take on a politically-aware and moralistic stance and the traditionalist desire to preserve a Eurocentric reputation and stature. Šis is most apparent in an exhibit that, in avoiding the trope of ethnologic display, perpetuates the historical ‘othering’ of the represented indigenous cultures through construction of a homogenized ‘indigeneity’ that belies very important contextualization of the objects and their relationship to the museum.

[…]

It becomes clear that I cannot take on display in Indian Art of the Americas without referencing its very Eurocentric connes within a very specic type of institution. I will thereby briešy address the culturally-specic history of the comprehensive museum model and, more importantly, the ideological status that this very prestigious lineage has conferred upon the institution. In Art and the Power of Placement, Victoria Newhouse traces a history of Western models of display that sees early attempts rst observable in Roman antiquity, formalized in the Italian studiolo and northern salon archetypes, and culminating in the late nineteenth century public museum.µ Anthony Shelton adds that these “former 53 M. Arango

 Shelton, “Museums and colonial museums” were driven by a motivation “to visibly materialize the totality of a Museum Displays,” 481-482. domain over which governmental power strove to assert mastery.” Šrough its instantiation  Carol Duncan, Civilizing of a “presumed universal human disposition towards collecting, the enjoyment of beauty rituals: Inside Public Art or rarity, and/or curiosity for knowledge,” the museum assumed a legitimizing authority in Museums (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 10. testifying to the superior nature and intellect of human beings.¶ An authority in the eld of critical museology, Carol Duncan further identies the institution’s emulation of monumental  Shelton, “Museums and Museum Displays,” 484, ceremonial structures both literally through architectural form and metaphorically through and Carol Duncan, “Art evocation of a ritual space that is “carefully marked o± and culturally designated as reserved Museums and the Ritual of for a special quality of attention.”Á Shelton characterizes the museum as a tomb or mausoleum Citizenship,” in Exhibiting permeated by an air of melancholia; Duncan, as an awe-inducing secularized temple or Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ceremonial monument. In any case, the museum’s inherited legacy, and its authoritative ed. Ivan Karp and Steven role as mediator between object and viewer, signicantly prescribe a certain way to regard D. Lavine (Smithsonian and apprehend, a predetermined “way of seeing”.à Tied to this emblematic performance of Institution, 1991), 91. the museum as it plays out in the executed display are three issues into which I divide my  Svetlana Alpers, “The argumentation: visual regard, agency in viewership, and honesty and transparency. Museum as a Way of Seeing,” in Exhibiting Centuries of human proclivity towards collection and classication of objects naturally Cultures: The Poetics and fomented a mode of regard rooted in visual appreciation that was further institutionalized Politics of Museum Display, in the Western art museum. Duncan a¼rms that, with the eighteenth-century shift from ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, (Smithsonian princely holdings to ostensibly democratic, public collections, objects in museums underwent Institution, 1991), 25-32. a “reinvestment of meaning” through the discipline of art history.¹» Šis categorical development has subjected the cultural property traditionally housed in the museum to the  Duncan, “Art Museums,” 93-95. same visual attentiveness applied to other art objects. Svetlana Alpers’ aptly titled “Še Museum as a Way of Seeing” contends that display of material culture ultimately seeks to Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” 27. displace the object and recontextualize it to t our denition of ‘art’,¹¹ conducive to a valuation of the object on aesthetic terms and consequent confusion of visual interest with  Ibid., 30. cultural or historical value.¹² “Our way of seeing can open itself up to di±erent things, but it  Ibid. remains inescapably ours,” says Alpers, communicating the inherent subjectivity of the gaze.¹³ At the same time, the visual attention deployed in the museum is by no means immediately  Stephen Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” reprehensible or unjustiable; Stephen Greenblatt argues for the potentialities of a gaze that, in Exhibiting Cultures: The in admiring the genius or “ingenia” of an object, is neither imperialist nor radical and is in Poetics and Politics of fact one of the “distinctive achievements of our culture.”¹¿ Šis aligns with Alpers’ admission Museum Display, ed. Ivan that visual regard is inextricably linked with a museum’s modus operandi and cannot be so Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution, easily dispensed with, but we can certainly attempt to work with it to best t the objects.¹µ 1991), 53. Overall, the implications of the specic mode of regard activated by and in the museum, whether instructive or delimiting, is explained by what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett terms  Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” 27. a “museum e±ect” which sees the comportment of viewers within the museum extending to everyday life beyond its walls.¹¶ Še mode of object apprehension operating in the institution  Barbara Kirshenblatt- thus has ramications beyond the immediacy of the display and, where Indian Arts of the Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” in Exhibiting Americas is involved, may signicantly determine viewers’ perception of American Indian Cultures: The Poetics and cultures both current and past. Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven As the agent operating within this predetermined mode of regard, the viewer is evidently of D. Lavine (Smithsonian great importance and must be ttingly accounted for in any display space. Baxandall proposes Institution, 1991), 410. that the causational relationship set up in an exhibit, with the exhibitor presenting the object  Baxandall, “Exhibiting as an e‹ect of a larger cultural fact and the viewer interpreting the given information as a Intention,” 38. cause of the alien object, is conducive to misinformation through the overt activation of the viewer’s subjectivity.¹Á Še viewer’s involvement is therefore central in devising solutions to ethnographic displays. In Indian Art of the Americas, the ‘larger cultural fact’ is ostensibly an unspecied indigeneity. Še problem with the exhibit, rather than obstructing the viewer’s imagination by over-contextualizing, is a vagueness of display with limited didactic material or explanation that forces the viewer to either attempt comprehension by overanalyzing, to little e±ect, or else adopt a completely detached and disengaged attitude. Šis is what M. Arango 54

Greenblatt seeks to resolve by calling for an intensication of the wonder-inducing gaze,  Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” 49. which forces the viewer to literally and metaphorically face the object in its totality and sees both tied up in a reciprocity from which the exterior world is excluded.¹Â It is ironic,  Ibid., 44. or perhaps disillusioning, that the very thing that signicantly problematizes the display of  Baxandall, “Exhibiting material culture—a visual regard—is seemingly also the solution to a viewer’s deactivation Intention,” 37. in the display space.  Susan Vogel, “Always True to the Object, in Our Inextricable from the role of the viewer is the institution’s honesty, or lack thereof, in deciding Fashion,” in Exhibiting what narrative to craft around the exhibited objects. Greenblatt calls for an “openness” of Cultures: The Poetics and display that highlights objects’ formal and contextual circumstances through didactic Politics of Museum Display, materials that make up for the contextual displacement of the objects.¹Ã Baxandall similarly ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, (Smithsonian asserts that the exhibitor must acknowledge his own subjectivity in curating a display that Institution, 1991), 191-204. inherently attempts to demonstrate a personal “theory of culture”,²» and Susan Vogel goes even further, contending that exhibitions of non-West art may be interpretative only if the determining conditions are also displayed—exhibitions about Western ways of seeing, experience, perception itself.²¹ Šis compelling proposal is of course a response to the severe politicization of honesty in exhibits of material culture such as Indian Art of the Americas, where the very nature and existence of the collections must be accounted for; though not at the core of my investigation, accession and provenance will be addressed insofar as they are necessary to a culture of honesty and transparency in the institution. With historical origins as an ethnologic exhibit, Indian Art of the Americas instantiates collections with topographical inscriptions outside the West and produced by cultures historically colonized and mistreated by the imperialistic power typied by the Western Encyclopedic museum. Considering the continual existence of indigenous peoples today, and Western involvement in the eradication of many others, a dignifying representation seems unachievable without a straightforward and candid curatorial approach.

