Artists N

eed Art H

istoriansPilot Edition

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 HongFounder of Artists Need Art Historians

Acknowledgement

Ye-Bhit Hong with Claudia Hart & cohort

Emilija Worthington Aishan Zhang

Cyrus Hung Hau Ng

Virtual Installations

The Game of Art History: A Critical Inquiry into Digital Relevance

Re-centralizing Art History: A Case Study of Google Arts and Culture

Technology for Post-Anthropocenic Ideology

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11 15

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Defining “Western”: the indiscreet definition of “Western” within Art History Discipline

27Barbie Kim

table ofcontents

Jessy Lembke

An Examination of the Cubist Influence in Chagall’s The Praying Jew

35

La Pointe Courte: A Film in History

The Politics of Asian Hip Hop

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31

Charlie Miller

Megan Lim En

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

Ziqiao Wang 59

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

51Manuela Uribe Arango

An Archive of Production: Looking out from Petrus

Joshua Plekkenpol 49

Théodore Géricault on His Deathbed

Jin Charlie Kang 45

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

Diana Nway Htwe 65

Scan to view works live.

During 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. �is 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.”

Virtual Installations

Tehamana (00:31) Audrea Wah BFA 2020

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

5 Ye-Bhit Hong

1 The augmented-reality medium, conceptually hybridizes virtual space and non-physical virtual reality with the physical objects of the real world.  It is a brand new medium and has been little used, and for the most part, with little success in terms of making sophisticated, rich, augmented experiences or real/unreal hybrid objects. 

Cameras, including but not limited to augmented and virtual reality technologies, are monoscopic while humans are stereoscopic. However, it is easily mistaken that photography portrays objective reality with no subjectivity and does not present the world as the eye sees it, yet we accept it as a true representation. In our minds, we do not experience space as homogeneously because we look through our screens, which only re�ect numbers of interlaced pixels. People now believe they can envision the world through accurate scienti�c scans which is a belief that excludes the idea that our cultural imagination of the world changes historically and so, over time, this is re�ected in the visual representations and objecti�cations that we produce. Art is the objecti�cation 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.

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.1 �e 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.

�e Art World in the nineteenth century was in perpetual morphosis. As the world was imbued by scienti�c revelations and tabulations, Romantic artists sought to tell stories of mythology,

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

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

6Y. Hong

2 David Raskin, “Why Fauvist?” ARTHIS Adv Survey Modern/ Contemporary Art & Architecture (class lecture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL February 04, 2019).

morality, and responsibility. �e burgeoning of the camera made traditional academic paintings “obsolete,” as allegorical �gures were intended to represent abstract ideas, with actual facts becoming obscured by fantasy. Salons, in France, were no longer exclusive to the elite two percent, but had expanded into a public spectacle for the masses. Napoleon III, in 1893, set up the Salon of the Refused to showcase rejected artists who did not conform to the values of academic standards. �e artists’ job evolved. �eir task was to reveal a reality that could not be objectively captured by a camera.2 However, it must be clari�ed 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.

Feminine Paradigm (01:27) Justine Guzman BFA 2021

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

Bathers In�nity (01:15) Parinda Mai WaniwatMFA 2021

Cézanne, Paul. �e Bathers. 1899-1904. Oil on canvas. �e Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL..

7 Y. Hong

3 Christopher Cutrone, ARTHIS Adorno on Culture Industry (class lecture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL February 19, 2020).

4 Clement Greenberg: Modernist Painting [1965], reprinted in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison eds, Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology (New York, NY: Harper & Row 1982), 5. of Chicago, Chicago, IL February 19, 2020).

Culture was not suddenly struck by lightening! �e camera obscura had been used as a tool to design paintings for centuries, but it did not re�ect a meaningful vision or an image of the world. One must therefore critically evaluate why it made sense for humans to invent photography when they did, and why they then identi�ed photographic images as a medium What changed about our subjectivity such that photographic images would make sense to use, and the paradigm of capturing our imagination of the world in a way that painting no longer could?3 Art ultimately is an interrogation process as criticism is built into the object to see if it is internally viable. As Clement Greenberg argues, “the essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more �rmly in its area of competence.”4 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. �e Event Will Tell, plate 69 from �e Disasters of War. 1812/20 published 1863. Etching, burnished aquataint, lavis, drypoint, and burin on ivory wove paper with gilt edges. �e 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. �ere 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.

8Y. Hong

�e 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. �e following artists instigate the audience to re�ect, investigate, and critique institutional pedagogy, the political climate, economic accessibility, and philosophy of the art that we consume.

Cottage (01:38) Max Reber BFA 2021

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

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

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

9 Y. Hong

I was once told by my mom that I played the video game "Just Cause 3" as "Just Cause", while my brother played "Just Cuz".¹ At once critically opposed, our playing styles dictated that while I played to overthrow the fascist regime on the �ctional island of Medici and �nish the game, my brother played to jump out of airplanes and blow up homes, bridges, statues, etc. just because he could. Simultaneously exhibiting our fundamental di±erences, this example demonstrates something much more telling of games on a larger scale. As hermeneutics maintains a spotlight in digital media analysis, di±ering interpretations of the parameters of something like a videogame could be transposed onto any activity within or on the fringe of the contemporary digital �eld.² One of these activities, I argue, is art history which in its own specialized sense can be analyzed as a formulaic game, and treated as such in attempting to place its present and predict its future in the ever-digitizing world. Reconceptualization of this kind requires an analysis of the de�nitions of all aspects involved, which will include a de�nition of "game", "hermeneutics", "art history", and "global". �e de�nitions given will also touch upon the question of whether or not this reconceptualization makes a global art history possible, and whether or not a global art history would ever truly be "global" in the imagined way. As games take an all-encompassing place in the digital world, perhaps it is time for a �eld like art history to adopt similar interfaces and formulaic qualities.

De�nitions of a "game" are typically �xed under relations to "play" determined by sociologists Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois in the mid-20th century. Most succinctly summarized by Alexander Galloway in his book Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, their de�nitions have boiled down to conceptions of games as "an activity de�ned by rules in which players try to reach some sort of goal".³ �is is a de�nition 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 de�nition, 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 de�nitions because relativism dictates that there be an endless reconceptualization based on context.4 Relative de�nitions 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 de�nition of "game", and that de�nition �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). �e "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 speci�c kind of game for an art history analysis, Galloway de�nes video games as "a cultural object, bound by history and materiality, consisting of an electronic computational device and a game simulated in software".5 Where art history �ts more or

1 Square Enix, Just Cause 3 (December 1, 2015).

2 Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, and McKenzie Wark. Excommunication: Three Inquiries in Media and Mediation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014).

3 Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 1.

4 Jonne Arjoranta, “Game Definitions: a Wittgensteinian Approach.” Game Studies 14, no. 1 (August 14, 2014). http://gamestudies.org/1401/articles/arjoranta.

5 Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, 1.

�e Game ofArt History:A Critical Inquiry into Digital Relevance

11 Emilija Worthington

6 Ibid, 2.

7 Brendan Keogh. A Play of Bodies How We Perceive Videogames (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018), 17.

8 Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, 17.

9 Ibid, 7.

10 Elkins, “Art History as a Global Discipline,” 22.

11 Larissa Hjorth. Games and Gaming: an Introduction to New Media (Oxford, NY: Berg Publishers, 2011).

less into the �rst half of Galloway's de�nition of video games, more and more, the �eld ofart history is becoming digitized and subject to the digital world of messaging anddatabanks. Although the source material of art history is not necessarily contingent uponthe digital (artists, the art itself ), the supporting code, so to speak, can largely be foundin the digital realm.

What I am more interested in, however, is Galloway's recalibration of an analysis of video games to Huizinga and Caillois' �rst de�nition of "game" directly in relation to "play". He 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 computer code".6 Similarly, Brendan Keogh writes on the phenomenological study of video games, dependent on the physical attributes of the activity.7 Art history is not just a noun, it has the character of action-the actions taken may include writing, reading, seeing, listening, just doing art history, etc. Galloway goes on to describe the categories of gamic action: operator and machine, diegetic and nondiegetic.8 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.9

�ese 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.

�us 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. �ere 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".¹0 �is 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 in�uences. 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.

12E. 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 rede�ne and reconceptualize art history as a "game" of sorts. In doing so as a video game more speci�cally, art history is brought into the digital realm as a contemporarily relevant discipline. As digital media critique and analysisdepends on hermeneutics, my argument similarly depends on the relativism of such, whichin turn dictates its reception. In tracking the historical perception of a "game," and itscurrent connotation among those like Alexander R. Galloway, I seek to extend the de�nition into disciplinary territories perhaps not previously considered. Art history, as an activityand a noun, I believe is best de�ned 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. �is 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?

13 E. Worthington

Yeon Ji Chung, The Bedroom in November 2019,

2019, Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 in.

Google Arts and Culture (GAC, former name: Google Art Project) is a not for pro�t program under Google Cultural Institute, providing open-access online exhibition for users and sharing free technical tools with cultural institutions across the globe.¹ �e name of GAC implies that the platform contains a mixture of di±erent categories of culture-related subjects that is not just art by de�nition of the period, style and location. According to Jason Brush, who worked in the user experience sector of the GAC project, the images of artworks used by GAC are based on an image organizing software, Picasa, which is the predecessor of Google Photos.² �eoretically, this type of image belongs to the neutral medium, and carries no additional artistic meanings and purposes. "Powered by a broad, connected suite of Google technologies, Art project [Google Arts and Culture] is a Java-based Google App Engine Web application. �e site exists entirely on Google's infrastructure, and was built using Google APIs."³ �is technology creates a space that can organize all information into one place. �e platform presents museum collections in the same spatial and time order through digitalization,which is not a traditional practice of curatorial discipline.

My essay shows that digital museum platforms serve as an addition to the study of art by introducing possibilities of new accessibility, visibility, functionality and diversity. �is does not, however, mean that GAC adopts a diverse practice of global art. �e framework of Google Arts and Culture still follows the tradition of enlightenment education, but the internet based platform enables access of information for the masses. �e technology is a medium, but at 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 ideoscapes",4 the hyper-communicative characteristic of internet allows multiple types of art to exist inside the internet, therefore this model breaks di±erent presentation and valuation to the distinction between art and artifacts. However, the pictorial based digitalization cannot escape from its western perspective, which comes from the medium itself. Even �ough GAC provides a necessity to achieve con�ation of all arts and culture, digital technology can only provide 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."5

In Museum Without Walls, André Malraux observed the departure of artworks and their original 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.6 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. �e 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 speci�cities that are practically and conceptually di¼cult to be aligned with other mediums. In a museum, a painting will not be placed next to food

1 “About the Google Cultural Institute”, Google Cultural Institute, Accessed on December 9, 8:15pm, 2019 https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/partners/.

2 Brush, Jason, Interviewed by Mediati, Nick. 2011. "Google's Art Project: The Tech Behind the Scenes." PC World 29 (4): 16. Notes: Picasa is an image organizing software Google acquired in 2004. In 2015,Google launched Google Photo, and terminated its support to Picasa in 2016. More details can be found in Sabharwal, Anil (February 12, 2016). "Moving on from Picasa". O�cial Google Picasa Blog. Google. Retrieved February 4, 2017.

3 Ibid.

4 Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Di©erence in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2–3 (June 1990): 295–310.

5 Ibid. pp.295.

6 Malraux, André. Museum Without Walls. [1st ed. in the U.S.A.]. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1967. pp.148-160.

Collecting �e World: �e Heterogeneity of Content on Google Arts and Culture

15 Aishan Zhang

7 Willis, Anne-Marie. 1990, Digitalization and The Living Death of Photography in Hayward, Philip. Culture, Technology & Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century. London: J. Libbey. pp.199.

8 Ibid., pp.200.

9 Sekula, Allan. "The Tra®c in Photographs." Art Journal 41, no. 1 (1981): 15-25. doi:10.2307/776511. pp.15-25.

10 Manovich, Lev. Principles of New Media in The Language of New Media. 1st MIT Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002. pp.47.

11 Ibid. pp.89.

12 “Homepage”,Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on December 7, 3:04 PM, 2019, https://artsandculture.google.com/.

13 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.

unless there is a contextual relationship between them. On Google Arts and Culture, although many objects are not well correlated with each other, they are still represented as works in a way that contemporary museums do not.

�e essential technology for placing multiple objects together is the digitization process. According to Anne-Marie Willis, "Digitalization is a process which is cannibalizing and regurgitating photographic (and other) imagery, allowing the production of simulations of simulations."7 When digitalization emphasizes on the formal presentation of the work, the art, design, and decorative objects are reduced to �at images that can be put on the same wall of the website. Willis believes that the representation of photography is "rested upon the empiricist assumptions and understandings of its operation," and the digitalization removes the former, focusing on the latter. �is idea is a supplementation to Alan Sekula's argument that photography is hunted by bourgeois science and bourgeois art , and indicates the dominance of science over art in the process of digitalization. As such, photography has binary identities -- the one symbolizing a neutral medium that is no di±erent from oil paint or marble, the other representing artistic possibilities, that is a piece of painting or sculpture. In museums, both categories of photography exist. Digitalization belongs to the scienti�c function of photography, which is often used as a major method for archives and preservation. In the language of media studies, this transformation from one material to another is called 'transcode', means "to translate it [content] into another format."10 �is concept elucidates the change of content, "both on the level of content and form."11 Digitalization takes the subject away from an ever changing environment to a motionless world that is composed of pixels.

