Rutgers Art Review The Journal of Graduate Research in Art History VOL. 29 Rutgers Art Review The Rutgers Art Review (RAR) is an annual journal produced by graduate students in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University. The journal is dedicated to presenting original research by graduate volume the editors convene an editorial board made students in Art History and related fields. For each up of students from the department and review all new submissions. The strongest papers are then sent to established contribute to existing scholarship. Articles appearing scholars in order to confirm that each one will in RAR are abstracted and indexed online in America: History and Life, ARTbibliographies Modern, the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art), Historical Abstracts, and the Wilson Art Index. The journal is distributed by and public libraries in North America and Europe. subscription to many of the finest university, museum, to printed volumes before Vol. 29, visit: For more information about RAR or to suscribe RAR.Rutgers.edu Cover Image: Udechukwu, Obiora, Exile Train, 1981?, brush and ink, sketchbook page. Staff &Thanks Editors Special Thanks Virginia Allison Harbin The editors of Volume 29 would like to thank our Gianna LoScerbo guidance as Rutgers Art Review switched into a digital Assistant Editor version.faculty advisor Without Tatiana her involvement, Flores for her this dedication transition and Lauren Henning wouldRutgers have Art beenReview much would more also difficult. like to thank the time To contact the staff at and dedication of our outside readers, who took time Rutgers Art Review, email: from their busy schedule to read and review our submissions. 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In This Issue Cast Not to the Beasts the Souls that Confess You: Images of Mouths at the Cathedral of St. Lazare at Autun 4 RACHEL DANFORD A Touching Image: Andrea Mantegna’s Engraving of 22 the Virgin and Child SUsaNNAH FISHER “As Seen On TV”: Publicity, Violence and Self-Promotion in Chris Burden’s 41 Television Works, 1972-1976 Chelsea BEHLE FralICK A Nigerian Song Literatus: Chinese Song Dynasty in the Contemporary 61 LiteratiArt of Obiora Painting Udechukwu Concepts From the KRIsteN WINDMULLER-LUNA 4 Cast Not to the taloned demons claims the damned from the Beasts the Souls other, delivering them up to the torments of hell behind them. Several elements at the far That Confess You right edge of the tympanum help describe these Images of Mouths at the torments. Near the corner, a cluster of small Cathedral of St. Lazare at Autun to resist the pull of a wild-haired devil, who has hookedhuman figuresthem by cower the neck together with ain fork a group, and a trying noose. RACHEL DANFORD This demon is shown bursting out of the mouth of a disembodied, bestial head, which in turn emerges from a the side of a long, narrow box with three arched recesses on the front and four, Introduction1 above this infernal structure to heat a forge into whichdog-bone another shaped demon clasps is onshoving top. Open several flames human rise he cathedral of St. Lazare at Autun is T feature a full Last Judgment on the central Thesebeings, scenes headfirst. were clearly intended to instill a tympanumone of theits northwest oldest French façade cathedrals (Fig. 1). 2to The sense of horror in those who saw them. This scenes of judgment and hell on the right side of intent is evinced verbally in a couplet inscribed on the tympanum are particularly vivid (Fig. 2). At the lintel below hell that reads the center of this vision, a large scale is being used Terreat hic terror quos terreus alligat error, to weigh souls. An angel collects the saved from Nam fore sic verum notat hic horror specierum. one side of the scale while a group of emaciated, May this terror terrify those whom earthly error Fig. 1 Last Judgment Tympanum, ca. 1120–1146, limestone, reproduced with permission. Cathedral of St. Lazare, Autun, France. Credit: Dr. James B. Kiracofe, “Cast Not to the Beasts the Souls that Confess You” 5 Images of Mouths at the Cathedral of St. Lazare at Autun the horror of the images. Therefore, a viewer’s experience of the tympanum at Autun was not merely visual but also oral and aural, performed by voicing the inscriptions out loud. Romanesque churches were meant to be experienced and interpreted visually, spatially, orally, and aurally. Meaning was generated through lived experience, the manner in which visitors engaged with the site, the words spoken, and the types of performances enacted there.5 In this paper, I focus on the relationship between spoken acts and visual images at Autun by arguing that there was a connection between activities that engaged the mouths of