Presuming that the Art Institute and similar institutions will not be deaccessioning their collections of cultural property in the near future, the very least we must expect and demand is explicit admission of the issues entailed by the ownership, collection and display of these objects. To this end, I am not necessarily concerned with the what of the objects and peoples represented in Indian Art of the Americas, but with the how of their display— the curatorial motives, imperatives, and conditions presumably informing the visual and didactic techniques of the exhibit space. How are these culturally-specic objects being presented to a foreign and presumably uninformed public? Does the display facilitate or delimit understanding? Is there a genuine e±ort on the museum’s part to present the objects and cultures as comprehensively as possible? To what extent is the imperative for a dignied display of these historically underrepresented peoples fullled? Answers to these questions will be implicitly woven into the following discussion on politics of display and representation in Indian Art of the Americas.

[…]

II. An Objectifying Gaze

[…]

Še predominance of a visual valuation in Indian Art of the Americas is self-evident, apparent rst and foremost in a modern design absolved of any obvious contextual cues. Equally telling is the scarcity of didactic material, the assemblage of numerous similar-type objects close together in vitrines, and the open šoor plan with attempted organic layout of the space by vaguely distinguished culture or geographic region. It has already been mentioned that the lack of indigenous primary written sources might explain the curatorial rationale in crafting such a non-contextual exhibit; moreover, it seems a natural and logical approach to objects 55 M. Arango

 A chapter of Newhouse’s within the parameters of an art museum following a trajectory of institutional models. book is dedicated to examples and evaluations Leaving aside this second point for the time being, I focus on the issue of contextualization of several approaches that implicitly counterpoints a sight-centric display. to display of Egyptian artifacts. Newhouse, “Art Še exhibition catalogue for Indian Art of the Americas is a comprehensive tome covering a or Archaeology,” in Art and majority of the cultures represented in the collection including signicant information on the the Power of Placement, 108-142. cultural, ritualistic, spiritual, and functional import of the objects. Divided into ‘North America’, ‘Mesoamerica’, ‘Lower Central America’, and ‘Andes, Peru, and Bolivia’, with  Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, subcategories by tribe or community within each, the objects are here treated as “Objects of Ethnography,” 389. geographically and culturally contingent. Yet these very same objects are displayed in the museum along very di±erent lines, clustered with numerous objects in limited spaces  Newhouse, Art and the where they become one amongst many, and serviced by an explanation only arbitrarily Power of Placement, 109. through captions in the vastly overlooked single object label.  Mark Cartwright, “Chavin Civilization,” Ancient History On the one hand, the vitrine and other similar arrangements throughout the exhibit Encyclopedia, April 7, 2015. exemplify a productive e±ort to avoid subjecting these cultural products either to the https://www.ancient.eu/ Chavin_Civilization/. denaturing single-object model of traditional art display or to theatrical drama of hyper- contextualized reconstructions, both of which have been associated with museum display of  Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, material culture in the past.²² Še dangers of an “ethnographic atrophy” that represents “Objects of Ethnography,” 389. parts of a society as if they stood in for the whole is here circumvented through the strategic clustering of several objects of related geographic origins.²³ Clearly the curators were  Ibid., 390. cognizant of the precarity of the collection in its presentation to the public: on the display  Townsend, Indian Arts of of artifacts or antiquities, Newhouse a¼rms that “grouped together by material or type, the Americas, 14. and related to a particular environment, objects are seen as archaeological evidence of a lost civilization. Mounted on individual pedestals, like Modern sculpture, and removed from any kind of historical reference, the same objects become ne art.”²¿ Še vitrine evidently adopts from both without succumbing fully to either, proposing a mediated visual appreciation of the material culture within.

At the same time, the amalgamation of varied cultures and contexts in close proximity, with no articulated distinction, arguably still produces the e±ect of a single originating culture. Šis has dangerous implications for the perception of indigeneity, as the vitrine grouping seemingly relegates all of the exhibited cultures to a distant past despite the signicant fact that, for example, while the Chavín have been extinct since 200 BC, the Colombian Tairona and Nariño continue to exist through descendant o±shoot tribes to this day.²µ So while the space cannot be accused of producing problematic in-situ representations that “tend towards the monographic”,²¶ as is common in natural history museums or older exhibition models, neither is it the in-context display that rightfully considers the objects’ contingency.²Á It is quite likely that the inattentive viewer, not paying mind to the small and inconspicuous object labels, would consequently assume that all of these belonged to the same culture or, equally dangerous, read one or two labels and assign the same provenance to the entire grouping. Še vitrine, and in fact the entire gallery space, therefore reiterate the overlying assumption that because they are not visible in everyday contemporary rst-world contexts, these indigenous peoples are nonexistent or not signicantly present and are furthermore mainly distinguishable through their obvious distinction from us, but not inter-indigenous specicities. With no given indication of the unifying term linking its contents, the vitrine opens itself up to a misinterpretation that conceptualizes the strained relationship between a postcolonial Western culture and indigenous populations.

Perhaps this is to be expected of an art museum where collections are, in Townsend’s words, “governed by a more specialized approach concentrated on works of the strongest visual appeal.”²Â Še reluctance to isolate, di±erentiate, specify cultural contingencies of these objects makes the vitrine an instantiation of display prioritizing an aesthetic valuation, M. Arango 56

encouraging visual associations between objects that might otherwise merit contextual  Vogel, “Always True to the Object”, 193. distinctions. Še issue is not the fact that these objects are all placed side by side, but what the viewer makes of them when a curatorial rationale is not expressly articulated. Šat is,  Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, while the catalogue demonstrates a deep investment in and knowledge of these objects that “Objects of Ethnography,” 391. might dismiss the notion of a mere aesthetic interest on the curator’s part, the vitrine itself, as it currently stands, lacks any such explanation and succumbs therefore to a delimiting visual apprehension that threatens misconception about the objects, their cultures and, most pressingly, indigeneity as a whole. Intentional or otherwise, this seems to me an apt representation of the Eurocentric and colonial apparatus of the Art Institute as an Encyclopedic museum.