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.12 �is 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."13 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

16A. Zhang

mankind throughout the world."14 In this exhibition, cameras captured the most basic and intimate moments in their life, such as family gatherings, children playing, eating meals (Fig. 2), and dancing. �e images of ordinary people from developed and developing countries represents a humanistic spirit. Roland Barthes criticized this attempt as a "conventional humanism."15 Skula also was disgusted at Steichen's approach, commented that the use of photographs in this exhibition is an "epitome of American cold war liberalism."16 Similarly, Susan Sontag condemned the exhibition because it "denies the determining weight of history—of genuine and historically embedded di±erences, injustices, and con�icts... universalizing human conditions into joy."¹7

Likewise, the way GAC is organized shares the notion of con�ation, bringing all arts and culture into oneness. According to Media scholar Lev Manovich, "Cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or language, by new ones that derive from the computer's ontology, epistemology and pragmatics" in human computer interfaces.¹8 After this process, all culture and arts are represented together in the same medium though an upgraded PowerPoint style of presentation on GAC. On the one hand, this stable form of aesthetic experience creates an equalness, that moves away from bias and partiality in the angles or gazes from a privileged group to the others. �estandardized format of representation of all arts and culture on the website is vastly di±erent from the problematic display and valuation that singles out non-western arts and cultures in many Western museums, in particular encyclopedia museums since the pre-modern period.¹9

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

14 Ibid.pp.4.

15 Barthes, Roland, 1957, La grande famille des hommes (The Great Family of Man) in Mythologies, Paris: editions du seuil, pp.173-176.

16 Sekula, Allan. "The Tra®c in Photographs." Art Journal 41, no. 1 (1981): 15-25. doi:10.2307/776511.

17 Sontag, Susan, 2008, America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly in On Photography, London; New York: Penguin. pp.33.

18 Manovich, Lev. Principles of New Media in The Language of New Media. 1st MIT Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002. pp.47.

19 Non-Western art served as ‘primitive’ objects, representing collectible evidence for natural science in comparison to the advanced western civilization in pre-modern society. More details can be found in Cli©ord, James (1988) ‘On collecting art and culture’ in Cli©ord, James (1988) The predicament of culture: twentieth century ethnography, literature and art. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, pp 215–251.

Figure 2. �e Family of Man, pg. 90, [6 photographs on page].

17 A. Zhang

Moreover, GAC also has a page (Fig. 3) that is dedicated to medium, which is one of 12 sub-categories that GAC designed to lead website users to explore, which contains 198 mediums of arts and culture.20 In this section, some traditional art mediums are included, such as ink, watercolor painting, oil paint, oil pastels, tempera, photograph, etching, pencil, bronze, ceramic, marble, and acrylic paint. �ere are also some unusual art materials, including wool, hair, skin, pearl, olive, sapphire, and sand. �is way of representation on GAC challenges the conventional aesthetic value in relation to the materials. Although art materials have undergone the renovation of mediums since the birth of modern art, and the shift has become more radical after the ready-made concept was a¼rmed by Marcel Duchamp, there are a lot

of pieces in those categories that would now be grouped into �ne-art, and de�ned as artifact or designed object by most of institutions, or museum experts. For example, ceramic jars and dishes are often conceived as decorative arts in Western context. In most Asian countries, such as China, ceramic wares are considered as one of the main categories of �ne art. Since the de�nition of art and material vary from one place to another, a singular de�nition of �ne art and decorative art does not �t into global art history. By transforming all mediums into digital images, the biases between high art and artifacts 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 speci�cally �ts the pictorial-based history of Western civilization.2¹ To be more speci�c, paintings since the Renaissance along with other works of art based on a �at 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 �e Art Institute of Chicago's collection page onGAC 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 begrouped 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. �e 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).22 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

20 “Mediums”, Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on 2019, December 8, 10:21AM.https://artsandculture.google.com/category/medium?tab=pop.

21 Belting, Hans, What Is a Symbolic form?, Florence and Baghdad, Renaissance Art and Arabic Science, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011, pp.13-26.

22 “The Art Institute of Chicago organized by Color”, Google Arts and Culture, Accessed on 2019, December 8, 10:21AM.

Figure 4. Pair of Dragon Pendants, Chinese, 4th-3rd century B.C. �e Art Institute of Chicago.

Figure 5. Portrait of Emperor Hadrian, Roman 2nd century A.D. �e Art Institute of Chicago.

18A. Zhang

works have alternative images nor street view technology to provide full dimension view, which is crucial for viewing sculptures, especially when the scale, material and color are not represented as accurate as the real experience o±-cite. In Malraux's opinion, the "depth" is still absent in photography of art.23 After forty years, digital technology, including image recognition through arti�cial intelligence still does not fully translate themateriality of the art. �e obstacles of ancient and non-pictorial art in the process of digitization reveal the failure for those objects to accommodate digital technology. �e absence of street view feature shows

the ignorance to the problems, which aggravate the inadaptability of non-pictorial art. Since many non-Western art is notbased 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. �e process is based on what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin described as the medium's capability to "remediate" one thing to another.24 GACis a powerful mediator between pictorial culture and non-pictorial culture. As MarshallMcLuhan states, "�e medium is the message."25 �e way that art is displayed determines the accessibility and visibility of that object. �e problem of visibility is ignored by this medium of digital image. Photography and the internet platform both o±er �exible geographic location of the image, but it fails to o±er the �exible 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 Sel�e project in 2018. By using facial recognition technology, this feature in the application allows users to match their sel�es 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. �e product manager of GAC, Michelle Luo explained the purpose for this project:

�e 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 �e prospect of exploring all that art can be daunting. To make it easier, we dreamt up a fun

Figure 6.Equestrian and Four Figures, late 12th/15th century, Mali, �e Art Institute of Chicago.

Figure 7. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Old Man with a Gold Chain,1631, �e Art Institute of Chicago.

23 Malraux, André. Notes, Museum Without Walls. [1st ed. in the U.S.A.]. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967. pp.148.

24 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999, pp.19.

25 McLuhan, Marshall, and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. First MIT Press edition, 1994. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

19 A. Zhang

solution: connect people to art by way of a fundamental artistic pursuit, the search for the self... or, in this case, the sel�e.26

�e Art Sel�e swept mainstream social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. As a marketing strategy to the website, this project was very successful. It was unique, interactive and massive. According to Luo, "more than 30 millions of sel�es" were taken and matched with portraits by January, 2018.²7 �is project introduced the GAC to the masses and prompted people to install the app on their mobiles. �is project reveals that the pictorial

reproduction of art are utilized as a part of marketing materials. Although it is helpful in encouraging the study of art. Under the limited perspective of technology, all contents are selected and de�ned byits ability to be matched and consumed.

According to Walter Benjamin, there are two values in art: one is "cult value", and another is "exhibition value".28 In the age of digital reproduction, "exhibition value shows its superiority to cult value".²9 Even if the content is low exhibition value, this value will be produced through the digitalization. In our society, such value can be easily transformed as commercial value. In Benjamin's opinion, "mass reproduction is especially suited to the reproduction of the masses".30 In the case of �e Art Sel�e, portraiture is used in service of mass consumption. �e reason for not having a program that matches with the object or landscape is simply because of the popularity of sel�es

on social media. In this marketing campaign, non-pictorial works are lagging behind, and eventually can disappear in the sea of pictorial perceptive.

According to Belting, "the global dissemination of visual media, however rooted they are in Western culture, will cause a worldwide spread of Western images or, even less so, of Western imagination".³0 �e rise of the internet, personal computers, and mobile devices contributes to the growing Western domination. From 17 partner organizations at its initiate period in 2011 to 1,000 museums and cultural 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 de�ning art and non-art are made in the process of re-making the medium into pixels, there is also a notion of

Figure 8. Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, �e Art Institute of Chicago.

Figure 9. Piet Mondrain, Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Grey , 1921, �e Art Institute of Chicago.

26 Luo, Michelle, Exploring Art (Through Selfies) with Google Arts & Culture, Arts and Culture, Outreach & Initiatives, Google Blog, Accessed on December 16 , 2019 https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/exploring-art-through-selfies-google-arts-culture/.

27 Ibid.

28 Benjamin,Walter and Michael W.Jennings 2010. "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility [First Version]." in Grey Room 39 (39): 11-38. pp. 17

29 Ibid. pp. 20

30 Ibid. pp. 34

31 Belting, Hans. "Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology." Critical Inquiry 31, no. 2 (2005): 302-19. doi:10.1086/430962.pp.317

32 Google, Cultural Institute, Accessed: 27-10-2019 08:09 UTC, 23. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/partners/.

33 Jennings, Justin. Globalizations and the Ancient World. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 132.

20A. Zhang

34 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. �e crux of GAC, e Family of Man and many other international exhibitionscomes from the singular representation of the globe, which is a perceptive of digital device.

�rough the singular process of digitization of all arts, GAC levels culture integrates di±erent cultures in the same way.³4 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 awarenesson 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. �erefore, my essay does not attempt to �nd a solution to heterogenization. Instead, it aims to bring up the issue as a re�ection of the current practice ofdigital institutions. �e 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 thelong 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.

21 A. Zhang

�e toolset built up in prior modules facilitates my exploration of how the material reality of technology impacts the past, present, and future of the Anthropocene. I begin with ideology which creates cohesive bodies of concepts¹ by isolating them from an expansive context, determines the composition of assemblages, and manifests as technology—thereby providing the “how and why” of technological development. Technology is an interface, serving the role of mediator between subjective human experience and the external objective-spatial world; as a result, technology cognitively a±ects the perception of subjects. �is notion would be neutral if not for the instrumentalisation of ideology by State apparatuses which derive their power from hegemonic structures such as nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism. A product of this phenomenon is the current techno-industrial paradigm, whose inherently exploitative, alienating, and extractive character generates technology which negatively mediates the relationship of its users with the physical world. Hegemonic ideologies maintain old social relations (understandings of the self, others, and nature) through technology, in turn preventing new technologies which may arise from alternate paradigms of production from developing.

[...]

I decided to use one of the oldest, fundamental, most essential, and universal forms of technology for my case study: architecture. A primary technology all humans intimately interact with, architecture is fundamentally a spatial territorialisation² whose primary use is human occupation. Architecture is sensual: it serves as the visual background and context of urban life, a±ects the movement of sound and other types of vibration, interfaces haptic perception, and channels the �ow of its inhabitants, facilitating or obstructing social interaction. As the substrate upon which human experience plays out, architecture is inherently aesthetic—a bridge between pure utility and the seemingly hermetic realm of art. Just as art is a re�ection of life, architecture re�ects the wants and needs of an audience whose ideological subjecthood must be spatially and temporally contextualised. Buildings are, among other things, a concrete articulation of a culture's relation to nature³. �us, 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 interpellation4 and homogenisation, accumulating people and capital alike. Individuals populate urban environments as anonymous quantities—their rei�ed existences are de�ned by the condensation, acceleration, and distillation of production, consumption, and its continual evolution. �e boundary between human and object blurs as commodities produce and are produced, varying only super�cially 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

1 Concepts can be understood as objects of the mind, the first execution of an idea to be explored and matured before its execution in the physical world.

2 Elizabeth Grosz, “Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture.” In Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, 11. Columbia University Press, NEW YORK, 2008, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/gros14518.4. Accessed 28 Feb. 2020.

3 Pauline von Bonsdor©, “Building and the Naturally Unplanned.” In The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, edited by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, Columbia University Press, New York, 2005, pp. 81. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/ligh13502.9. Accessed 28 Feb. 2020.

4 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays, edited by Ben Brewster, 85–120. Monthly Review Press, 2001.

Technology forPost-AnthropocenicIdeology

23 Cyrus Hung Hau Ng

collection of buildings re�ecting an international formula uniform in intention, material, and organisation. �e infrastructural composition and spatial arrangement, construction materials, and maintenance needs are determined by and rely on international standards of production, trade, and aesthetics. Manifesting an unchanged ideology, the universal presence of such buildings in cities normalise and maintain outdated sensibilities ratherthan represent cutting-edge technological possibilities.

One object of study is the James R. �ompson Center, a building in Chicago which houses Illinois state government o¼ces. A tall glass and steel building with a 17-story open atrium, the imposing structure is an image of the government’s grandeur, transparency, and rationality. Exemplifying modernist principles in its construction, structure, aesthetic,atmospheric envelope, and consumptive footprint, the �ompson Center combines thermally conductive materials, superabundant scale, and an impermeable and unbreathable air envelope5 without regard to Chicago’s climate and geographical situation. In order to maintain a stable and comfortable climate in such an excessive amount of space, processes of heating in the winter and cooling in the summer are overburdened and thereby consume massive amounts of energy. Typical of 20th century applications of HVAC systems, the �ompson Center’s impermeable envelope is designed as a barrier between the exterior and interior in order to cultivate a homogenous, ideal interior environment.6 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. �e modern building’s delineating character can also be understood as a microcosmic model for cities, in which a similar con�guration of interior and exterior occurs both economically and sociopolitically. Such an in�exible HVAC system is unable to adapt to the extreme and constantly �uctuating temperature of Chicago; the �ompson 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.

�e automated climate adjustments of the �ompson 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. �is 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 architectureand 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 referencingthe environment.

[...]

By contrast, the architectural achievements of Zimbabwean architect Mick Pearce signi�cantly deviate from current norms of HVAC and building membrane non-permeability. As the lead architect, Pearce wanted his buildings to re�ect two tenetsof his philosophy of “tropical architecture”—�rst, that design principles developedin the temperate northern hemisphere7 are ill-suited to tropical climates like Zimbabwe’s; and second, that e±ective design should draw inspiration from local nature.8 While temperature regulation and constant air�ow 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

5 Michelle Addington, “Contingent Behaviours.” In Architectural Design: Energies, 14. Vol. 79, no. 3, May 2009, doi:10.1002/ad.882.

