Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

The Future Of Art Book Publishing Is Here

Wow! Today I had a look at the first digital-only publication of the Museum of Modern Art,* and I can really see — even after only a short time of experimentation — how much digital technology can do for art books.

PicassoCubism_cover-300x400The book, Picasso: The Making of Cubism 1912-1914, comes in iPad or PDF form. Here’s the official description, from the press release:

Edited by Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, and Blair Hartzell, independent art historian and curator, it embraces the innovative features and infinite real estate of the digital format in order to present new scholarship on a breakthrough moment in the history of Cubism and twentieth-century art. [This] …cross-disciplinary project…presents in-depth studies of 15 objects made by Picasso between 1912 and 1914….

So how is it different? For a start, there’s an easy jump from text to source. Footnote numbers appear in red, click on it, and you go right to the footnote. The trip back to the text is not as simple. it’s manual, but I suspect that will be fixed in future digital books.

UPDATE: MoMA tells me that ” if you click on the red numbers again while you’re in the footnotes, it’ll take you back to the page you were on.” Good — but that was not intuitive.

Better are the thumbnail images in the margins. Click on them and they popup as enlargements.

For each work of art, here’s a description of how the book “works”:

Each of this publication’s fifteen chapters is devoted to a single object created by Picasso between 1912 and 1914. Each chapter has six components: Portfolio of Images, Essay, Conservation Notes, Provenance, Selected Exhibitions, and Selected References, accessible through the persistent navigation bar running along the bottom of each page. The chapters are arranged chronologically by the date of the artwork discussed and can be paged through in sequence, from beginning to end. Alternatively, chapters (along with front and back matter) can be accessed through the Table of Contents. Tapping or clicking a comparative figure brings up a full-page view of that image, with caption. Selected artworks (the artist’s
Guitar constructions) may be “rotated,” or viewed in the round.

All true, as I was beginning to discover with Picasso’s Guitar on a Table, from 1912. It was fun to click on the nav bar, going from “recto” to “verso” to “raking” to “UV” to “Reflected IR” to”Transmitted Ir” to “X-ray.” Then I had to leave my office and go home.

MoMA had warned me that “it has to be read with Adobe Reader or Adobe Pro in order for all the features to work.” I do have Adobe at home — not X, not XI, which is apparently what I need. Many features, like the flipping I described above, didn’t work in Adobe X.

I know that I could just download that, and get back to my exploration. But not tonight, as I write this. Suffice to say, this is a very interesting development in art books, the beginning of a new future in art books.

Picasso: The Making of Cubism 1912-1914 sells for $24.99. For the iPad app, go to the App Store. For the enhanced PDF version, which can be read on a laptop or desktop, go to MoMA’s online store. It’s a big file — almost 348 MB. It took a few minutes to download. On first glance, it’s worth it.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of MoMA 

*I consult to a foundation that supports MoMA

Try This NYT Web App To Track Art Coverage Trends

Who is mentioned more often in pages of The New York Times from its start in the 1850s through 2011?

  • Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci?
  • Van Gogh, Degas or Gauguin?
  • Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois or Mary Cassatt?
  • Impressionism or Modernism?
  • Monet or Manet?

You can see for yourself how the Times chronicled art trends — or any other trends — with a new web app called Chronicle. It allows you and me to tap into “Visualizing language usage in New York Times news coverage throughout its history” to discern trends.

chronicle-logo

 

 

 

 

Big hat-tip to Hyperallergic, which did a few tests (not those above, which are mine) several days back, testing things like “contemporary” versus “modernism” and groups of contemporary artists. See them here.

The answers to the questions I posed were not so predictable:

  • Michelangelo
  • Van Gogh, then Degas
  • Louise Bourgeois, then Mary Cassatt
  • Modernism
  • Manet

I’d have thought that Monet would have beaten Manet, but this one test has a flaw. I used Claude Monet as the search term because there was once a big jewelry brand named Monet. But I am not sure that the Times consistently used Manet’s first name in English or French… a quandary.

You can also click on a year to see articles from that year.

This doesn’t prove anything, of course. But it’s an indicator of what the general public, in the East, at least (and in years past maybe more broadly, given the New York Times syndicate distribution, which I’m guessing has decreased in total circulation distribution, but maybe not).

 

“No Time To Think” — Are Museums Part of the Problem Or Antidotes?

Has the worm turned? Are people weary of multi-tasking, interactivity, overcommitment, overextension and too tied to mobile devices?

BrainIf you read an article in the July 27 edition of The New York Times headlined No Time to Think, you learned two things. First, the answer is no. As the article said:

In 11 experiments involving more than 700 people, the majority of participants reported that they found it unpleasant to be alone in a room with their thoughts for just 6 to 15 minutes…

…It could be because human beings, when left alone, tend to dwell on what’s wrong in their lives. We have evolved to become problem solvers and meaning makers. What preys on our minds, when we aren’t updating our Facebook page or in spinning class, are the things we haven’t figured out — difficult relationships, personal and professional failures, money trouble, health concerns and so on. And until there is resolution, or at least some kind of understanding or acceptance, these thoughts reverberate in our heads. Hello rumination. Hello insomnia.