[…]

III. Decontextualization and the Gaze

It would nevertheless be wrong to suggest that aesthetic regard and context are mutually exclusive, and that one supersedes or replaces the other. Vogel compellingly argues that we experience objects in our totality, “too far from the voices of the original owners and makers, too locked into the perspectives of our own culture to presume to be faithful to the object in any exalted way. We can be faithful only in our fashion, which often means we are [...] only barely faithful, or not at all. And we can be faithful only in the fashion of our time.”²Ã We therefore cannot assume that by dismantling the visual apparatus of regard we might retrieve the lost context, and neither is the process facilitated by the partialities and limitations of historiography itself. Šat is, it merits questioning whether an accurate contextualization is even feasibly possible, considering that most existing historical accounts of no-longer-extant indigenous cultures are generally written from a Western colonial perspective. Še approach to cultural objects in an exhibit therefore becomes a toss-up between a contextualization based on biased or exclusionary historical accounts, and an objectifying visualization from n outsider's perspective.

But Kirshenblatt-Gimblett makes an equally valid point that signicantly complicates the issue, regarding the multiplicity of context itself. Še range of diverse terms that may constitute an object’s context, neither singular nor set but surveyed at the exhibitor’s discretion, historically called for a standardizing classicatory system. Šus ‘art’ became a categorical imperative that universalized the object and removed any contextual contingency, systematizing a certain model of display founded on aesthetic appreciation.³» So realistically, turning to the question of context and what it may encompass in terms of the objects accrued in Indian Art of the Americas, we may nd that a reinstitution of contextual terms does not necessarily require šawed and subjective historical accounts of the indigenous populations. It appears that the museum could equally re-contextualize the collection based on its association to the Art Institute, or historical relations between cultural objects and Encyclopedic museums, or the practices of acquisition of such objects, among many others. Any of these are equally important conditions of the indigenous works on display, and would provide a more well-rounded, dignifying and coherent account of the objects while fullling the institutional inclination towards displaying objects and not makers. Not to mention that there is signicant potential for re-igniting public interest in these objects by representing them in a new light beyond their relic or evidentiary status, a contextualization not based on indigenous cultural specicities but on other signicant aspects of their history and existence that are equally telling of an indigenous provenance and cultural contingency.

What continues to trouble me, and what I believe to be the most pressing issue of the visual inclinations in Indian Art of the Americas, is the valuation of material culture that follows. In the absence of contextual material and encouragement of a purportedly objective regard, an aesthetic valuation seems to overtake the original cultural, functional, spiritual value of the 57 M. Arango

 Ibid., 410. exhibited objects. Museums, as great authorities of instruction and education, have the power  A review of former director to shape worldviews and shift cultural consciousness. And so the display of cultural property, James Cuno’s book especially non-Western, is fraught with the implications of how it may a±ect perceptions discusses the ubiquity of outside of the institution. “Še museum e±ect works both ways. Not only do ordinary things these modes of accession in the formation of Art become special when placed in museum settings, but also the museum experience itself Institute collections: becomes a model for experiencing life outside its walls.”³¹ So the aesthetic valuation of Phaedra Livingstone, Amerindian material culture in Indian Art becomes further indicative of a greater cultural review of Who Owns perception of indigeneity as a xed, static, objective thing outside our everyday societal Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our operations and, at the same time, continues to teach this idea to a public through the Ancient Heritage, by James legitimized museum experience. Cuno, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and […] Society 40, no. 3 (2010): 238-242. V. Honesty and Transparency  Ibid., 444. Še role of the viewer is demonstrably linked directly to the institution’s willingness or refusal  Shelton, “Museums and to relay information and, along the same lines, the nature of any given information. It is Museum Displays,” 484. generally recognized that collections of non-West material culture, artifacts, antiquities,  Vogel, “Always True to the cultural property such as Arts of the Americas are in perpetual tension with the sites of their Object,” 201. display; at the most rudimentary is the museumgoer’s intuitive understanding of the authoritative museum’s ownership of this non-Western cultural property, while further insight might point to the objects’ circumscription in exploitative a±airs including looting, desecration of sacred sites, and grave digging, symptomatic of an imperialist tradition and its desire for domination of the ‘other’.³² In today’s modernizing drive towards institutional egalitarianism and fairness, there is a growing imperative to see the facts of these collections’ existence laid out for the visitor to apprehend, even if this means the museum’s self-incrimination.

[…]

“Material culture is always selectively and necessarily accompanied by amnesia,” says Michael Rowlands, echoing Duncan’s descriptions of the ritualistic museum by likening it to a site of memorialization that carries all the potentials for remembrance and commemoration but equally su±ers “the selective forgetting of what is di¼cult or contradictory.”³³ Shelton builds upon this idea by associating amnesia with the production of ‘othering’ and misleading displays, paraphrasing Pierre Nora’s argument that “it is only after the relation between personal memory and the past is broken, as in modern Western societies, that history emerges to x the past in a uniform manner to produce stereotypical ctions that it sometimes tries to conšate with remembrance.”³¿

Šus the history-writing and memory-making faculties of the museum underline the urgency for a foundation of honesty and transparency. Even today it would appear that the ubiquity of institutional silence and commonplace knowledge of the civic museum’s šaws have mitigated the exigency of openness, the bare minimum expression of honesty by the museum deemed acceptable—or at the very least not worth pursuing—by an audience that is generally disillusioned with the institution’s potential and willingness to change, and in any case well- informed about its shortcomings. But the unspoken demand persists, and must be continually reiterated if we indeed desire to see a progression in the Encyclopedic museum. As Vogel aptly puts, “the fact that museums recontextualize and interpret objects is a given, requiring no apologies. Šey should, however, be self-aware and open about the degree of subjectivity that is also a given [...]. Še museum must allow the public to know that it is not a broad frame through which the art and culture of the world can be inspected, but a tightly focused lens that shows the visitor a particular point of view.”³µ M. Arango 58