6 Ibid., 14.

7 Design principles which are taken for granted by the International Style.

8 J Scott Turner, “Beyond Biomimicry: What Termites Can Tell Us about Realizing the Living Building.” In First International Conference on Industrialized, Intelligent Construction (I3CON), 5. 14 May 2008.

24C. Ng

Centre, Pearce studied the architecture of termite mounds to devise alternate ventilation and circulation methods; his becoming-termite9 aided the realisation that the principle of induced air�ow could be utilised to ventilate interior spaces. While fresh, cool air was drawn in through openings placed at the bottom of the shopping center, rising hot air trapped in the high-thermal-capacity walls during the day would be released by the cold nighttime temperature.¹0 A further iteration of this system was realised in his design of the undulating ceiling panels of Council House 2, which simultaneously collects and releases hot air from the building during the day.

Pearce’s innovations are powerful indicators of how the innate knowledge developed by non-human animals can inform contextually and materially appropriate designs. However, 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 callthe “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 �uxes 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. �e 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. �e 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.

9 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari. “1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible...'' In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 232-309. Continuum, 2004.

10 Turner, “Beyond Biomimicry: What Termites Can Tell Us about Realizing the Living Building”, 5

11 Ibid., 12

25 C. Ng

Charlie Kang, Ta�y,

2019, Oil on canvas, 31.5 x 40 in.

De�ning “Western”: the indiscreet de�nition of “Western” within Art History Discipline“Western” has become a frequently mentioned issue within the art history discipline. Globalization leads to stress the “Western” root of the discipline. Generalist art historian James Elkins argued that, “all possible narratives—indeed, any writing that appears to the reader as art history—is Western”.¹ Art historian Hans Belting similarly argued that, “art history...was a local game that worked only for Western art and only from the Renaissance onwards.”² �e in�uence of the term “Western” within the discipline is evident. While the discourses continue to initiate new theories and arguments, the term itself was rarely elaborated with speci�cation. Geographical, historical, or sociopolitical context was often neglected. “Western” is commonly being automatically assumed as a geographical indication of European or Euro-Americans. �is assumption is reinforced in a contemporary setting where globalization has deeply impacted the art history discourse. Consequently, “Western” is being criticized by default. �e issues regarding generalization and lack of speci�cation of the term “Western” leads to a false fundamental information delivery and risk to cause sociopolitical controversies. �is article will show the ambiguity of “Western”s’ de�nitions and the indiscreet uses of the term without any intellectual consideration, and willultimately argue that the term so frequently mentioned is essentially a term unable to be de�ned.

�e incoherence of the term’s de�nition is the result of the varying responses made under di±erent discourses. However, there is the risk of creating false cultural and historical assumptions, if the de�nition is not uni�ed with historical context. Art historian Jonathan Harrison published a book which provides dictionary de�nitions 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 �erefore, the de�nition of the term “Western” drastically shifts even within the agreed geographical borders.

�e online encyclopedia Wikipedia de�ned Western Art, as “�e art of Europe, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe.”4 �is de�nition provided by Wikipedia holds no credibility as an academic citation, however is a great example of irresponsibility de�ning the term “Western” within art history that leads to general misunderstanding.�is is an example of a wildly accessed encyclopedia portraying “Western” art as European art without any proper research or explanation. As a result, the de�nition 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.5 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 �awed if engaging with a closer look.

1 Elkins, James. 2010. Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History. Hong Kong; London: Hong Kong University Press. 9.

2 Belting, Hans. 2009. "The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums."Hatje Cantz. 45.

3 Harris, Jonathan. 2006. Art History: The Key Concepts. London; New York: Routledge.336.

4 “Art of Europe.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, November 23, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Europe.

5 Belting, Hans. 2003. Art History After Modernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ix.

27 Barbie Kim

Harris pointed out that on the surface, “Western” seems to be a clear idea that represents as a United States and Western European perspectives.”6 Harris’s concept re�ected the geographical complexity when de�ning the term “Western.” �is concept indicated the inconsistency and lack of a uni�ed geographical idea when mentioning this. Harris’s concept of “Western” is being limited to Western Europe re�ected the main contradictions and issues being raised. �is speci�cation is inconsistent and neglected by the art historians who considered “Western” as Euro-American. Belting pointed out in his book Art History After Modernism that “the unity of Western Art, which has become uncertain, gained its common pro�le from the contrast to that of East European art.”7 As indicated, there is a neglection between the drastic distinction between Western-Europe and Eastern-Europe. �erefore, not specifying or acknowledging this di±erence leads to creating assumption and generalizing Europe.

�e neglection of Eastern Europe can lead to delivering false information and reinforces the exclusivity. It is crucial to point out this neglecting of discourse regarding Eastern-European 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.8 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.”9 �erefore, 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, re�ected that, “�ediscipline of art history is in the process of reinventing itself to take mobility and the intersections with the global into better account.”¹0 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 �is showed the rising awareness of creating a uni�ed tendency within art historical studies which many labeled as “Western.” However this critique of “Western” can cause even more �awed information delivery due to the evident lack in speci�cation of what is considered as “Western” in these discourses. If following Harris’s indication, what is being considered as “Western” requires a revisit.

�e 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. �e 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 de�nition of “Western” is only provided for context. Although there is no agreed or concluded de�nition 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 globalizationmakes drastic impacts.

Although art historians have been critically attempting to point out the issues of ‘Western”, this self-re�ection 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

6 Harris, Jonathan. 2006. Art History: The Key Concepts. 337.

7 Belting, Hans. Art History After Modernism. 53.

8 Ibid. 54.

9 Ibid. 54.

10 Manthorne, Katherine. "Remapping American Art." American Art 22, no. 3 (2008). doi:10.1086/595811. 112.

11 Elkins, James. 2002. Stories of Art. New York: Routledge. 19.

28B. Kim

outside…”¹² It is important to acknowledge the unavoidable issues even this paper holds through the examination of “Western.” �e approach and discourses is still within the larger art historical discipline, which is being argued as showing the “Western” tendency. While therooted “Western” in�uences 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 de�nitions of the term itself.

Belting stated that, “willingly or not, we are confronted with the dissolution of the universalsigni�cant of western art and historiography.”¹³ It is fair to say that whatever one might de�ne as “Western,” it is a larger system which art historians within the art history discipline as a collective cannot avoid. �erefore, by not addressing the issues in de�nitions and predispositions of “Western” is to risk the colonialism within the term to expand. In addition, without speci�cation of what “Western” can easily lead to unnecessary sociopolitical con�icts within and beyond art history discipline. While it is agreed by art historians that art history is in�uenced 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. �e indiscreet de�nition of “Western” will lead to various consequences, hence for a more informed discourse the speci�city is required.

12 Belting, Hans. Art History After Modernism. 169.

13 Ibid.vii.

29 B. Kim

�e Politics ofAsian Hip Hop

I know this foreign, and if you fuck wit it, you keep it trueBut if you don’t, we come in peace, love, we hope that you keep it you.No Hook - Bohan Phoenix (feat. �e Higher Brothers)

Hip hop is a musical genre that originated in African American and African diasporic communities in inner-city New York in the 1970s. It is “quintessentially (an) African American cultural form and diasporic expression, especially in the contexts of subcultural, underground resistance against the dominant hegemony.”¹

Yet, recently there has been a surge of music reporting on a phenomenon uno¼cially termed the “new wave of Asian hip hop.”² However, the in�ux of Asian hip hop should not come as a surprise to Western audiences. As Genius writes, “for others, it was an important step in an emerging movement that has been steadily gaining momentum over the past few years—enter the Asian hip-hop wave.”³ �e roots of Asian hip hop run deep and have ties to the growth of multiculturalism and globalisation in the 1980s. Many countries in Asia have developed thriving underground and “over ground” hip hop scenes and have adapted and hybridized the African American music genre with their domestic culture.

�e 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 Noise makes the claim that although hip hop was a form that originated from African American communities, it has become a global style. In particular, the rapid economic and social development of countries in Asia in the 1980s and 1990s opened up the countries to a greater �ow of culture, information and technology. It is in this period of economic and political stability that youth culture became increasingly liberal, idealistic and consumerist.In many circumstances, this in�uence on popular culture is seen as a result of the westernisation of Asia, which can be attributed to many factors such as the alignment of 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.4 Ultimately, it can be seen that the forces of globalisation, be it in terms of ushering in socio-economic stability or proliferating aspectsof 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”.5 Taking this into consideration, we can see how the global in�uence 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. �e 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 speci�cities.

1 Hae-Kyung Um, “The Poetics of Resistance and the Politics of Crossing Borders: Korean Hip-Hop and ‘Cultural Reterritorialisation”, Popular Music 32, no. 1 (2013), 52

2 Amy X Wang, "America Isn't Ready for Asian Rappers. They're Taking Over Anyway", Rolling Stone (August 19, 2019), http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/88rising-joji-kris-wu-asian-rap-takeover-727420/.

3 Kevin Loo, “Inside The New Wave of Asian Hip-Hop”, Genius (June 13, 2017), genius.com/a/inside-the-new-wave-of-asian-hip-hop.

4 Noriko Manabe, “Representing Japan: ‘National’ Style among Japanese Hip-Hop DJs”, (Popular Music, vol. 32, no. 1, 2013) pp. 35–50.

5 Andrew Bennett, Cultures of Popular Music, (Open University Press, 2001), 94.

31 Megan Lim En

“Hip hop scenes have rapidly developed from an adoption to an adaptation of US musical forms and idioms”. When adapted by artists in other regions, there is “an increasing syncretism and incorporation of local linguistic and musical features.”6 In examining the hip 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.

1. Musical Qualities

One of the most direct forms of adaptation is the incorporation of local music instruments in hip hop tracks. For example, Seo Taeji’s Hayeoga incorporates the traditional Korean instrument, Taepyeongso, in a solo performed by Kim Deok-su. Another example can beseen in MC Sniper’s use of �ute, sither and Buddhist wooden percussion in Buddha Baby.

In the DJ scene, Japanese DJ Krush furthers the use of instrumentation by simulating heterophony in his tracks. With many Asian instruments, music is played heterophonically “where each voice or instrument plays a variation of a basic melody; performers need not be in synchronization”.7 DJ Krush often employs this concept by overlapping musical samples on di±erent timelines, as seen in his track Parallel Distortion. In an interview, DJ Krush explains that his decision to incorporate Japanese instruments and musical concepts came about from his collaboration with American hip hop artists, “I didn’t want to imitate American hip-hoppers”.8

By utilizing the postmodern quality of hip hop that allows for sampling, mixing and hybridization of di±erent musical qualities, Asian hip hop artists found a way to incorporate distinct musical sounds and concepts from their own culture. �is 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.9

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 recon�gure 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 followedsuit, discovering other techniques such as using Sino-Japanese compounds, borrowed words (katakana) or English words.¹0

�is 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 rede�ne the genre in accordance to their own musical sensibilities and national language. �ere is an added pressure on these Asian artists to negotiate the multiple consciousness that is held of them:

6 Tony Mitchell, Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2001)

7 Manabe, “Representing Japan”, 38.

8 Interview with DJ Krush, September 2008.

9 Angel Lin, “Independent Hip Hop Artists in Hong Kong: Cultural Capitalism, Youth Subcultural Resistance, and Alternative Modes of Cultural Production.” Mobile and Popular Culture: "Mobile and Pop in Asia", vol. 1 (2006).

10 Noriko Manabe. “Globalisation and Japanese Creativity: Adaptations of Japanese Language to Rap” (Ethnomusicology, vol. 50, no. 1, 2006) pp. 1–36.

32M. En

the expectations of the West, the preferences of the domestic audience, an awareness of hip hop trends globally and the artists’ own cultural identity and musical strengths.

Hip hop in America is fundamentally political, emerging from a disenfranchised community. With rising “Asian hip hop” labels like 88RISING, it can be easy to regard Asian hip hop simply as an aestheticisation of American hip hop. However, doing so would deny the way that hip hop has begun to function in the same manner in Asia—as an expression of youth culture and political sentiment. Asian hip hop artists wield the genre as a tool for political commentary or activism, localizing the function of hip hop in its domestic context.

In countries like Korea and Japan, it has been observed that “hip hop embraces aesthetic and ethical themes rather than political controversy”.¹¹ �e era of rapid economic development and pragmatism, coupled together with the conservative values of East Asian societies, has created excessive societal pressure on the younger generation. Hip hop is then embraced asan outlet for the articulation of these pressures and discontentment. �is can be clearly seenin 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.

�e 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 embodiesthe qualities of hip hop as an instrument of empowerment.

In other countries such as Vietnam and �ailand, hip hop is not just a tool for self-expression, but a subversive form of political expression. Vietnamese rapper Suboi’s 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 anddirect 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'sjust say I keep it poetic”.¹² Hip hop has become an underground expression of discontentthat can evade the iron �st of the government.

�e mainstream appeal of hip hop also allows for youths to reclaim their political voice. In 2018, �ai rap group Rap Against Dictatorship released . �e song’s lyrics challenge the military dictatorship that currently runs �ailand:

e country whose capital is turned into a killing �eldWhose charter is written and erased by the army’s bootse country that points a gun at your throatWhere you must choose to eat the truth or bullets

�e 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. �e 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.