medieval visitors to the site and images of mouths in the sculptural program itself. I base this connection on an etymological argument, present in contemporary twelfth-century theological discourse. In this discourse, the Latin words for death (mors), bite (morsus), and gnawing Fig. 2 Last Judgment Tympanum, detail of hell, ca. 1120– remorse (remordere) formed an etymological loop in which medieval viewers could have 1146, limestone, Cathedral of St. Lazare, Autun, France. recognized a powerful model for understanding Credit:binds, Dr. James for the B. horrorKiracofe, of reproduced these images with here permission. in the reciprocal nature of the religious world this manner truly depicts what will be.3 they inhabited, a world where salvation and damnation could both be graphically envisioned In his work on Romanesque portal inscriptions, by activities that engaged the mouth. Damnation meant being consumed, dismembered, and these lines.4 swallowed by the mouth of hell, while salvation andCalvin “or” Kendall sounds argued in terreus for a, terreat sonorous, terror reading, error of, was the reverse, a regurgitation and release from and horror, that Kendall form pointed a resonant to the link shared between “er” the beast, triggered by means of the Christian’s moral “error” and the consequent “terror” and own mouth in prayer and confession. Though “horror” visualized on the tympanum. Autun’s death is pictured as a ravenous mouth on the medieval audience would have recognized a real, Last Judgment tympanum at Autun, rescue was cause-and-effect relationship between error and enacted verbally in public confession, a ritual that horror and reveled in the sonorous wordplay was performed annually before the northeast when speaking the inscription aloud. Moreover, portal of the cathedral. audibly pronouncing the sounds and rhythms of Etymology as an Art-Historical Device of the images. The repetition of abrasive, almost growling,the words “er” intensified and “or” the sounds eschatological glossed a warningscene Before turning to the images at Autun, it is important to say a few words about my use sounds directed the visitors’ attention back to of etymology as an art-historical device.6 filled with bestial monsters. In this way, the “Cast Not to the Beasts the Souls that Confess You” 6 Images of Mouths at the Cathedral of St. Lazare at Autun In a way, it is highly appropriate to use etymology programs in churches.12 By emphasizing thematic to explicate the images at Autun because in the ties between disparate subjects, Romanesque Middle Ages there was understood to be a basic sculptural programs, like that at Autun, were connection between words and the visible world. organized more by patterns of association than by Etymology provided Christian thinkers with a linear, chronological narratives.13 way to make sense of their material environment, since the name of a thing was thought to express The etymological argument I will apply to the its essential nature. The nomen revealed the images at Autun is introduced in Book 11 of numen and was thus an omen of a larger truth.7 Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville argued Death (mors) is so called, because it is bitter that when one understood the origin of a word (amarus), or by derivation from Mars, who is the one also understood its power, “for when you author of death; [or else, death is derived from the can perceive whence the germ of a name comes, bite (morsus you will more quickly grasp its energy. The he bit the fruit of the forbidden tree, he incurred ) of the first human, because when examination of the whole substance is more death].14 plainly known by etymology.”8 God had spoken the The second half of this explanation emphasizes world into existence using nothing but his Word, the sonorous similarity between death, mors, and if one understood the relationships between and bite, morsus. Isidore’s assertion that mors words, it was possible to uncover the divine may be named from morsus demonstrates a patterns that had guided Creation.9 Consequently, real relationship between bite and death that medieval rhetoricians regarded sonorous relationships between words as evidence for death entered the world through the act of biting actual relationships in the real, visible world. thecould forbidden extend beyond fruit. To the go initialfurther significance and imagine that that death itself had a bite would have been a Using etymology as an epistemological tool natural association to make, given the sonorous requires a certain amount of free association, and similarities between the words.15 indeed, many medieval readers were trained to cultivate associative patterns of thinking when Isidore’s etymology of mors was known in meditating on texts.