Še same can be said for questions of institutional practices and policies regarding  Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” 44. treatment of material culture, which certainly merit disclosure along with and beyond Vogel’s general call for an admission of the inherently subjective museum apparatus.  Complementing the Greenblatt suggests the inclusion of didactics that “introduce and in e±ect stand in for UNESCO Convention is the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention the context that has been e±aced in the process of moving the object into the museum,” on Stolen or Illegally a proposition that, if ultimately unable restore that which has been lost, at least attempts Exported Cultural Objects, a restoration of the object’s agency by paying tribute to a cultural contingency.³¶ Šis I which is focused on the believe to be the most pressing problem of Indian Art of the Americas, because while the restitution of stolen objects and importantly “covers other identied issues of visual aesthetic regard and deactivation of the viewer may be all stolen cultural objects, justied along certain lines of inquiry, there seems to be no explanation for the evident not just inventoried and lack of honesty in a 21st century display of cultural property within an institution declared ones.” The United apparently embodying moralistic advancement. To be clear, I am not suggesting that States has not signed onto the Convention. the display is presenting outright lies, nor do I want to dramatize it as a front for sinister More on the Convention institutional secrets; I only mean to draw attention to the indisputable omission of in: “The 1995 UNIDROIT important facts about the exhibited objects and the collection that annul any potential Convention,” UNESCO, dignifying or respectful display. accessed March 6, 2020, http://www.unesco.org/ new/en/culture/themes/ […] illicit-tra®cking-of-cultural- property/1995-unidroit- Šat Arts of the Americas is implicated in contentious operations is to be expected convention/. considering the period of its formation before existence of regulation and the general reigning Western worldviews minimizing non-Western indigenous populations. Present- day misconduct is equally unsurprising, seeing as the museum evidently retains its essential incentive as a site of expansive knowledge and its symbolic representation of dominance and authority. At the same time, the task of honesty is ironically almost facilitated today thanks to the clear lines drawn between ethical and immoral practices, the existence of regulations and guidelines such as the exhaustive 1970 UNESCO Convention—and the complementary 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which the United States has failed to implement³Á— clearly laying out a standardized treatment of material culture. Šere is no excuse, then, for the continual institutional silence on the clearly unacceptable a±airs that have historically circumscribed collections of material culture including exploitation, exotication, suppression, and colonialism. 59 Ziqiao Wang

Encountering a Church in a Church: Shape of Reliquary of St. omas Becket

This specific narrative Šis paper investigates a plaque (Plate 1) made at the beginning of 13th century in Limoges, sense had been confirmed explicitly by Mrs. Kate today’s southern France. Šis plaque, once part of a medieval reliquary, displays a scene from Buckingham, the endower; the life of an Anglo Saint Šomas Becket (1118-1170), who had been martyred in Canterbury describing the narration Cathedral in England.¹ Today it is hard to imagine the fragmentary panel’s signicance. But is the martyr scene of one must remember that the medieval viewers saw a whole reliquary casket of Becket— Thomas Becket. See Oswald, Goetz, “Medieval actively reserving Becket’s precious remains. Šis paper addresses questions on how does the Enamels and Metalwork reliquary’s original shape of a church correspond to the climate of cult of worship of Becket, in the Buckingham- asking if the shape representing a church is conceptual or referential to a specic church? Collection,” Bulletin of the Furthermore, as this object was located inside the Canterbury Cathedral, to what extent Art Institute of Chicago (1907-1951) 38, no. 7, 1944: does the shape contribute to the medieval viewers’ contemplations of the piety of relics? 109, doi:10.2307/4112540/ (April 11, 2019).  Charles Freeman, “Bishop, Magic and Relics in the Post-Roman World,” In Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe (New Haven, CONN: Yale University Press, 2011), 50.  See Hahn, 20.

Figure 1. Plate 1. Anonymous, Plaques from a Reliquary Casket with the Martyrdom of a Saint, Gilt copper, Champlevé enamel, 1200/50, 9.7 × 15.6 cm, Art Institute of Chicago.

Še surviving plaque features a sapphire background, rectangular in shape, with two metallic feet that touch the ground. Še garment on his upper body appears with texture constructed by šowing curves. Two knights approach Becket with their arms raised, holding swords next to Becket. An altar stands at the left end with a smooth quality.

One argues the shape is equivalently signicant for its craftsmanship, since the medieval reliquaries were created exclusively for preserving the saints’ remains. Relics was considered as virtuous and miraculous in medieval Christendom. Relics infuse the divine power with deserving high dignities in early Christianity that Augustine of Hippos (354-430) applauded: relics’ therapeutic potency as preventing demonic spirits and healing illness.² Medievalist Cynthia Hahn argues that their containers, reliquaries, could ennoble the invisible relics inside.³ How does this ambiguous architectonic shape manifest the sanctitude of the relics of Becket? Such symbolism is a hybrid one. Dom Becquet claims these gabled châsse are Z. Wang 60

the imitations of the type of pagan Roman sarcophagi. Sarcophagi make reference to  Arnold Angenedt, “Garland Sarcophagus,” In Treasures miniatured houses for dead.¿ However, one here in this paper argues the shape emulating of Heaven: Saints, Relics, more at a Christian church, Gothic Cathedral at great possibility. and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Cleveland, OH; In the 12th century, church was a multivalent space for medieval religious life. Church were Baltimore, MD; London, New unique venues for preserving the memories of the saints and for the communal worshipping. Haven, CONN: Cleveland Museum of Art; Walters Christian ceremonies were held in churches while relics’ potency being exerted—where Art Museum; The British the miracles taking place. In the twelfth century, relics containers shape like churches Museum; Distributed by Yale became popular. Both their form and the decoration in gold, brilliant enamel, and precious University Press, 2010), 30. gems suggest that the bodily fragments and dust within are lifted to heavenly glory and  Caroline Walker Bynum, gathered into a whole.µ Še intertwined relationship between the church and the heaven, “Visual Matter,” In Christian as Bynum discusses in the above quote, was underpinned by the 12th century’s popular Materiality: An Essay on theological theories of churches’ interiors visuality as well, as the spiritual embodiment of Religion in Late Medieval churches. Abbot Suger of St. Denis (1081-1151) eulogized cathedral windows’ illuminated Europe (New York, NY; Cambridge, Mass: Zone lights suggesting the God’s presence in the church, as the illuminated atmosphere denoting Books; Distributed by the Heavenly Jerusalem.¶ Šis conceptual symbolism appears in this reliquary. Šis was also a MIT Press, 2011), 73. standardized schema for producing reliquaries in Christendom, as Eric Palazzo supports,  Sarah M. Guérin, “Meaningful the reliquaries as church miniature was the standard among 12th century reliquary Spectacles: Gothic Ivories making.Á It is possible the châsse in a church shape would enhance Becket’s spirituality Staging the Divine,” The within the furnished interior of Becket’s Canterbury Cathedral as well. During 1176-1179 Art Bulletin 95, no. 1, the Cathedral’s interior was reconstructed frequently, for the display of Becket’s relics at 2013: 55. www.jstor.org/ stable/43188795/ (April 12, optimal locus. Cathedral researcher Hearn. M. F. notes now the latest construction in 1179, 2019). where the masons elevated the altar to leave enough spaces for allowing more pilgrims to interact with the reliquaries: “[…] more succinctly characterized as a chapel, this extension  Eric Palazzo, “Relics, Liturgical Spaces, and the was splendidly ornamented like a monumental reliquary with polychrome marble and Theology of the Church,” In delicate structural articulation.” Šis reconstruction indeed served the eyes of pilgrimages Treasures of Heaven: Saints, sumptuously, as surrounded decorations behind altar reinforcing a sacred presence for Relics, and Devotion in Becket’s reliquary. Seeing in medieval theological notion was a gesture of o±ering homage Medieval Europe (Cleveland, OH; Baltimore, MD; London, to relics. Še worshipping saints’ relics in a theoretical register according to Šiofrid, the New Haven, CONN: abbot of Echternach (?-1110), was a matter of the sense— Seeing in particular: “saints Cleveland Museum of Art; relics are not only ‘sacred’ objects of cult and religious devotion but also objects intended to Walters Art Museum; The quicken the senses in the liturgy.”à British Museum; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2010), 103.  Hearn, M. F, “Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 1, 1994: 23. doi:10.2307/3046001/ (April 13, 2019).  Palazzo, 103.