11 Um, Poetics, 58

12 Ethan Harfenist, “Censorship Doesn't Keep Vietnam's Rappers from Speaking Their Piece” (Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 13 July 2015), www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-©-vietnam-hip-hop-20150712-story.html.

13 Hannah Beech, “A Rap Challenger to the Thai Military Junta” (The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Feb. 2019), www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/world/asia/rap-video-thailand-liberate-p.html.

33 M. En

Sam Oh, Chair II,

2018, Oil on canvas, 22 x 23 in.

In Marc Chagall’s e Praying Jew1, the stark color palette and careful balance in composition creates a representation of Hasidic Judaism that goes beyond just documentation to the creation of it as symbolic. Chagall most noticeably used a very limited color palette that straysvery little from the gray scale, with heavy emphasis on black and white. �ere is onlydeparture when it comes to the depiction of the �gure, the man in Hasidic prayer clothes, where light �esh and blue is used to emphasize the body. �e choice of color is one that isvery predominate when considering this piece as it is drawn from the tallit and phylacteries that the man wears, adopting “the white and black color scheme and geometric patterns characterizing this ritual garb as the basis for a dazzling composition of highly abstracted shapes.”2 �e geometric shapes that are utilized along with the heavy use of black whitecreate a very bold look as most areas are de�ned by value or color rather than a contour line. Overall this leads to a very smooth, �nished feel to the piece that is also emphasized by the technique Chagall uses in the application of the paint itself since brushstrokes are not obviously visible.

�is rather smooth look leaves any texture in the piece left in how the colors are blended. While the palette is limited, it also explores the full value of the colors utilized. �ere’s not stark color-blocking of pure shades but rather a utilizing of blending which creates a balance between abstraction and realism. �is can indicate the many in�uences on Chagall’s work that ultimately leads to it being very distinct from any possible classi�cation. 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. �e 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.3 e Praying Jew especially seems to visually associate with Cubism the most distinctly. �e 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. �e 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.”4

�e 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 in�uence 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 in�uences Chagall worked under and transformed:

1 Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew, 1923 (one of two versions after a 1914 composition), oil on canvas, 46 x 35 3/16 in., Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago.

2 Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham Collection.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, no. 2 (1994), 148.

3 Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham Collection.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, no. 2 (1994), 148.

4 Douglas W. Druick, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 121.

An Examinationof the Cubist In�uencein Chagall’s�e Praying Jew

35 Jessy Beth Lambke

5 Katherine Kuh, “Marc Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1946), 90.

6 Katherine Kuh, “Marc Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1946), 90.

7 Douglas W. Druick, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 121.

8 Margherita Andreotti, “The Joseph Winterbotham Collection.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, no. 2 (1994), 148.

9 Katherine Kuh, “Marc Chagall.” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1946), 90.

Whether his medium is oil, water color, gouache or print, his idiom remains his own. He is never a Cubist though he borrows at times the Cubists’ method of transparency and 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 de�ned as a Romanticist who has founded no school but none the less in�uence contemporary art.5

While Chagall’s formal borrowing of Cubist forms is worthy of discussion as it is still relevant to the reading of the work, it seems like only the beginning of comprehending Chagall’s formal choices in regard to the content of the piece. �e idea of the “Cubists’ method of transparency and simultaneity”6 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”7 as well as bringing this world into his modern day. �e abstracted �gures that tie into this discussion of Cubist techniques also allow for Chagall’s portrait to take on a life beyond documentation. �at by capturing this life that he found dying in a space that was no longer real and in a non-naturalist manner, the portrait of a Hasidic man praying became a representation of this

culture outside of space and time itself, creating “an icon or symbol for an entire world, the Jewish world of Chagall’s youth”8 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 in�uenced bywhathe’s observed in art but taking these techniques and making them unique to him andhis 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.”9 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. �is once again leads to the question if art can really be subjectively viewed without interpretation if every decision has some weight and intention?

36J. Lambke

Upon the DVD release of Claude Chabrol’s �rst two features, critic Royal S. Brown wrote that his style “does not challenge the norms of standard narrative �lmmaking in ways that we associate with the output of his New Wave colleagues such as Godard, Resnais, Rivette, and even Rohmer.”¹ To modern audiences it may be seen as stylistically conservative compared to his cohort, but at the time of release of his �rst feature, Le beau Serge, it was lauded by mainstream critics as well as the Cahiers du cinéma circle. François Tru±aut, upon seeing the �lm at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, remarked that “Technically the �lm is as masterful as if Chabrol had been directing for ten years, though this is his �rst contact with a camera. Here is an unusual and courageous �lm that will raise the level of French cinema this year.”² In its apparent tameness, Terrence Ra±erty is quick to point out that

Le beau Serge is a picture that can be imagined otherwise, as a far more conventional, and 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 this perspective: if the principles of the nouvelle vague could transform this rural drama so decisively, then they were capable of anything.³

Set in the town of Sardent, we follow François (Jean-Claude Brialy) as he returns home to recover from a serious illness.4 Upon his arrival, a canted high-angle shot à la Hitchcock reveals an old friend, Serge (Gérard Blain), as he drunkenly stumbles across the town square with his father-in-law, Glomaud (Edmond Beauchamp) (�g. 1). François is bothered when Serge doesn’t recognize him, and becomes preoccupied by how he became a lout and the village drunk. �e majority of the plot centers on François’ vision of taking Serge up as a pet-project to “�x” into a well-adjusted young man. As the �lm progresses, major tensions emerge as Serge and the townspeople push back on François’ disruptive homecoming,and in a latent homosexual tension between Serge and François. �roughout this comes a romantic subplot between François and Marie (Bernadette Lafont), Serge’s sister-in-law. �eir burgeoning romance is condemned by her adoptive father, who secretly wants her for himself. Ultimately, the �lm aims to explore the purpose, both psychological and social,of homecoming—as A.H. Weiler puts it, the �lm is an “illustration of the idea that you can’t, or shouldn’t, go home again.”5 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 natural lighting, hiring his friends as collaborators, and �lming on location.6 Upon its theatrical release, Chabrol’s spendthriftness and stylistic choices proved to be viable in both critical and commercial realms.7 �e French New Wave is oft-cited as beginning with this 1958 �lm.8 �ough �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 wasmade during a decade ripe in bureaucracy and competing cinematic trends, where a �lmlike Varda’s could easily fall through the cracks.

1 Brown, Royal S. “Le Beau Serge/Les Cousins.” Cineaste 37, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 54–56. Accessed April 15, 2020.

2 Le Beau Serge - Claude Chabrol: NEW WAVE CLASSICS Review & Analysis. Accessed April 15, 2020.

3 Ra©erty, Terrence. “Le Beau Serge: Homecomings.” The Criterion Collection, September 19, 2011. Accessed April 15, 2020.

4 Sardent for Chabrol, much like Sète for Varda, was a town to which he had fled during the Vichy occupation of France during WWII, and spent much of his boyhood there.

5 Weiler, A. H. “France's Angry Young Men; ' Le Beau Serge' Opens at the 55th Street.” The New York Times, August 3, 1959. Accessed April 15, 2020.

6 Ra©erty, Terrence. “Le Beau Serge: Homecomings.” The Criterion Collection, September 19, 2011. Accessed April 15, 2020.

7 Ibid.

8 Harper, Dan. “Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge.” Senses of Cinema, June 4, 2014. Accessed April 15, 2020.

La Pointe Courte:A Film in History

37 Charlie Miller

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.9 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.”¹0 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. �ese �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.¹4 �e 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.¹5 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

9 Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson, and Je© Smith. Film Art: An Introduction. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2020. pp. 461. Accessed April 15, 2020.

10 Neupert, Richard John. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. pp. 60. Accessed April 15, 2020.

11 Bénézet, Delphine. The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism. Wallflower Press, 2014. pp. 49. Accessed April 15, 2020.

12 Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema. pp. 45. Accessed April 15, 2020.

13 Ibid. pp. 45.

14 Ibid. pp. 3.

15 Ibid. pp. 8.

38C. Miller

Europe and the world. As stated earlier, since Varda worked outside industry pathways, she was unable to distribute her �lm theatrically and thus was denied the monetary capital that has always been tied to cinema. �is essay is invested in exploring the ways in which these movements appear in the �lm, how the �lm operates as an encapsulation of wider European cinematic modes of production, and the e±ect of Varda working outside traditional models of cinema production within France. I will �rst brie�y discuss the impact of Italian neorealism upon Varda’s work before moving on to a discussion of “Tradition of Quality” cinema and its linkages to the French economy.

In André Bazin and Italian Neorealism, Bert Cardullo writes that the term neorealism was �rst applied to Luchino Visconti’s 1942 �lm Ossessione and quickly became a widespread phenomena in Italian cinema.¹6 He goes on to describe the points of connection between these �lms, writing that

�ese pictures reacted not only against the banality that had long been the dominant mode of Italian cinema, but also against prevailing socioeconomic conditions in Italy. With minimal resources, the neorealist �lmmakers worked in real locations using local 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. �us Italian neorealism was the �rst postwar cinema to liberate �lmmaking from the arti�cial con�nes of the studio, and,by extension, from the Hollywood-originated studio system.¹7

�is 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. �is, like with neorealism, produced a sense of documentary. As Varda later said, “[�e �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.”¹8 As such, straddling the divide between �ctive and documentary subjects, La Pointe Courte directly recalls the e±orts by the neorealists to re�ect 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 re�ect 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.”¹9 �is 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. �e �lm’s visuals also recall the work of Italian neorealists. Inthe 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.’”²0 Her camera is mobile, constantly seeking what comes to bea delicate balance between documentary-like footage and shots which re�ect 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. �ese elements combine not to give the work the sense of being derivative of neorealism, but simply that of being heavily in�uenced by their works. �e 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 tofurther 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

16 Cardullo, Bert. “What Is Neorealism?” In André Bazin and Italian Neorealism. pp. 19. Accessed April 15, 2020.

17 Ibid. pp. 19.

18 Fieschi, Jean-Andre, & Ollier, Claude. “A Secular Grace: Agnès Varda.” From Cahiers du cinéma, no. 165, April 1965, included in Agnès Varda: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2014. pp. 24. Accessed April 15, 2020.

19 Ibid. pp. 24.

20 Ibid. pp. 26.

21 Ibid. pp. 26.

39 C. Miller

by the formation of two �lm companies, Gaumont and Pathé Frères.²² �ese studios were instrumental in expanding the form and distribution of cinema throughout Europe and the world. As Emilie Bickerton writes, “France had the largest output of any nation in theworld up to 1914, contributing 90 per cent of all �lms distributed internationally.”²³ As theFrench �lm industry was out-competing other national cinemas year after year, they also began to shift the tides in cinematic form from comedic shorts and féeries to narrative storytelling, as well as bureaucratize the production process by splitting the creation of a�lm into its constituent parts: the screenwriter, director, studio head, and the like.²4 Bureaucracy likewise extended to advancement within the �lm industry, and wouldrequire �lm professionals to commit years of experience before being able to direct, which was still in place during the 1950s.²5 For a young artist, this made it practically impossibleto direct �lm projects and release the �lm theatrically. Once an artist became viable todirect, they would have to work with rigid constraints upon the form and content of their�lm, which became known as “Tradition of Quality” cinema.

“Tradition of Quality” is a term which began to be applied to the �lms made after the creation of the Centre nationale du cinéma et l’image animée (CNC) in 1946, “an arm of the French Ministry of Culture dedicated to maintaining a coherent national cinema strategy, to describe the kind of �lmmaking that the French government wanted to promote in the postwar era.”²6 As cited in Rodney Hill’s essay “�e New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques Demy’s ‘�e Umbrellas of Cherbourg,’” Alan Williams writes that “‘Quality’ meant, �rst of all, that the �lms could not be inferior to the best American products, either technically… or materially.”²7 Of critical importance in the emergence of “Tradition of Quality” cinema was the deal signed between French and Italian governments which gave certain advantages to French-Italian co-productions. With a consistent �nancial base and wider distribution audience, �lms began to be made with large-scale sets and classical narrative structure in 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 thepolitical sphere, populated in the 1950s by the uncomfortable aftermath of World War Two, the Cold War, and massive imperialist endeavors and decolonizations playing out in wars in Algeria and Indochina. As François Tru±aut writes, “One sees how competent the promoters of the ‘Tradition of Quality’ are in choosing only subjects that favour the misunderstandings on which the whole system rests.”²8 �at is, the CNC approved of �lms that aligned with France’s national branding. �roughout the 1950s the CNC did not actively censor so muchas e±ectively create a programmatic self-censorship in directors and writers for the screen. �is Cerebus of cinematic power operated in the Foucauldian sense of the apparatus, in thatit was a “thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures… philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions.”²9 Indeed, the formation of a state-sponsored agencyof cinematic production whose signifying body of work consisted of that which corresponded with the a±ective sensitivity of the state resulted in a monoculture of �lms unable to exist beyond the realms of entertainment and propaganda. Following Annette Kuhn’s argument, 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 actively denied expression in them.”³0 �is is all to say that the �lms of this period, created roughly between 1946 and 1958, were re�ective 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 befound in that period, now somewhat neglected, of French �lm history.”³¹ �e Cahiers du cinéma crowd would disagree, however.

22 Abel, Richard. The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896-1914. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. Accessed April 15, 2020.

23 Bickerton, Emilie. A Short History of Cahiers Du Cinéma. London: Verso, 2011. Accessed April 15, 2020.

24 Green, Pamela B., director. Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché. Be Natural Productions, 2018. Amazon Video. Accessed April 15, 2020.