But the second thing the article said is that this is really harmful.

…Suppressing negative feelings only gives them more power, she said, leading to intrusive thoughts, which makes people get even busier to keep them at bay. The constant cognitive strain of evading emotions underlies a range of psychological troubles such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression and panic attacks, not to mention a range of addictions. It is also associated with various somatic problems like eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, inflammation, impaired immunity and headaches.

Studies further suggest that not giving yourself time to reflect impairs your ability to empathize with others….

Researchers have also found that an idle mind is a crucible of creativity. A number of studies have shown that people tend to come up with more novel uses for objects if they are first given an easy task that allows their minds to wander, rather than a more demanding one.

Of course, I’ve simplified here, but you can read the rest of the article at the link above.

As I read this article, I kept thinking two things — are museums becoming part of this problem? And how, instead, could they become part of the solution? Could museums be an antidote, or has — to borrow the old cliche — that train left the station?

I’m still thinking.

Artisan: Anyone For Fake Wood?

295Or, the more elegant term, faux bois? Faux bois furniture and furnishings are made of concrete to look like real wood. It’s a 19th century art that is, in some circles, making a bit of a comeback. False, it seems, lasts longer than the real, which is prone to decay. It works especially well in garden fixtures.

Michael Fogg, a Connecticut practitioner of the art, is updating faux bois — making bonsai tables and chandeliers with slender branches as well as planters and garden furniture.

I’m just telling you this because I wrote about the art and the artisan in the current, July-August, issue of Traditional Home.  It’s a rare trade (though there is mass-produced stuff that looks like faux bois). And it’ s not easy to find. As I wrote:

Patsy Pittman Light, author of Capturing Nature: The Cement Sculpture of Dionicio Rodriguez, figures that there are perhaps a dozen professionals, at most, handcrafting faux bois objects in the United States.

wittemuseumThe artisan, like a painter with paints, makes his (or her) own concrete, using a unique formula.

 “The less water, the stronger the mix is, but the harder it is to work with,” [Fogg] explains. “I like it to be like cream cheese, but pie dough is what you get if you don’t add enough water.” 

A couple of museums have faux bois — for example, in the Huntington Library and Museum’s Japanese Garden in San Marino, California, you’ll find faux bois trellises and pergolas, and at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, you’ll find a treehouse by artist Carlos Cortés. San Antonio is a hotspot for faux bois. The things you learn reporting…

 

 

While We’re On the Subject of Marketing

1405624750793Here’s another example of synergy with opera (which I last wrote about here on July 1): On October 5, the National Gallery of Art in Washington will launch a “focus exhibition” called Degas’s Little Dancer, which will show off its version of the wax sculpture, set amid 11 other works by Degas, some from its collection, some borrowed.

Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center will unveil a musical by the name of Little Dancer, directed and choreographed by five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman and based on a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens with music by Stephen Flaherty. Their show, according to the Kennedy Center, can be summarized:

Part fact, part fiction, and set in the harsh backstage world of the Paris Opera Ballet, this world premiere Kennedy Center musical is inspired by the story of Marie van Goethem, a young ballerina who posed for Edgar Degas and became, inadvertently, the most famous dancer in the world. Torn by her family’s poverty, her debt to the artist, and the lure of wealthy men, she struggles to keep her place in the corps de ballet–a girl on the verge of womanhood, caught between the conflicting demands of life and art.

It runs Oct. 25 through Nov. 30.

Little-Dancer_FINAL_web_400x400So the NGA smartly capitalized on the event. The exhibition will illustrate Degas’s “fascination with the practice and performance of ballet.” It will include Ballet Scene, a pastel from 1907, and a monotype from c. 1874 titled The Ballet Master.  The star painting will be The Dance Class (c. 1873) from the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. There’s more  — read it here.

The NGA is rather proud of its Dancer, which it notes is “the only one that was formed by the artist’s own hands and the only one he ever showed publicly.” Also:

The Gallery has the third largest collection of Degas works in the world, including 12 cast bronzes, one posthumously produced plaster, 19 paintings, 71 works on paper, and 52 original Degas works in wax, clay, and plaster.

The NGA also says it will highlight:

…the experimental, modern approach Degas took to his work. Degas did not carve sculpture but used an additive process. Little Dancer was modeled in wax over a metal armature, bulked with organic materials including wood, rope, and even old paintbrushes in the arms. It was then covered with clay and layers of pigmented wax. Degas further elevated the sculpture’s realism by affixing a wig of human hair to the head and outfitting his ballerina in a cotton-and-silk tutu, a real bodice, and linen slippers.

Confession: the Dancer has never been a favorite of mine. I prefer Degas’s racing scenes, though I appreciate the ballet ones. No matter: I’m in the minority, I think. I think this show will be popular, and the timing is perfect. It runs until Jan. 11.