Figure 2. Anonymous, The Worship of Pilgrimages in Canterbury Cathedral, 2017, as produced in Louise Ann Hampson, “Remembrance of Things Past:Recreating the Lost World of Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury and the Use of Digital Media in Public Access,” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture, 68. 61 Z. Wang

 Louise Ann Hampson, Church as the materialistic contained enclosure is also a stage allowing pilgrims to pray and “Remembrance of Things Past: Recreating the send homage to relics by seeing and interacting with the relics’ miraculous performances. Lost World of Medieval Medieval pilgrims in Canterbury Cathedral were not only physically kneeling as they Pilgrimage to St. Thomas worship; in front of the altar (Plate 3), but their eyes and minds were physically and mentally Becket in Canterbury engaging with the assembled visual objects existed in the chapel: stained-glass windows and the Use of Digital Media in Public Access,” behind altar. Pilgrims’ visions had been instructed by the glass windows’ content: the Peregrinations: Journal of miracles of Becket.¹» Še narration of gabled châsse appearing in the miracle. Še dream of Medieval Art & Architecture, Philip of Alnwick (?-1275), who received dream visions for Becket’s visitation and healing 2017, 68, http://eprints. his illness (Plate 5).¹¹ Such continuous narratives on glasses, the simulacrum of the same whiterose.ac.uk/134163/ (April 22, 2019). châsse devised a supernatural presence of the real châsse, from a supercial representation onto a tangible object transcendentally. Scott Montgomery denes such phenomenon as Rachel Koopmans, “Visions, the Sacra Conversazione: the dialogue between the reliquaries and the glazed windows in Reliquaries, and the Image of “Becket’s Shrine in churches’ chapels. Šese multi-medium dialogue is ongoing, which would let pilgrims awe the Miracle Windows of to Becket’s immortal presence.¹² Še reliquary and pictorial narratives on windows were not Canterbury Cathedral,” solely standing apart from each other, but they were communicating; where the brightness Gesta 54, no. 1, 2015: 38, of the glass’ light radiated on the reliquary on the altar and “animated” the gabled châsse.¹³ doi:10.1086/679400/ (Apr 25, 2019). At rst, blue appears on stained glasses is the symbol of the heaven, the destination where Becket’s soul attaining during the miracles. Moreover, as long as pilgrims’ eyes noticed  Scott B Montgomery, “Sacra Conversazione: the depicted miracle stories on windows, the association between the real reliquary and Dialogues between its representation behind would persuade pilgrims to believe and vow to Becket’s relics, to Reliquaries and Windows.” this gabled châsse in specic. Journal of Glass Studies 56, 2014, 260, http://www.jstor. org/stable/24191436/ (Apr 30, 2019).  Ibid., 262.

Figure 3. Anonymous, Becket appeared in the Dream of Phillips, ca. 1213–20, stained-glass panel n. III, 45. Gesta, Vol. 54, No. 1, March 2015, p. 38. Z. Wang 62

Scholars in studying the Limoges châsse reliquaries tend to neglect their morphology, but reliquaries’ shapes should be researched in their own rights. Contextually, the emulation of a general church connotates a sacred space for enshrining Becket’s relics. Chronologically, Canterbury Cathedral’s renovation in 1179 was indeed underpinned the visibility and worshiping for relics, as church became the critical agent for validating relics’ cult to be understood. Dramatically, the chapel’s stained-glass behind the châsse animates the object, composing a mega sacred space. Under the divine luminosity and the depiction of miracle, the gabled-shape of Becket’s reliquary had trespassed its objecthood, penetrating the limits of temporality and spatiality into an animated and holy being for šeshing out the miracle.

Gabrielle Woo, Crystal Palace, 2019, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. 65 Diana Nway Htwe

e 3-in-1 Buddha: A Conversational Essay on the Tripartite Union of the Buddha, the King, and the Bodhisattva.

The first question I ever get Šere are two crowned Buddhas from Burma at the Art Institute of Chicago.œ One from the from anyone is, “Is it Burma or Myanmar?” The answer is rst Burmese Empire and the other from the last. Še style of the crowned Buddha is either. Both names are just representative of a tripartite union of the Buddha, the Burmese King and the Bodhisattva; by attempted romanizations of putting these two Buddhas back into their original historical contexts in correlation to Burmese the Burmese pronunciation perceptions of kingship and Buddhahood, the persistence of this crowned style from the rst “Š¦ ¤ŠŦ”. The transition between the two names Burmese dynasty to the last highlights a resilient yet muted Burmese Buddhist nationalism. is political but that is not the reason I prefer the old Še Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha and the Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha Seated on an name. I prefer the old British Elephant Šrone are placed side by side about ten feet apart from one another in the Southeast name “Burma” because 1) Asian galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago. Še titles of the Buddhas, of course, are titles “Myanmar” is such a new name that older books bestowed upon by the museum. Due to their redundancy and long length, and alluding to the on Burma, of course, only Buddhas’ respective dynastical eras, I shall be using the Bagan Buddha to address the 12th use “Burma.” 2) a personal century standing Buddha and the Konbaung Buddha to address the late 19th century seated preference. Non-Burmese and enthroned, glass-inlaid, and gold-gilded Buddha. have no way of perfectly pronouncing “Š¦ ¤ŠŦ”so rather than a strange Še style of a crowned Buddha—with a multi-tiered head-dress and royal decoration over the attempt, I prefer hearing the chest—is generally known as “Charkravartin” (in Sanskrit), “Jambhupati” (in Pāli) or universal failproof, “Burma.” But you monarch.² Such a style of Buddha is a large departure from how an ascetic and abstinent are welcome to use either Buddha is generally portrayed. Such a di±erence is less obvious in the Bagan Buddha as the one. J.F, “Should You Say wooden sculpture’s age and wear do not exhibit its formal glory. However, the Konbaung Myanmar or Burma,” Buddha is bright, gleaming, and golden—complete with the Konbaung crown and royal regalia, The Economist, seated grandly on a tiered throne šanked by two elephants—in a gallery full of objects December 20, 2016. weathered and grey. On multiple accounts during my visits to the Buddha, I have heard people https://www.economist. com/the-economist- say along the lines, “Why is a Buddha dressed like this?” “Are they sure this shiny being is a explains/2016/12/20/should- Buddha?” “Is the museum mistaken?” you-say-myanmar-or-burma. To conrm to the dear visitors as a Burmese Buddhist: Yes, this is a Buddha. But, yes, it is a  Sylvia Fraser-Lu, “Buddha Images,” in Burmese little more complicated than just a Buddha. Še crowned style, with the Bagan Buddha as Lacquerware. (Bangkok: evidence, has persisted since the Bagan dynasty. It had a particular rise in popularity during Orchid Press, 2000), 139- the 19th century where Burmese people even began dressing and crowning existing 140. Buddhas—following the crowning of the most famous Buddha image in Burma, Mahamuni  John Falconer et al., Buddha in Mandalay.ª With the British colonization of Burma proper in 1885, the Myanmar Style: Art, nationalist association of kingship and Buddhahood was fueled as many feared the Architecture and Design of modernization e±ects of globalism.¿ Burma (Hong Kong: Periplus Publishing, 1998),136. Še crowned style is a union of the Buddha, the king, and the bodhisattva; hence, a “3-in-1  Turner, “Sasana Decline Buddha.” Burma is a place where numbers are treated with care and reverence as they may and Tradition Reform,” be magical, mystical or symbolic. Buddhist scripture involves numerical groupings such as in Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of the Triple Gems, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Nine Virtues of the Buddha, Religion in Colonial Burma. the Ten Perfections just to name a few. Burmese society also tends to favor combinations of (Hononolulu: University of di±erent things in one unit as in our mythical creatures such as the Pyinsarupa: a chimerical Hawai’i Press, 2014), 26. creature made of ve di±erent animals, and the Manotethiha: a Burmese sphinx made from  Ministery of Culture Affairs, a deva’s head and two lions’ bodies.µ Burmese people are also diehard consumers of 3-in-1 Myanmar. Dictionary of instant co±ee and tea, which contains ground co±ee or tea, sugar, and milk powder. Šerefore, D. Htwe 66