25 “Agnès Varda on LA POINTE COURTE.” The Criterion Channel. Accessed April 15, 2020.

26 Hill, Rodney. "The New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"." Cinema Journal 48, no. 1 (2008): 27-50. Accessed April 15, 2020.

27 Ibid. pp. 30.

28 Tru©aut, François. “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema.” In Cahiers Du Cinéma: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Accessed April 15, 2020.

29 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books, n.d. Accessed April 15, 2020.

30 Kuhn, Annette. Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality: 1909-1925. London: Routledge, 1988. Accessed April 15, 2020.

31 Hill, "The New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality." pp. 30.

40C. Miller

In his essay for Cahiers du cinéma titled “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” François Tru±aut rails against “Tradition of Quality” �lms and its screenwriters, particularly 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 considered a major step towards auteur theory.³³ �is opinion about “Tradition of Quality” is largely informed by Tru±aut’s reputation as a �lmmaker and his in�uence during and after 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 considered the creatives working under the banner of “Tradition of Quality” to be hacks, 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 put on artists trying to work in the industry did not allow young creatives to create theirown original work right away, which was frustrating to many young people.³4 In the 1950s, the youth were creating a distinction between themselves and previous generations. As Richard Neupert writes in A History of the French New Wave Cinema,

“[�e] nouvelle vague was initially a blanket term for fundamental social changes that de�ned 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.”³5

�ere 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. �is 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.”³6 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.³7 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.”³8 Indeed, as Colin Crisp argues, “�is 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.”³9 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. �ese 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

32 Tru©aut, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” in Cahiers Du Cinéma: The 1950s.

33 Ibid. pp. 30.

34 Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema. pp. xxi.

35 Ibid. pp. 21.

36 Ibid. pp. 8.

37 Ibid. pp. 9.

38 Ibid. pp. 10.

39 Ibid. pp. 8. Accessed April 15, 2020.

41 C. Miller

among the youth, whose opinions grew increasingly critical of the national cinema (for reasons stated previously), save for a few heroic exceptions: Jean-Pierre Melville (sometimes referred to as a “spiritual father” of the New Wave), Robert Bresson, and Jean Renoir. A high interest in American �lms—which were decidedly darker in their themes—also were in�uential to young creatives who too wanted to make �lms about wayward youth and unsustainable romance. Hollywood, after all, is not explicitly run or funded by the United States government.40 �ese combined factors and interests imbued a real sense of purpose to create a new, independent cinema, divorced from older generations’ ideas that French movies necessarily had to re�ect a speci�c idea of French culture. La Pointe Courte was championed by one frequenter of Parisian ciné-clubs, André Bazin, who fought for the �lm to be screened out-of-competition at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival and in ciné-clubs throughout the city.4¹ �e �lm, because it could not be screened theatrically, had to be embraced by community organizations like the ciné-clubs. �is 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 unableto 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. �e signi�cance 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. �ese 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 wayswe �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, in�uence, 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 de�nitive 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. �e 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.

40 Streich, Birgit. "Propaganda Business: The Roosevelt Administration and Hollywood." Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 16, no. 1 (1990): 43-65. Accessed April 15, 2020.

41 Fieschi & Ollier, “A Secular Grace: Agnès Varda.” Included in Agnès Varda: Interviews. pp. 25. Accessed April 15, 2020.

42C. Miller

Taylor Augustine, Guide,

2019, Oil on panel, 24 x 18 in.

�e oil on canvas painting done by the French artist Charles-Émile Callande de Champmartin (1797-1883), simply shows a deceased head, its eyes closed peacefully, nestled in white fabrics.¹ �e painting is situated in the Art Institute of Chicago, next to Head of a Guillotined Man (1818 or 1819) which depicts (as one can guess from the title) a guillotined head. While sitting in front of those two paintings, I had a conversation with Larissa Borteh, an instructor at the 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 on the right, Head of a Guillotined Man and that this beheaded painter, �éodore Géricault (1791-1824) was obsessed with collecting and studying dead body parts. (Fig. 1) At the time, I merely thought “what karma, that the head of an artist who is so infatuated in painting dead limbs and heads is painted in the same manner.”

Further scavenging of the work’s attribution and provenance unraveled the mystery, con�rming the �gure in the painting to be Géricault from Géricault’s death mask. Nonetheless, it failed to fully answer the most critical question of its proposition. Both the painting and the artist are not evaluated exclusively, but are mentioned with a lack of interest throughout the art 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 friend has become a caricature despite his intention. �is statement disregards the culture of death that Champmartin and his contemporaries, including Géricault, shared and undermined Champartin’s artistic capacity. Champmartin, who remained an intimate friend throughout Géricault’s life, utilized the strong stylization and purposeful ambiguity of éodore Géricault on His Deathbed to reveal Géricault through multiple facets.

Con�rming the Figure of the painting

�e painting’s jumbled history of attributions did resolve my pessimism but brought about a new inquiry:

In 1884, the painting was revealed to the public for Champmartin Sale.² Even though the label found with the painting, “Géricault (�) / 69 – Téte d’homme sur son lit de more, provident de la coll. Champmartin.’”, seemingly con�rmed its provenance, art historians such as Lorenz Eitner strongly defended Géricault’s attribution.³ She claimed that the compelling painting had no reason to be Champmartin’s, but its “energy of conception and vigour of execution is strongly marked by the mind and hand of Géricault.”4 In 1937, the Art Institute of Chicago acquired the After Death (Study), thought to be made in 1818 or 1819 by Géricault – as part of the A. A. Muger Collection from Paris J.Rosner, an agent for Richard Goetz.5 �e painting was considered part of the artist’s study of decapitated heads and limbs in preparation for his masterpiece, e Raft of Medusa6. In 1978, Philip Grunchec doubted the attribution “on the grounds that the drapery, in particular, bore no resemblance to other works” by Géricault.”7 Grunchec’s suspicions were con�rmed in 1985: the institution �nally cleaned the painting and found a signature in red, “E. Champmartin”, in the upper left corner of the painting.8 (Fig. 4) �e 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

1 His name varies in sources: Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin, Charles Emile Callande de Champmartin or Charles Champmartin. I will address him as “Champmartin” from now on for the convenience.

2 The Art Institute of Chicago, Théodore Géricault on his Deathbed: Provenance History (The Art Institute of Chicago Database).

3 C. Simon Dickinson, Theodore GÉRICAULT : Portrait of a man, probably the engraver François Godefroy, on his deathbed, (Catalogue from Simon C. Dickinson LTD, London).

4 Ibid, 165.

5 The Art Institute of Chicago, Théodore Géricault on his Deathbed: Provenance History.Eitner. Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, 165.

6 The Art Institute of Chicago, GÉRICAULT, Théodore, AFTER DEATH (An older label from object file in the Art Institute of Chicago).Art Institute of Chicago. An Illustrated Guide to the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, 32.The Art Institute of Chicago, Dead man’s head (An object File from the AIC European Painting and Sculpture Department).

7 Dickinson, Theodore GÉRICAULT : Portrait of a man, probably the engraver François Godefroy, on his deathbed.

8 Ibid.

�éodore Géricault on His Deathbed

45 Jin Charlie Kang

9 Title changes made by the European Painting and Sculpture department and noted in the Art Institute of Chicago collection database., Email from Devon Lee Pyle-Vowles, the Collection Manger of the European Painting and Sculpture department.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Eugène Delacroix, The Journal of Eugéne Delacroix (trans. Walter Pach. Grove Inc., 1961).

European painting department and Gloria Groom, the curator in the institution, “noted that the subject is not a ‘Severed Head’ and that the title needed more research and changed it to After Death (Study).9 Just a year ago, September 6, 2018, the current curator of the department, Emerson Bowyer, changed the title and the date of the work: éodore Géricault on hisDeathbed, 1824 (the year Géricault died).¹0

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) �e �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 �us, Chenique’s newly found evidence and Delacroix’s journal con�rms the �gure reference of the painting to be Géricault’s death mask but leads to acrucial 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

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.

46J. Kang

of Chicago introduced the work as part of �éodore Géricault’s collection of dead limbs and corpses paintings to prepare for his masterpiece, e Raft of Medusa.¹³ After the correct attribution, the painting became Champmartin’s study of a “severed head.” In her academic journal, art historian Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer argues that Géricault’s corpse paintings are more than just preparation for his masterpiece. She insists that they are in fact, �nished products themselves that sympathetically observe the victims of France’s governmental turmoil and the use of the guillotine.¹4 She brie�y mentions Champmartin’s painting as a product of his participation in Géricault’s “candlelit sessions with severed limbs.”¹5 Similarly, Linda Nochlin, in her book e Body in Pieces: e Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity, brie�y observes Champmartin’s horizontal placement of the “severed head” in After Death, Head of a Dead Man in order to make a comparative observation to �éodore Gericault’s placement of severed heads in his paintings to expose the gore of decapitation.¹6 Nonetheless, previous conversations about éodore Géricault on His Deathbed are hardly accountable as scholars have only acknowledged the �gure of the painting as a “severed head”, not as Champmartin’s contemporary on the deathbed.

After presenting his discovery of two bridgeworks, Chenique brie�y observes the painting. He notes that the stylization of the painting and “the suggestion of a shoulder or a nightshirt visible between the pillow and the sheet,” are solely built from the artist’s imagination.¹7 He states, “despite his [Champmartin’s intent], his over-dramatisation of the subject turned it [the artist’s imagined portrait] into a kind of caricature.”¹8 While Chenique is aware of the 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 deathbed. �is argument underestimates Champmartin’s talent following the historical trend of overshadowing the artist due to his lesser fame. It also overlooks the intimate relationship and culture both artists shared. �rough particular style, Champmartin meticulously creates an ambivalent condition of his friend. �is truly commemorates �éodore Géricault as both an artist and a mortal being.

13 The Art Institute of Chicago, An Illustrated Guide to the Collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, 32.The Art Institute of Chicago, A Label use by the Art Institute of Chicago before 1986.Dickinson, Theodore GÉRICAULT : Portrait of a man, probably the engraver François Godefroy, on his deathbed.

14 Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Géricault’s Severed Heads and Limbs: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Sca¤old (The Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 4, December 1992), 599-618.

15 Ibid, 614.

16 Linda Nochlin, The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity (Thames and Hudson Inc. 1995), 20-23.

17 Bruno Chenique, Max Hollein, Gregor Wedekind, Russell Stockman, and David Wharry, Géricault: Images of Life and Death (Frankfurt : München: Schirn Kunsthalle ; Hirmer, 2013), 140.

18 Ibid, 140.

47 J. Kang

Sam Oh, Corduroy,

2019, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in.

Inside the goldsmith's shop is an assortment of wonder: bourgeois garments in the ring being weighed on a balance, shelves of wrought objects and materials of the goldsmith's trade, counter supporting an elaborately entwined girdle, weights and a box to store them in, coins, and a mirror re�ecting a view outside of the picture space-two fashionably dressed strollers supporting a falcon and a row of houses. It is indicated that the counter is a shopfront through the mirror and understood that it belongs to a goldsmith by the nature of the goods insideof the space.

�ere is an peculiarity: why would Christus, as noted in the Robert Lehman Collection catalogue, depict a goldsmith without any tools of the craft?¹ �e iconography begins to unfold 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 as a saint² characterization was of the work as a vocational altarpiece; the possible portrait of Willem van Fluten, a Bruges goldsmith. �e discontinuities in the understanding of this work call for further investigation of Christus' imagery. Contextualizing A Goldsmith within Central Europe at the mid �fteenth century develops the work as an archival object-elucidating both political and economic relations.

�e organization of the painting is akin to a Wunderkammer: each crevice stores a curiosity that begs to be explored. I am arguing to examine the signi�cance of this work from the inside out. Following the subjects and objects within this painting, from their position within the work outwards, Petrus Christus' 1449 A Goldsmith in his Shop is placed at the center of an evolving speculation of Flemish history.

�e �fteenth century as a point of change in the economic history of Europe has been primarily understood through the change of international trade routes. �is 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."4 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 commodi�ed

1 Charles Sterling, Maryan W., Charles Talbot, Martha Wol©, Egbert Havenkamp-Begeman, Jonathan Brown, John Hayes, The Robert Lehman Collection II: Fifteen to Eighteenth Century Paintings: France, Central Europe, The Netherlands, Spain and Great Britain, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 1998), 65.

² Ibid, 65.

³ Zs P Pach, “The Shifting of International Trade Routes in the 15th-17th Centuries”, Acta Historica Acedemiae Scientiarum Hungarica, Vol. 14, No. 3/4. (Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanties, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1968), 292

4 Ibid, 292.

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

49 Joshua Plekkenpol

5 Boylaert, Clercq, Dumolyn, “Sumptuary Legislation, Material Culture, and the Semiotics of ‘Vivre Noblement’ in the country of Flanders (14th-16th centuries)”, pp. 416.

6 Velden, “Defrocking St. Eloy: Petrus Christus’s ‘Vocational Portrait of a Goldsmith’”, 258.

7 Ibid, 257.

objects in the sense that they were purchasable by the economic elite of that society. However, much suggests that seigniories were 'enclaved commodities,' objects which it was deemed improper to subject frequently to commodity exchange."5 By constructing the appreciation of their labor, the Bruges goldsmith guild created a fetish for speci�c objects by acceleratingtheir role within passing of property and power. �is shared motivation between Philip the Good and the Bruges goldsmith's guild provided a symbiotic solution to each of their respective agendas.