the Myanma Performing and Plastic Arts (Yangon: Myittamoe Publishing, 2001). Amarapura Maha Gandayone Sayadaw, Yote Sone Buddha-win. (Yangon: Thuwunna Publishing, 2000).  Amarapura Maha Gandayone Sayadaw, Yote Sone Buddha-win. (Yangon: Thuwunna Publishing, 2000).

I found applying this 3-in-1 approach to this subject more palpable and unique to the culture in question. It is a culture that fully embraces “more is more”—the more elements in one object, the better deal.

Še Buddha and king aspect of the 3-in-1 Buddha is quite obvious. Še recognition of the sculpture as a bodhisattva—a future Buddha—however, requires a deeper understanding of the intricacies of Burmese Šeravada Buddhism. Growing up in Burma, I, myself, have naturally accepted this gure as a bodhisattva precisely because it is a Buddha and a king at the same time. Only when I was prompted to write a thesis, did I become aware that such a connection was not obvious to non-Burmese and non-Buddhists.

Še gure is a bodhisattva precisely because it is simultaneously a king and a Buddha. Še relationship between the three elements is rather conversational. Še association between kingship and Buddhahood in crowned and bejeweled Burmese Buddhas is largely rooted in Gautama Buddha’s nal bodhisattva life as the Crown Prince Siddhartha, whom had he not become the Buddha, would have become a universal monarch.¶ Še king represents the epitome of worldly riches, and the Buddha is a being who has actively renounced the very same riches. Bodhisattvahood—the arduous journey of a human becoming a Buddha— connects these two seemingly irreconcilable contrasts, allowing them to coexist in one entity.

Še Bodhisattva ideal present in the crowned Buddha serves as a channel of space and time for this transformation from kingship to Buddhahood to take place. When a Burmese Buddhist sees such a Buddha, she will inherently recall the jataka tales of the Buddha’s past lives and his journey: a human like the rest of us who persevered to reach an end to all su±ering. INDEX

Church, 50, 59–62 Civilization, 55 G Classroom Ideology, 33 Collection, 6, 18, 23, 45–7, 49, 53–8 Galleries, gallery, 51–5, 65 Colonial, Colonialism, 23, 29, 51–8 Galloway, Alexander, 11–3 Community, 13, 33, 41–2, 55 Game, 11–3, 27 Concept, Conceptual, 11–3, 16–8, Gauguin, Paul, 5 28, 31–2, 59–60 Gaze, An Objectifying Gaze, 17, Consumer, Consumerist, 31, 38–42 53–6 A Contemporary, 8, 11–3, 16–9, 25, 27, Géricault, Théodore, 45–7 36, 45–7, 51–5 Global, Globalized, Globalization, A Goldsmith in his Shop, 49–50 Context, Contextualization, 8, 8, 11–2, 15–21, 23–4, 27–9, 31, Activism, 33 15–8, 23, 27–8, 33, 52–6, 55–8 49 Addington, Michelle, 24 Critique, 9, 12–3, 24, 28, 41, 51 Google Arts and Culture, 15–21 Africa, African, 31, 51 Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha, Goya, Francisco José de y African American, 31 65–6 Lucientes, 8 Alpers, Svetlana, 53 Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha Greenberg, Clement, 8 Althusser, Louis, 23 Seated on an Elephant Throne, Greenblatt, Stephen, 53 America, Americas, American, 17, 65–6 Groom, Gloria, 46 31–3, 40–2, 51–8 Cubism, Cubist, 35–6 Grosz, Elizabeth, 23 Amerindian, 52, 57 Cutrone, Christopher, 8 Grusin, Richard, 19 Andes, 55 Guérin, Sarah M., 60 Andreotti, Margherita, 35, 36 Angenedt, Arnold, 60 Anthropocene, 23 H Anthropology, Anthropological, Hamilton, Andrew, 52 28 Hampson, Louise Ann, 60–1 Appadurai, Arjun, 15 Harfenist, Ethan, 33 Archaeological, Archaeology, 55 Harris, Jonathan, 27–8 Architecture, Architectural, 15, Hart, Claudia, 5 23–5, 40, 51–3 Hayeoga, 32 Arjoranta, Jonne, 11 D Head of a Guillotined Man, 45 Art Institute of Chicago, Hearn, M.F., 60 6–9, 18, 45–6, 51, 65 Death Mask, 45–6 Hegemony, 21, 31 Artifact, 18 Delacroix, Eugène, 46 Hermeneutics, 11–3 Asia, Asian, 18, 31–3, 51, 65 Deleuze, Gilles, 23–4 Himalaya, Himalayan, 51 At the Moulin Rouge, 6 Deleuzean, 24 Hip hop , 31–3 Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina, 47 Design, 8, 16–8, 24–5, 52–4 Hjorth, Larissa, 12 Augmented Reality, 8 Deus Ex Machina, 7 Authority, 8, 51–8 Dickinson, C. Simon, 45 Dickinson, Theodore, 46 Diegetic, 12 B Digital, 5–8, 11–3, 15–21 Discussion, 8, 11–3, 33, 36, 39, Barthes, Roland, 17 52–4 Beech, Hannah, 33 Display, 17, 52–8, 60 Belting, Hans, 18–20, 27–9 DJ Krush, 32 Benjamin, Walter, 8, 20 Druick, Douglas W., 35–6 Bennett, Andrew, 31 Dumolyn, Jan, 49 I Bodhisattva, 65–6 Duncan, Carol, 53 Bolivia, 55 Iconography, 49 Bolter, Jay David, 19 Identity Politics, 51 Borteh, Larissa, 45 E Imperialist, Imperialism, 23, 40, Bowyer, Emerson, 46 51–7 Boylaert, Frederik, 49 East Asia, East Asian, 32–3 Impressionist, Impressionism, 6 Brush, Jason, 15 Economic, Economy, 9, 31–3, India, Indian, 51–7 Burma, Burmese, 65–6 38–42, 49–50 Indigenous Communities, Buddha, Buddhist, 33, 65–6 Eitner, Lorenz, 45 Indigenous People, 51–8 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 60 Elkins, James, 12–3, 27 Institution, 45–6, 51–8 Emblematic performance, 53 Italy, Italian, 39–42, 52 Encyclopedic Museum, 51–7 C Environment, Environmental, 16, 24–5, 55 J Capital, Capitalist, Capitalism, 23, Equestrian and Four Figures, 18 33, 39, 42, 49–50 Euro-American, 27–8 James R. Thompson Center, 24 Cartwright, Mark, 55 Eurocentric, 28, 51–6 Japan, Japanese, 32–3 Cathedral, 59–62 Exotification, 58 Jew, 35–6 Central America, 55 Exploitation, Exploitative, 23, 57–8 Johnson, Steve, 51 Cézanne, Paul, 7 Expression, 31–3, 40, 57 Chagall, Marc, 35–6 Champmartin, Charles Emile K Callande de, 45–7 F Karp, Ivan, 51–4 Chenique, Bruno, 45–7 Keogh, Brendan, 12 Chicago, 24 Flemish, 49 Kim, Deok-su, 32 Chicago style, 12 Fluten, Willem van, 49 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, Christendom, 59–60 Freeman, Charles, 59 Fu, Snow Yunxue, 5 53–6 INDEX

Konbaung Buddha, 65 Petrus Christus, 49–50 The Bathers, 7 Koopmans, Rachel, 61 Photography, 6–8, 15–9 The Death of Procris, 7 Korea, Korean, 31–3 Plaques from a Reliquary Casket The Family of Man, 16–21 Kuh, Katherine, 36 with the Martyrdom of a Saint, The Praying Jew, 35–6 59 The Raft of Medusa, 47 Politics, 31, 51–4 The Worship of Pilgrimages in Portrait of Emperor Hadrian, 18 Canterbury Cathedral, 60 Postcolonial, 55 Théodore Géricault on His Postmodern, 32 Deathbed, 45–7 Progressivist, 51 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 6 Provenance, 45, 54–6 Townsend, Richard, 52 Public, 7, 38–41, 45, 50–1, 52–7 Trackable, 6–9 Tradition, Traditional, Traditionalist, 7, 15–21, 32–3, 37–42, L 55–7 Turner, J Scott, 24–5 Land Acknowledgment, 51 Language, 16–7, 32 Lavine, Steven D., 51–4 U Lin, Angel, 32 Local, Localizing, Localization, Um, Hae-Kyung, 31 12–3, 24, 27, 31–3, 39, 51 UNESCO, 58 Loo, Kevin, 31 R Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Grey, Rap, 32–3 V 18–20 Raskin, David, 7 van Rijn, Rembrandt, 18–21 Realist, Realism, 5–6, 35 Velden, Hugo van der, 50 Reliquary, 59–62 Videogame, 11 M Renaissance, 18–20, 27 Vietnam, Vietnamese, 33 representation, 6, 16–21, 35–6, Viewership, 53 Malraux, André, 18–9 54–8, 61 Virtual, 5–9 Manabe, Noriko, 31–2 Reterritorialisation, 31 Vogel, Susan, 54 Manovich, Lev, 16–7 Roman, 18, 52, 59–60 von Bonsdor‹, Pauline, 23 Manthorne, Katherine, 28 Romantic, Romanticism, 6, 37 Material, 12, 16–9, 23–4, 37–42, Rowlands, Michael, 57 50, 51–8 McLuhan, Marshall, 19 W Merahi metua no Tehamana S Wang, Amy X., 31 (Tehamana Has Many West, Benjamin, 7 Parents or The Ancestors of School of the Art Institute of Western, 15–20, 27–9, 31, 49–50, Tehamana), 5 Chicago, 5, 45 51–8 Mesoamerica, 55 Sculpture, 18, 55, 66 When a Rose is Not a Rose, 5 Mitchell, Tony, 32 Sekula, Allan, 16 Willis, Anne-Marie, 16 Modernization, 51, 65 Seo, Taeji, 32 Wunderkammer, 49 Mondrian, Piet, 18 Shelton, Anthony, 52–7 Montgomery, Scott B., 61 Smithsonian Institution, 51–4 Museum, 8, 16–8, 51–8, 65 Social, 19–20, 23–5, 31, 37–41, 49 Music, Musical, 31–3 Society, Societies, 15–20, 24, 33, 49–50, 55–7, 65 Sontag, Susan, 17 N Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian, 51, 65 National, Nationalism, 8, 12, 23, 28, St. Eligius, 49 33, 40–42, 65 St. Thomas Becket, 59 Native American, 51-2 Steichen, Edward, 16 New York, 31 Stein, Gertrude, 5 Newhouse, Victoria, 52 Sterling, Charles, 49 Nochlin, Linda, 47 Steyerl, Hito, 8 Nora, Pierre, 57 Still Life with Funyun, 5 North America, 55 Nothing. The Event Will Tell, plate 69 from The Disasters of War, 8