To expand this further, an analysis of the restrictions guilds placed on changing interregional trade that stimulated the capitalist industries of Western Europe is due. �e upper left portion of the painting consists of two shelves, each containing elements of a goldsmith's trade. I would

like to draw attention to the curious vessel on the bottom shelf: a murky, grim vessel for the Eucharist. �e vessel is veiled by the shade of the green cloak dividing the page insofar that it covers the leftmost portion of the vessel. �e visual signi�cance of this vertical line disorients the vessel's aesthetic value. �is 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.6 �is 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?

�us 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 signi�cance 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. Andfurther 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 termsof interregional trade in Central Europe. �rough this we are able to access the gravity ofthe gift as a case study for the restrictions guilds placed on terms of trade. Van der Veldennotes 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."7 �e achievement of a career long professional relationship withthe duke would undoubtedly e±ect the Bruges goldsmith's guild positively.

I believe that the characters re�ected in the mirror contribute to the speculation that has surrounded this painting throughout history. �e 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.

50J. Plekkenpol

I. Introduction

In an ever more politically sensitized, conscious, reformative public sphere, the Encyclopedic museum is at risk of becoming obsolete. We form part of a sociopolitical climate where skepticism reigns supreme and questioning of authority is expected and even encouraged. Identity politics are at the centerfold of public condemnations of acts of racism, sexism, segregation and identity-based exclusion, and the colonially-inscribed history of the Western public museum makes it a natural target for such criticism. For these Encyclopedic, comprehensive, ethnographic institutions¹—those relics of centuries-old colonial interests and Eurocentric principles—relevance in today’s world means accommodating for a new set of values centered around cultural sensitivity and inclusivity, while contending with the colonial vestiges of their past.

As one such museum, the Art Institute of Chicago houses thousands of objects from a myriad of cultures, periods, and contexts. Including that which is deemed ‘art’ within the canon of Western art history, but also material culture or “culturally purposeful objects”² functioning decidedly outside of this schema, the Art Institute necessarily becomes a site of tension, with its traditionally Eurocentric framework competing against the desire tomodernize its infrastructure, both in architecture and public image. Already, the museumhas attempted ingratiation with local indigenous communities through a Land Acknowledgement ceremony, held late last year in commemoration of the Native American tribes forcibly removed from the territory that it now sits on.³ Not incidentally, this was closely preceded by the inde�nite postponement of an upcoming exhibition of Mimbres pottery only months before it was slated to open in May 2019, a widely publicized incident that foregrounded the lack of contemporary indigenous input in the show’s formulation and, more problematically, the museum’s failure to realize that a majority of the objects tobe displayed were actually grave goods looted from Mimbres burial sites. Amidst public statements and quasi-apologies, the Art Institute acknowledged wrongdoings and 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.”4

A less blatant but equally convincing e±ort at ideological reformulation is the update and redesign of several Art Institute galleries in recent years. �e 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 signi�cant 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

1 All are terms that I have come across in varied discourse as labels for the civic museum – large-scale, public, government-funded institutions.

2 Michael Baxandall, “Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 33-41.

3 “Land Acknowledgment,” The Art Institute of Chicago, accessed February 9, 2020, https://www.artic.edu/about-us/land-acknowledgment.

4 Steve Johnson, “Art Institute Postpones Major Native American Pottery Exhibit over Cultural Insensitivity Concerns at the Last Minute,” Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-art-institute-postpones-native-american-pottery-exhibition-0402-story.html.

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

51 Manuela Uribe Arango

anomalous state in the repertoire of the art museum—concerning as they do material culture that is topographically and often temporally removed from the Western articulation of art history—is not diminished by white-pedestalled and sleek-surfaced attempts to the contrary. 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 �e 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. �is 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 con�nes within a very speci�c type of institution. I will thereby brie�y address the culturally-speci�c history of the comprehensive museum model and, more importantly, the ideological status that this very prestigious lineage hasconferred 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.5 Anthony Shelton adds that these “former

5 Victoria Newhouse, Art and the Power of Placement (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2005), 8-42.

52M. Arango

colonial museums” were driven by a motivation “to visibly materialize the totality of a domain over which governmental power strove to assert mastery.” �rough its instantiation of a “presumed universal human disposition towards collecting, the enjoyment of beauty or rarity, and/or curiosity for knowledge,” the museum assumed a legitimizing authority in testifying to the superior nature and intellect of human beings.6 An authority in the �eld of critical museology, Carol Duncan further identi�es the institution’s emulation of monumental ceremonial structures both literally through architectural form and metaphorically through evocation of a ritual space that is “carefully marked o± and culturally designated as reserved for a special quality of attention.”7 Shelton characterizes the museum as a tomb or mausoleum permeated by an air of melancholia; Duncan, as an awe-inducing secularized temple or ceremonial monument.8 In any case, the museum’s inherited legacy, and its authoritative role as mediator between object and viewer, signi�cantly prescribe a certain way to regard and apprehend, a predetermined “way of seeing”.9 Tied to this emblematic performance of the museum as it plays out in the executed display are three issues into which I divide my argumentation: visual regard, agency in viewership, and honesty and transparency.

Centuries of human proclivity towards collection and classi�cation of objects naturally fomented a mode of regard rooted in visual appreciation that was further institutionalized in the Western art museum. Duncan a¼rms that, with the eighteenth-century shift from princely holdings to ostensibly democratic, public collections, objects in museums underwent a “reinvestment of meaning” through the discipline of art history.¹0 �is categorical development has subjected the cultural property traditionally housed in the museum to thesame visual attentiveness applied to other art objects. Svetlana Alpers’ aptly titled “�e Museum as a Way of Seeing” contends that display of material culture ultimately seeks todisplace the object and recontextualize it to �t our de�nition of ‘art’,¹¹ conducive to a valuation of the object on aesthetic terms and consequent confusion of visual interest with cultural or historical value.¹² “Our way of seeing can open itself up to di±erent things, but it 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 reprehensible or unjusti�able; Stephen Greenblatt argues for the potentialities of a gaze that, in admiring the genius or “ingenia” of an object, is neither imperialist nor radical and is in fact one of the “distinctive achievements of our culture.”¹4 �is aligns with Alpers’ admission that visual regard is inextricably linked with a museum’s modus operandi and cannot be so easily dispensed with, but we can certainly attempt to work with it to best �t the objects.¹5 Overall, the implications of the speci�c mode of regard activated by and in the museum, whether instructive or delimiting, is explained by what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett terms a “museum e±ect” which sees the comportment of viewers within the museum extending to everyday life beyond its walls.¹6 �e mode of object apprehension operating in the institution thus has rami�cations beyond the immediacy of the display and, where Indian Arts of the Americas is involved, may signi�cantly determine viewers’ perception of American Indian cultures both current and past.

As the agent operating within this predetermined mode of regard, the viewer is evidently of great importance and must be �ttingly accounted for in any display space. Baxandall proposes that the causational relationship set up in an exhibit, with the exhibitor presenting the object as an e�ect of a larger cultural fact and the viewer interpreting the given information as a cause of the alien object, is conducive to misinformation through the overt activation of the viewer’s subjectivity.¹7 �e 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 unspeci�ed indigeneity. �e 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. �is is what

6 Shelton, “Museums and Museum Displays,” 481-482.

7 Carol Duncan, Civilizing rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 10.

8 Shelton, “Museums and Museum Displays,” 484, and Carol Duncan, “Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 91.

9 Svetlana Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 25-32.

10 Duncan, “Art Museums,” 93-95.

11 Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” 27.

12 Ibid., 30.

13 Ibid.

14 Stephen Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 53.

15 Alpers, “The Museum as a Way of Seeing,” 27.

16 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 410.

17 Baxandall, “Exhibiting Intention,” 38.

53 M. Arango

Greenblatt seeks to resolve by calling for an intensi�cation of the wonder-inducing gaze, 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.¹8 It is ironic, or perhaps disillusioning, that the very thing that signi�cantly problematizes the display of material culture—a visual regard—is seemingly also the solution to a viewer’s deactivationin the display space.

Inextricable from the role of the viewer is the institution’s honesty, or lack thereof, in deciding what narrative to craft around the exhibited objects. Greenblatt calls for an “openness” ofdisplay that highlights objects’ formal and contextual circumstances through didactic materials that make up for the contextual displacement of the objects.¹9 Baxandall similarly asserts that the exhibitor must acknowledge his own subjectivity in curating a display that inherently attempts to demonstrate a personal “theory of culture”,²0 and Susan Vogel goes even further, contending that exhibitions of non-West art may be interpretative only if thedetermining conditions are also displayed—exhibitions about Western ways of seeing, experience, perception itself.²¹ �is 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 typi�ed 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 straightforwardand 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-speci�c objects being presented to a foreign and presumably uninformed public? Does the display facilitate ordelimit understanding? Is there a genuine e±ort on the museum’s part to present the objectsand cultures as comprehensively as possible? To what extent is the imperative for a digni�eddisplay of these historically underrepresented peoples ful�lled? Answers to these questionswill be implicitly woven into the following discussion on politics of display and representation in Indian Art of the Americas.

[…]

II. An Objectifying Gaze

[…]

�e 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 �oor 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

18 Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” 49.

19 Ibid., 44.

20 Baxandall, “Exhibiting Intention,” 37.

21 Susan Vogel, “Always True to the Object, in Our Fashion,” in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, (Smithsonian Institution, 1991), 191-204.

54M. Arango

within the parameters of an art museum following a trajectory of institutional models. Leaving aside this second point for the time being, I focus on the issue of contextualization that implicitly counterpoints a sight-centric display.

�e exhibition catalogue for Indian Art of the Americas is a comprehensive tome covering amajority of the cultures represented in the collection including signi�cant information on thecultural, ritualistic, spiritual, and functional import of the objects. Divided into ‘North America’, ‘Mesoamerica’, ‘Lower Central America’, and ‘Andes, Peru, and Bolivia’, withsubcategories by tribe or community within each, the objects are here treated as 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 spaceswhere they become one amongst many, and serviced by an explanation only arbitrarily through captions in the vastly overlooked single object label.

On the one hand, the vitrine and other similar arrangements throughout the exhibit exemplify a productive e±ort to avoid subjecting these cultural products either to the 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 ofmaterial culture in the past.²² �e dangers of an “ethnographic atrophy” that represents 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 cognizant of the precarity of the collection in its presentation to the public: on the display of artifacts or antiquities, Newhouse a¼rms that “grouped together by material or type, 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 fromany kind of historical reference, the same objects become �ne art.”²4 �e 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. �is 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 signi�cant 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.²5 So while the space cannot be accused of producing problematic in-situ representations that “tend towards the monographic”,²6 as is common in natural history museums or older exhibition models, neither is it the in-context display that rightfully considers the objects’ contingency.²7 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, equallydangerous, read one or two labels and assign the same provenance to the entire grouping. �e 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 signi�cantly present and are furthermore mainlydistinguishable through their obvious distinction from us, but not inter-indigenous speci�cities. With no given indication of the unifying term linking its contents, the vitrine opens itself up to a misinterpretation that conceptualizes the strained relationship betweena 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.”²8 �e reluctance to isolate, di±erentiate, specify cultural contingencies of these objects makes the vitrine an instantiation of display prioritizing an aesthetic valuation,

22 A chapter of Newhouse’s book is dedicated to examples and evaluations of several approaches to display of Egyptian artifacts. Newhouse, “Art or Archaeology,” in Art and the Power of Placement, 108-142.

23 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” 389.

24 Newhouse, Art and the Power of Placement, 109.

25 Mark Cartwright, “Chavin Civilization,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, April 7, 2015. https://www.ancient.eu/Chavin_Civilization/.

26 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” 389.

27 Ibid., 390.

28 Townsend, Indian Arts of the Americas, 14.

55 M. Arango

encouraging visual associations between objects that might otherwise merit contextual distinctions. �e issue is not the fact that these objects are all placed side by side, but whatthe viewer makes of them when a curatorial rationale is not expressly articulated. �at is, while the catalogue demonstrates a deep investment in and knowledge of these objects that 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, mostpressingly, 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.”²9 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. �at 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. �e 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 signi�cantly complicates theissue, regarding the multiplicity of context itself. �e 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 classi�catory system. �us ‘art’ became a categorical imperative that universalized the object and removed any contextual contingency, systematizing a certain model of display founded on aesthetic appreciation.³0 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 �awed 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 ful�lling the institutional inclination towards displaying objects and not makers. Not to mention that there is signi�cant 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 speci�cities but on other signi�cant 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

29 Vogel, “Always True to the Object”, 193.

30 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” 391.

56M. Arango

exhibited objects. Museums, as great authorities of instruction and education, have the power to shape worldviews and shift cultural consciousness. And so the display of cultural property, especially non-Western, is fraught with the implications of how it may a±ect perceptions outside of the institution. “�e museum e±ect works both ways. Not only do ordinary things become special when placed in museum settings, but also the museum experience itself becomes a model for experiencing life outside its walls.”³¹ So the aesthetic valuation of Amerindian material culture in Indian Art becomes further indicative of a greater cultural perception of indigeneity as a �xed, static, objective thing outside our everyday societal operations and, at the same time, continues to teach this idea to a public through the legitimized museum experience.

[…]

V. Honesty and Transparency

�e role of the viewer is demonstrably linked directly to the institution’s willingness or refusalto relay information and, along the same lines, the nature of any given information. It is generally recognized that collections of non-West material culture, artifacts, antiquities, cultural property such as Arts of the Americas are in perpetual tension with the sites of theirdisplay; 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 laidout 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 con�ate with remembrance.”³4

�us 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 �aws 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. �ey should, however, be self-aware and open about the degree of subjectivity that is also a given [...]. �e 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.”³5

31 Ibid., 410.

32 A review of former director James Cuno’s book discusses the ubiquity of these modes of accession in the formation of Art Institute collections: Phaedra Livingstone, review of Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage, by James Cuno, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 40, no. 3 (2010): 238-242.

33 Ibid., 444.

34 Shelton, “Museums and Museum Displays,” 484.

35 Vogel, “Always True to the Object,” 201.

57 M. Arango

�e same can be said for questions of institutional practices and policies regarding 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. Greenblatt suggests the inclusion of didactics that “introduce and in e±ect stand in for the context that has been e±aced in the process of moving the object into the museum,” a proposition that, if ultimately unable restore that which has been lost, at least attempts a restoration of the object’s agency by paying tribute to a cultural contingency.³6 �is I believe to be the most pressing problem of Indian Art of the Americas, because while the other identi�ed issues of visual aesthetic regard and deactivation of the viewer may be justi�ed along certain lines of inquiry, there seems to be no explanation for the evident lack of honesty in a 21st century display of cultural property within an institution apparently embodying moralistic advancement. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the display is presenting outright lies, nor do I want to dramatize it as a front for sinister institutional secrets; I only mean to draw attention to the indisputable omission of important facts about the exhibited objects and the collection that annul any potential dignifying or respectful display.

[…]

�at Arts of the Americas is implicated in contentious operations is to be expected 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 implement³7—clearly laying out a standardized treatment of material culture. �ere 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, exoti�cation, suppression, and colonialism.

36 Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder,” 44.

37 Complementing the UNESCO Convention is the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which is focused on the restitution of stolen objects and importantly “covers all stolen cultural objects, not just inventoried and declared ones.” The United States has not signed onto the Convention. More on the Convention in: “The 1995 UNIDROIT Convention,” UNESCO, accessed March 6, 2020, http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit-tra®cking-of-cultural-property/1995-unidroit-convention/.

58M. Arango

Encountering a Churchin a Church:Shape of Reliquary of St. �omas Becket

�is paper investigates a plaque (Plate 1) made at the beginning of 13th century in Limoges, today’s southern France. �is plaque, once part of a medieval reliquary, displays a scene from the life of an Anglo Saint �omas Becket (1118-1170), who had been martyred in Canterbury Cathedral in England.¹ Today it is hard to imagine the fragmentary panel’s signi�cance. Butone must remember that the medieval viewers saw a whole reliquary casket of Becket—actively reserving Becket’s precious remains. �is paper addresses questions on how does the reliquary’s original shape of a church correspond to the climate of cult of worship of Becket, asking if the shape representing a church is conceptual or referential to a speci�c church? Furthermore, as this object was located inside the Canterbury Cathedral, to what extent does the shape contribute to the medieval viewers’ contemplations of the piety of relics?

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.

�e surviving plaque features a sapphire background, rectangular in shape, with two metallic feet that touch the ground. �e garment on his upper body appears with texture constructed by �owing 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 signi�cant 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

1 This specific narrative sense had been confirmed explicitly by Mrs. Kate Buckingham, the endower; describing the narration is the martyr scene of Thomas Becket. See Oswald, Goetz, “Medieval Enamels and Metalwork in the Buckingham- Collection,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1907-1951) 38, no. 7, 1944: 109, doi:10.2307/4112540/ (April 11, 2019).

2 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.

3 See Hahn, 20.

59 Ziqiao Wang

the imitations of the type of pagan Roman sarcophagi. Sarcophagi make reference to miniatured houses for dead.4 However, one here in this paper argues the shape emulating more at a Christian church, Gothic Cathedral at great possibility.

In the 12th century, church was a multivalent space for medieval religious life. Church were unique venues for preserving the memories of the saints and for the communal worshipping. Christian ceremonies were held in churches while relics’ potency being exerted—where the miracles taking place. In the twelfth century, relics containers shape like churches became popular. Both their form and the decoration in gold, brilliant enamel, and precious gems suggest that the bodily fragments and dust within are lifted to heavenly glory and gathered into a whole.5 �e intertwined relationship between the church and the heaven, as Bynum discusses in the above quote, was underpinned by the 12th century’s popular theological theories of churches’ interiors visuality as well, as the spiritual embodiment of churches. Abbot Suger of St. Denis (1081-1151) eulogized cathedral windows’ illuminated lights suggesting the God’s presence in the church, as the illuminated atmosphere denoting Heavenly Jerusalem.6 �is conceptual symbolism appears in this reliquary. �is was also a standardized schema for producing reliquaries in Christendom, as Eric Palazzo supports, the reliquaries as church miniature was the standard among 12th century reliquary making.7 It is possible the châsse in a church shape would enhance Becket’s spirituality within the furnished interior of Becket’s Canterbury Cathedral as well. During 1176-1179 the Cathedral’s interior was reconstructed frequently, for the display of Becket’s relics at optimal locus. Cathedral researcher Hearn. M. F. notes now the latest construction in 1179, 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 was splendidly ornamented like a monumental reliquary with polychrome marble and delicate structural articulation.”8 �is reconstruction indeed served the eyes of pilgrimages sumptuously, as surrounded decorations behind altar reinforcing a sacred presence for Becket’s reliquary. Seeing in medieval theological notion was a gesture of o±ering homage to relics. �e worshipping saints’ relics in a theoretical register according to �iofrid, the abbot of Echternach (?-1110), was a matter of the sense— Seeing in particular: “saints relics are not only ‘sacred’ objects of cult and religious devotion but also objects intended to quicken the senses in the liturgy.”9

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.

4 Arnold Angenedt, “Garland Sarcophagus,” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Cleveland, OH; Baltimore, MD; London, New Haven, CONN: Cleveland Museum of Art; Walters Art Museum; The British Museum; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2010), 30.

5 Caroline Walker Bynum, “Visual Matter,” In Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, NY; Cambridge, Mass: Zone Books; Distributed by the MIT Press, 2011), 73.

6 Sarah M. Guérin, “Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic Ivories Staging the Divine,” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1, 2013: 55. www.jstor.org/stable/43188795/ (April 12, 2019).

7 Eric Palazzo, “Relics, Liturgical Spaces, and the Theology of the Church,” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Cleveland, OH; Baltimore, MD; London, New Haven, CONN: Cleveland Museum of Art; Walters Art Museum; The British Museum; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2010), 103.

8 Hearn, M. F, “Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Becket,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 1, 1994: 23. doi:10.2307/3046001/ (April 13, 2019).

9 Palazzo, 103.

60Z. Wang

Church as the materialistic contained enclosure is also a stage allowing pilgrims to pray and send homage to relics by seeing and interacting with the relics’ miraculous performances. Medieval pilgrims in Canterbury Cathedral were not only physically kneeling as they worship; in front of the altar (Plate 3), but their eyes and minds were physically and mentally engaging with the assembled visual objects existed in the chapel: stained-glass windows behind altar. Pilgrims’ visions had been instructed by the glass windows’ content: the miracles of Becket.¹0 �e narration of gabled châsse appearing in the miracle. �e dream of Philip of Alnwick (?-1275), who received dream visions for Becket’s visitation and healing his illness (Plate 5).¹¹ Such continuous narratives on glasses, the simulacrum of the same châsse devised a supernatural presence of the real châsse, from a super�cial representation onto a tangible object transcendentally. Scott Montgomery de�nes such phenomenon as the Sacra Conversazione: the dialogue between the reliquaries and the glazed windows in churches’ chapels. �ese multi-medium dialogue is ongoing, which would let pilgrims awe to Becket’s immortal presence.¹² �e reliquary and pictorial narratives on windows were not solely standing apart from each other, but they were communicating; where the brightness of the glass’ light radiated on the reliquary on the altar and “animated” the gabled châsse.¹³ 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 the depicted miracle stories on windows, the association between the real reliquary and its representation behind would persuade pilgrims to believe and vow to Becket’s relics, to this gabled châsse in speci�c.

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.

10 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, 2017, 68, http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/134163/ (April 22, 2019).

11 Rachel Koopmans, “Visions, Reliquaries, and the Image of “Becket’s Shrine in the Miracle Windows of Canterbury Cathedral,” Gesta 54, no. 1, 2015: 38, doi:10.1086/679400/ (Apr 25, 2019).

12 Scott B Montgomery, “Sacra Conversazione: Dialogues between Reliquaries and Windows.” Journal of Glass Studies 56, 2014, 260, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24191436/ (Apr 30, 2019).

13 Ibid., 262.

61 Z. Wang

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 limitsof temporality and spatiality into an animated and holy being for �eshing out the miracle.

62Z. Wang

Gabrielle Woo, Crystal Palace,

2019, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in.

�ere are two crowned Buddhas from Burma at the Art Institute of Chicago.1 One from the�rst Burmese Empire and the other from the last. �e style of the crowned Buddha is representative of a tripartite union of the Buddha, the Burmese King and the Bodhisattva; by putting these two Buddhas back into their original historical contexts in correlation to Burmese perceptions of kingship and Buddhahood, the persistence of this crowned style from the �rst Burmese dynasty to the last highlights a resilient yet muted Burmese Buddhist nationalism.

�e Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha and the Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha Seated on an Elephant �rone are placed side by side about ten feet apart from one another in the Southeast Asian galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago. �e titles of the Buddhas, of course, are titles bestowed upon by the museum. Due to their redundancy and long length, and alluding to the Buddhas’ respective dynastical eras, I shall be using the Bagan Buddha to address the 12th century standing Buddha and the Konbaung Buddha to address the late 19th century seated and enthroned, glass-inlaid, and gold-gilded Buddha.

�e style of a crowned Buddha—with a multi-tiered head-dress and royal decoration over the chest—is generally known as “Charkravartin” (in Sanskrit), “Jambhupati” (in Pāli) or universal monarch.² Such a style of Buddha is a large departure from how an ascetic and abstinent Buddha is generally portrayed. Such a di±erence is less obvious in the Bagan Buddha as the wooden sculpture’s age and wear do not exhibit its formal glory. However, the Konbaung Buddha is bright, gleaming, and golden—complete with the Konbaung crown and royal regalia,seated grandly on a tiered throne �anked by two elephants—in a gallery full of objects weathered and grey. On multiple accounts during my visits to the Buddha, I have heard people say along the lines, “Why is a Buddha dressed like this?” “Are they sure this shiny being is a Buddha?” “Is the museum mistaken?”

To con�rm to the dear visitors as a Burmese Buddhist: Yes, this is a Buddha. But, yes, it is alittle more complicated than just a Buddha. �e crowned style, with the Bagan Buddha asevidence, has persisted since the Bagan dynasty. It had a particular rise in popularity duringthe 19th century where Burmese people even began dressing and crowning existingBuddhas—following the crowning of the most famous Buddha image in Burma, Mahamuni Buddha in Mandalay.3 With the British colonization of Burma proper in 1885, thenationalist association of kingship and Buddhahood was fueled as many feared the modernization e±ects of globalism.4

�e crowned style is a union of the Buddha, the king, and the bodhisattva; hence, a “3-in-1 Buddha.” Burma is a place where numbers are treated with care and reverence as they may be magical, mystical or symbolic. Buddhist scripture involves numerical groupings such as the Triple Gems, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Precepts, the Nine Virtues of the Buddha, the Ten Perfections just to name a few. Burmese society also tends to favor combinations of di±erent things in one unit as in our mythical creatures such as the Pyinsarupa: a chimerical creature made of �ve di±erent animals, and the Manotethiha: a Burmese sphinx made from a deva’s head and two lions’ bodies.5 Burmese people are also diehard consumers of 3-in-1 instant co±ee and tea, which contains ground co±ee or tea, sugar, and milk powder. �erefore,

1 The first question I ever get from anyone is, “Is it Burma or Myanmar?” The answer is either. Both names are just attempted romanizations of the Burmese pronunciation “ ”. The transition between the two names is political but that is not the reason I prefer the old name. I prefer the old British name “Burma” because 1) “Myanmar” is such a new name that older books on Burma, of course, only use “Burma.” 2) a personal preference. Non-Burmese have no way of perfectly pronouncing “ ”so rather than a strange attempt, I prefer hearing the failproof, “Burma.” But you are welcome to use either one.J.F, “Should You Say Myanmar or Burma,” The Economist, December 20, 2016. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2016/12/20/should-you-say-myanmar-or-burma.

2 Sylvia Fraser-Lu, “Buddha Images,” in Burmese Lacquerware. (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000), 139-140.

3 John Falconer et al., Myanmar Style: Art, Architecture and Design of Burma (Hong Kong: Periplus Publishing, 1998),136.

4 Turner, “Sasana Decline and Tradition Reform,” in Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma. (Hononolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), 26.

5 Ministery of Culture Affairs, Myanmar. Dictionary of

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

65 Diana Nway Htwe

the Myanma Performing and Plastic Arts (Yangon: Myittamoe Publishing, 2001).6 Amarapura Maha Gandayone Sayadaw, Yote Sone Buddha-win. (Yangon: Thuwunna Publishing, 2000).

6 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.

�e Buddha and king aspect of the 3-in-1 Buddha is quite obvious. �e recognition of the sculpture as a bodhisattva—a future Buddha—however, requires a deeper understanding of the intricacies of Burmese �eravada 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.