O Old Man with a Gold Chain, 18–21

P T Pach, Zs. P., 49 Technology, Technologies, 7, 15–21, Pair of Dragon Pendants, 18 23–5, 31 Palazzo, Eric, 60 Term, Terminology, 21, 27–9, 39–41, Parallel Distortion, 32 55 Peru, 55 Thailand, 33 First, we can establish that there was a direct have been the subject of a typical studio lm. lineage between Italian neorealism and the lm, Lastly, the economic and consumer boom of the whether intentional or not. Even if Agnès Varda 1950s allowed for Varda’s lm to be discussed was unaware of what was happening in Italy and championed by a specialized group of in the late 1940s and early 50s, some members French youth interested in changing the state of her crew––and certainly her editor Alain of cinema in the country, and by screening it Resnais––knew about it. e signi cance of this in their ciné-clubs allowed for the lm to exist is that national cinema cultures informed each outside the traditional distributional methods other and did not exist in a vacuum. Second, we employed by the Ministry of Culture, and as can see that the specter of “Tradition of Quality” such arguably outside a capitalist framework. lms that hung over the decade is pushed back ese factors combine to create a lm that is upon in La Pointe Courte. By working in a le- stunningly dierent from the other lms of of-center mode of production and addressing 1950s France, at once in debt to neorealism and subjects like workers’ rights and the injustices of rebellious against the powers-that-be. poverty,contributors Varda shows a France which would not

faculty

Jennifer Dorothy Lee Nora Annesley Taylor Claudia Hart staff

Ye-Bhit Hong Diana Nway Htwe Jin Charlie Kang Cyrus Hung Hau Ng Emilija Worthington

design team

Solbi Park Audrea Wah Jinny Soojin Kim Justine Guzman artwork Stella Kwoun Xiao (Hank) Han Jiarui Wang contributors Alson Zhao Taylor Augustine Justine Guzman SAIC 2021 | BFA SAIC 2021 | BFA

Yeon Ji Chung Ye-Bhit Hong SAIC 2021 | BFA SAIC 2022 | BAAH

Jin Charlie Kang Yshao Lin SAIC 2021 | BAVCS SAIC 2020 | BFA One object of study is the James R. ompson is unable to adapt to the extreme and constantly Center, a building in Chicago which houses uctuating temperature of Chicago; the omp- Sam Oh Max Reber Illinois state government oces. A tall glass and son Center serves as an immanent critique of SAIC 2021 | BFA SAIC 2021 | BFA steel building with a 17-story open atrium, the the rigidity and inability of the government (as imposing structure is an image of the govern- well as urban society macrocosmically) to be Leroy Winter Bun Stout ment’s grandeur, transparency, and rationality. attentive and eciently respond to concrete SAIC 2021 | BFA SAIC 2020 | MFA Exemplifying modernist principles in its con- conditions. struction, structure, aesthetic, atmospheric enve- e automated climate adjustments of the Gabrielle Woo Audrea Wah lope, and consumptive footprint, the ompson ompson Center are inept at answering the SAIC 2021 | BFA SAIC 2020 | BFA Center combines thermally conductive materi- needs of its inhabitants, producing only dispro- als, superabundant scale, and an impermeable portionate waste—it is an architectural example and unbreathable air envelope without regard of technology which serves as a barrier, rather Mai Parinda Wanitwat to Chicago’s climate and geographical situation. than a mediator, failing to healthily integrate SAIC 2021 | MFA In order to maintain a stable and comfortable its users with the environment. is calls for climate in such an excessive amount of space, a higher standard of sensitivity, design, and processes of heating in the winter and cooling wisdom concerning materials, ultimately requir- in the summer are overburdened and thereby ing designers to be better informed about global consume massive amounts of energy. Typical causation. From a Deleuzean perspective, the of 20th century applications of HVAC systems, assemblage of cities must follow a rhizomatic the ompson Center’s impermeable envelope paradigm in its development and production is designed as a barrier between the exterior of architecture and infrastructure in order to and interior in order to cultivate a homogenous, be healthily integrated into the environment. ideal interior environment. Perhaps conceptions In order to have cities which operate ethically of the building as an impervious membrane is and sustainably, architectural technology should a principle derived from erroneous historical serve as true mediators: listening and adapting understandings of skin, assumed to indiscrim- its design and production through referencing inately protect interior from exterior instead of the environment. as a mediating system as we know it now. e modern building’s delineating character can also be understood as a microcosmic model for cities, in which a similar conguration of inte- rior and exterior occurs both economically and sociopolitically. Such an inexible HVAC system What I am more interested in, however, is example, the "operator" can be found in the art Galloway's recalibration of an analysis of video historian, the "machine" in the interfaces art games to Huizinga and Caillois' rst de nition historians come across (art, computers, other art of "game" directly in relation to "play". He historians, databanks). "Diegetic" in art history writes, "If photographs are images, and lms are would be the narrative equivalent: previous art moving images, then video games are actions... history texts and the direction an art historian without the active participation of players may want to go. "Nondiegetic" may fall into for- and machines, video games exist only as static matting: Chicago style, footnotes, certain ways computer code". Similarly, Brendan Keogh of writing on a subject, scholarly sources. writes on the phenomenological study of video us there are inherent gamic action qualities in games, dependent on the physical attributes of art history, however what might be the trickiest the activity.7 Art history is not just a noun, it to create an equivalent of is the concept of an has the character of action-the actions taken all-encompassing objective in art history. In all may include writing, reading, seeing, listening, games, there is a goal-although in my introduc- just doing art history, etc. Galloway goes on to tion anecdote, I exhibited how dierent people describe the categories of gamic action: operator may treat that objective as primary or secondary and machine, diegetic and nondiegetic.8 Opera- to the actual playing of the game. In a similar tor and machine action is fairly self-explanatory: way, art history has personal objectives for each the action the operator takes in playing, the art historian. One may do art history to shed action the machine takes in running the game. light on previous unknown artists, or use art Diegetic and nondiegetic take a more conceptual history to write critiques for exhibitions, or use side, where diegetic are the actions that move art history to critique and poke at art history. writers the narrative forward, and nondiegetic are all ere are a number of dierent goals within other actions like pausing, menus, etc.9 the main objective, however, and I would posit ese four "gamic actions" can in one way or that the main intention of art historians is to another be found in art history, although the (and I intentionally beg the question here) do Manuela Uribe Arango "machine" is not a coded machine in the video art history. SAIC 2020 | BAAH game sense. It is important here to note that I In reconceptualizing art history as a kind of ac- am not interested in creating a binary of action tion-based game, it becomes possible for anyone Megan Lim En in art history-as in gamic action, all actions are to "play" it, dependent on their ability to learn/ SAIC 2021 | BFA with VCS Thesis intertwined and dependent on each other. I am maintain the "rules", and have access to neces- merely attempting to form a credible connec- sary resources. With this, its globality seems a tion for a humorous reconceptualization. For bit more attainable. On the subject of a global art Ye-Bhit Hong SAIC 2022 | BAAH

Diana Nway Htwe SAIC 2020 | BAAH

Jin Charlie Kang SAIC 2021 | BAVCS

Barbie Kim SAIC 2021 | BFA with Art History Thesis

Jessy Lembke SAIC 2022 | BAAH sponsorship Charlie Miller SAIC 2020 | BAAH

Cyrus Hung Hau Ng SAIC 2020 | BAVCS

Joshua Plekkenpol SAIC 2020 | BFAW

Ziqiao Wang SAIC 2020 | BAAH

Emilija Worthington SAIC 2021 | BAAH

Aishan Zhang SAIC 2020 | BAAH