�e �gure is a bodhisattva precisely because it is simultaneously a king and a Buddha. �e relationship between the three elements is rather conversational. �e association between kingship and Buddhahood in crowned and bejeweled Burmese Buddhas is largely rooted inGautama Buddha’s �nal bodhisattva life as the Crown Prince Siddhartha, whom had he notbecome the Buddha, would have become a universal monarch.6 �e king represents the epitome of worldly riches, and the Buddha is a being who has actively renounced the verysame riches. Bodhisattvahood—the arduous journey of a human becoming a Buddha—connects these two seemingly irreconcilable contrasts, allowing them to coexist in one entity.

�e 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.

66D. Htwe

INDEX

AA Goldsmith in his Shop, 49–50Activism, 33Addington, Michelle, 24Africa, African, 31, 51African American, 31Alpers, Svetlana, 53Althusser, Louis, 23America, Americas, American, 17,

31–3, 40–2, 51–8Amerindian, 52, 57Andes, 55Andreotti, Margherita, 35, 36Angenedt, Arnold, 60Anthropocene, 23Anthropology, Anthropological,

28Appadurai, Arjun, 15Archaeological, Archaeology, 55Architecture, Architectural, 15,

23–5, 40, 51–3Arjoranta, Jonne, 11Art Institute of Chicago,

6–9, 18, 45–6, 51, 65Artifact, 18Asia, Asian, 18, 31–3, 51, 65At the Moulin Rouge, 6Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina, 47Augmented Reality, 8Authority, 8, 51–8

HHamilton, Andrew, 52Hampson, Louise Ann, 60–1Harfenist, Ethan, 33Harris, Jonathan, 27–8Hart, Claudia, 5Hayeoga, 32Head of a Guillotined Man, 45Hearn, M.F., 60Hegemony, 21, 31Hermeneutics, 11–3Himalaya, Himalayan, 51Hip hop , 31–3Hjorth, Larissa, 12

B

C

Barthes, Roland, 17Beech, Hannah, 33Belting, Hans, 18–20, 27–9Benjamin, Walter, 8, 20Bennett, Andrew, 31Bodhisattva, 65–6Bolivia, 55Bolter, Jay David, 19Borteh, Larissa, 45Bowyer, Emerson, 46Boylaert, Frederik, 49Brush, Jason, 15Burma, Burmese, 65–6Buddha, Buddhist, 33, 65–6Bynum, Caroline Walker, 60

Capital, Capitalist, Capitalism, 23,33, 39, 42, 49–50

Cartwright, Mark, 55Cathedral, 59–62Central America, 55Cézanne, Paul, 7Chagall, Marc, 35–6Champmartin, Charles Emile

Callande de, 45–7Chenique, Bruno, 45–7Chicago, 24Chicago style, 12Christendom, 59–60

Church, 50, 59–62Civilization, 55Classroom Ideology, 33Collection, 6, 18, 23, 45–7, 49, 53–8Colonial, Colonialism, 23, 29, 51–8Community, 13, 33, 41–2, 55Concept, Conceptual, 11–3, 16–8,

28, 31–2, 59–60Consumer, Consumerist, 31, 38–42Contemporary, 8, 11–3, 16–9, 25, 27,

36, 45–7, 51–5Context, Contextualization, 8,

15–8, 23, 27–8, 33, 52–6, 55–8 Critique, 9, 12–3, 24, 28, 41, 51Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha,

65–6Crowned and Bejeweled Buddha

Seated on an Elephant Throne, 65–6

Cubism, Cubist, 35–6Cutrone, Christopher, 8

DDeath Mask, 45–6Delacroix, Eugène, 46Deleuze, Gilles, 23–4Deleuzean, 24Design, 8, 16–8, 24–5, 52–4Deus Ex Machina, 7Dickinson, C. Simon, 45Dickinson, Theodore, 46Diegetic, 12Digital, 5–8, 11–3, 15–21Discussion, 8, 11–3, 33, 36, 39,

52–4Display, 17, 52–8, 60DJ Krush, 32Druick, Douglas W., 35–6Dumolyn, Jan, 49Duncan, Carol, 53

EEast Asia, East Asian, 32–3Economic, Economy, 9, 31–3,

38–42, 49–50Eitner, Lorenz, 45Elkins, James, 12–3, 27Emblematic performance, 53Encyclopedic Museum, 51–7Environment, Environmental, 16,

24–5, 55Equestrian and Four Figures, 18Euro-American, 27–8Eurocentric, 28, 51–6Exotification, 58Exploitation, Exploitative, 23, 57–8Expression, 31–3, 40, 57

FFlemish, 49Fluten, Willem van, 49Freeman, Charles, 59Fu, Snow Yunxue, 5

GGalleries, gallery, 51–5, 65Galloway, Alexander, 11–3Game, 11–3, 27Gauguin, Paul, 5Gaze, An Objectifying Gaze, 17,

53–6Géricault, Théodore, 45–7Global, Globalized, Globalization,

8, 11–2, 15–21, 23–4, 27–9, 31, 49

Google Arts and Culture, 15–21Goya, Francisco José de y Lucientes, 8Greenberg, Clement, 8Greenblatt, Stephen, 53Groom, Gloria, 46Grosz, Elizabeth, 23Grusin, Richard, 19Guérin, Sarah M., 60

JJames R. Thompson Center, 24Japan, Japanese, 32–3Jew, 35–6Johnson, Steve, 51

KKarp, Ivan, 51–4Keogh, Brendan, 12Kim, Deok-su, 32Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara,

53–6

IIconography, 49Identity Politics, 51Imperialist, Imperialism, 23, 40,

51–7Impressionist, Impressionism, 6India, Indian, 51–7Indigenous Communities,

Indigenous People, 51–8Institution, 45–6, 51–8Italy, Italian, 39–42, 52

INDEX

NNational, Nationalism, 8, 12, 23, 28,

33, 40–42, 65Native American, 51-2New York, 31Newhouse, Victoria, 52Nochlin, Linda, 47Nora, Pierre, 57North America, 55Nothing. The Event Will Tell, plate

69 from The Disasters of War, 8

PPach, Zs. P., 49Pair of Dragon Pendants, 18Palazzo, Eric, 60Parallel Distortion, 32Peru, 55

OOld Man with a Gold Chain, 18–21

WWang, Amy X., 31West, Benjamin, 7Western, 15–20, 27–9, 31, 49–50,

51–8When a Rose is Not a Rose, 5Willis, Anne-Marie, 16Wunderkammer, 49

TTechnology, Technologies, 7, 15–21,

23–5, 31Term, Terminology, 21, 27–9, 39–41,

55Thailand, 33

UUm, Hae-Kyung, 31UNESCO, 58

The Bathers, 7The Death of Procris, 7The Family of Man, 16–21The Praying Jew, 35–6The Raft of Medusa, 47The Worship of Pilgrimages in

Canterbury Cathedral, 60Théodore Géricault on His

Deathbed, 45–7Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 6Townsend, Richard, 52Trackable, 6–9Tradition, Traditional, Traditionalist, 7, 15–21, 32–3, 37–42,

55–7Turner, J Scott, 24–5

Vvan Rijn, Rembrandt, 18–21Velden, Hugo van der, 50Videogame, 11Vietnam, Vietnamese, 33Viewership, 53Virtual, 5–9Vogel, Susan, 54von Bonsdor�, Pauline, 23

LLand Acknowledgment, 51Language, 16–7, 32Lavine, Steven D., 51–4Lin, Angel, 32Local, Localizing, Localization,

12–3, 24, 27, 31–3, 39, 51Loo, Kevin, 31Lozenge Composition with Yellow,

Black, Blue, Red, and Grey, 18–20

SSchool of the Art Institute of

Chicago, 5, 45Sculpture, 18, 55, 66Sekula, Allan, 16Seo, Taeji, 32Shelton, Anthony, 52–7Smithsonian Institution, 51–4Social, 19–20, 23–5, 31, 37–41, 49Society, Societies, 15–20, 24, 33,

49–50, 55–7, 65Sontag, Susan, 17Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian,

51, 65St. Eligius, 49St. Thomas Becket, 59Steichen, Edward, 16Stein, Gertrude, 5Sterling, Charles, 49Steyerl, Hito, 8Still Life with Funyun, 5

RRap, 32–3Raskin, David, 7Realist, Realism, 5–6, 35Reliquary, 59–62Renaissance, 18–20, 27representation, 6, 16–21, 35–6,

54–8, 61Reterritorialisation, 31Roman, 18, 52, 59–60Romantic, Romanticism, 6, 37Rowlands, Michael, 57

Petrus Christus, 49–50Photography, 6–8, 15–9Plaques from a Reliquary Casket

with the Martyrdom of a Saint, 59

Politics, 31, 51–4Portrait of Emperor Hadrian, 18Postcolonial, 55Postmodern, 32Progressivist, 51Provenance, 45, 54–6Public, 7, 38–41, 45, 50–1, 52–7

MMalraux, André, 18–9Manabe, Noriko, 31–2Manovich, Lev, 16–7Manthorne, Katherine, 28Material, 12, 16–9, 23–4, 37–42,

50, 51–8McLuhan, Marshall, 19Merahi metua no Tehamana

(Tehamana Has Many Parents or The Ancestors of Tehamana), 5

Mesoamerica, 55Mitchell, Tony, 32Modernization, 51, 65Mondrian, Piet, 18Montgomery, Scott B., 61Museum, 8, 16–8, 51–8, 65Music, Musical, 31–3

Konbaung Buddha, 65Koopmans, Rachel, 61Korea, Korean, 31–3Kuh, Katherine, 36

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. �e signi�cance 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 le�-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. �ese 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.

One object of study is the James R. �ompson Center, a building in Chicago which houses Illinois state government o�ces. A tall glass and steel building with a 17-story open atrium, the imposing structure is an image of the govern-ment’s grandeur, transparency, and rationality. Exemplifying modernist principles in its con-struction, structure, aesthetic, atmospheric enve-lope, and consumptive footprint, the �ompson Center combines thermally conductive materi-als, superabundant scale, and an impermeable and unbreathable air envelope without regard to Chicago’s climate and geographical situation. In order to maintain a stable and comfortable climate in such an excessive amount of space, processes of heating in the winter and cooling in the summer are overburdened and thereby consume massive amounts of energy. Typical of 20th century applications of HVAC systems, the �ompson 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 indiscrim-inately protect interior from exterior instead of 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 con�guration of inte-rior and exterior occurs both economically and sociopolitically. Such an in�exible HVAC system

is unable to adapt to the extreme and constantly �uctuating temperature of Chicago; the �omp-son Center serves as an immanent critique of the rigidity and inability of the government (as well as urban society macrocosmically) to be attentive and e�ciently respond to concrete conditions. �e automated climate adjustments of the �ompson Center are inept at answering the needs of its inhabitants, producing only dispro-portionate 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. �is calls for a higher standard of sensitivity, design, and wisdom concerning materials, ultimately requir-ing 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.

contributorsfaculty

staff

Jennifer Dorothy Lee

Nora Annesley Taylor

Claudia Hart

Ye-Bhit Hong

Diana Nway Htwe

Jin Charlie Kang

Cyrus Hung Hau Ng

Emilija Worthington

Taylor AugustineSAIC 2021 | BFA

Yeon Ji ChungSAIC 2021 | BFA

Jin Charlie KangSAIC 2021 | BAVCS

Sam OhSAIC 2021 | BFA

Leroy WinterSAIC 2021 | BFA

Gabrielle WooSAIC 2021 | BFA

Justine GuzmanSAIC 2021 | BFA

Ye-Bhit HongSAIC 2022 | BAAH

Yshao LinSAIC 2020 | BFA

Max ReberSAIC 2021 | BFA

Bun StoutSAIC 2020 | MFA

Audrea WahSAIC 2020 | BFA

Mai Parinda WanitwatSAIC 2021 | MFA

Solbi Park

Jinny Soojin Kim

Stella Kwoun

Jiarui Wang

Alson Zhao

Audrea Wah

Justine Guzman

Xiao (Hank) Han

design team

artworkcontributors

What I am more interested in, however, is Galloway's recalibration of an analysis of video games to Huizinga and Caillois' �rst de�nition of "game" directly in relation to "play". He 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 computer code".6 Similarly, Brendan Keogh writes on the phenomenological study of video games, dependent on the physical attributes of the activity.7 Art history is not just a noun, it has the character of action-the actions taken may include writing, reading, seeing, listening, just doing art history, etc. Galloway goes on to describe the categories of gamic action: operator and machine, diegetic and nondiegetic.8 Opera-tor 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.9 �ese 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 connec-tion 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 for-matting: Chicago style, footnotes, certain ways of writing on a subject, scholarly sources. �us 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 introduc-tion 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. �ere 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 ac-tion-based game, it becomes possible for anyone to "play" it, dependent on their ability to learn/maintain the "rules", and have access to neces-sary resources. With this, its globality seems a bit more attainable. On the subject of a global art

writersManuela Uribe ArangoSAIC 2020 | BAAH

Megan Lim EnSAIC 2021 | BFA with VCS Thesis

Ye-Bhit HongSAIC 2022 | BAAH

Diana Nway HtweSAIC 2020 | BAAH

Jin Charlie KangSAIC 2021 | BAVCS

Barbie KimSAIC 2021 | BFA with Art History Thesis

Jessy LembkeSAIC 2022 | BAAH

Charlie MillerSAIC 2020 | BAAH

Cyrus Hung Hau NgSAIC 2020 | BAVCS

Joshua PlekkenpolSAIC 2020 | BFAW

Ziqiao WangSAIC 2020 | BAAH

Emilija WorthingtonSAIC 2021 | BAAH

Aishan ZhangSAIC 2020 | BAAH

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