by Jeanne Willette | Aug 7, 2015 | Modern
The British Look at the Chinese: The Anthropological Gaze When John Thomson (1837-1921), a native of Scotland, arrived in China, Great Britain had just militarily and politically and diplomatically defeated this huge nation, going to war, not once but twice, over the...
by Jeanne Willette | Jul 31, 2015 | Modern
Japonisme and Photography The terms “Near East,” “Far East,” and “Middle East” are all Eurocentric terms because they situate the speaker in the West, assumed to be the geographically superior position, the site from which the...
by Jeanne Willette | Jul 24, 2015 | Modern
Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East Part Two: Félix Bonfils and the Levant The Levant was essentially a European imaginary configuration imposed upon a certain stretch of the moribund Ottoman Empire, but more precisely, the Levant, a term derived from...
by Jeanne Willette | Jul 17, 2015 | Modern
Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East Part One: James McDonald and the Ordnance Survey “It is in fact with the Bible in his hand that a traveller ought to visit the Holy Land.” Viscount François-René de Chateaubriand. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem...
by Jeanne Willette | Jul 10, 2015 | Modern
Samuel Borne: Kashmir and the Aesthetics of Conquest In her seminal book, British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857), Harriet Martineau called India “our great Asiatic dependency” and described the Himalayas as “a steep slope” like...
by Jeanne Willette | Jul 3, 2015 | Modern
Samuel Bourne in India: Empire in the Making The way in which the British backed into the idea of empire or imperialism in contrast to colonialism can be viewed by contrasting the contemporaneous reactions of the nation to America and India. The Americans were...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 27, 2015 | Reviews
AMERICAN STORIES: PAINTINGS OF EVERYDAY LIFE. 1765 – 1915 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City October 12, 2009 – January 24, 2010 The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles February 28, 2010 – May 23, 2010 American Stories is a beautiful...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 26, 2015 | Modern
Eadweard Muybridge and the Horses of Leland Stanford Part Two On the sixth of June in the year 2015, a horse won the Triple Crown. After a drought that had lasted almost four decades American Pharaoh galloped to a win by five lengths. The Los Angeles Times celebrated...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 19, 2015 | Modern
Eadweard Muybridge: Photographing Colonialism Part Three Although the relationship between Eadweard Muybridge and Leland Stanford would send the photographer down a path that led to one of the main art forms of the twentieth century, the photographer, the cool killer...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 13, 2015 | Reviews
OUTSIDE THE BOX EDITION JACOB SAMUEL, 1988 – 2010 ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM May 23 – August 29, 2010 Jacob Samuel, a master printer and the art world’s “best-kept secret” has a life that many would envy. He gets artists to think “outside the box.” As...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 12, 2015 | Modern
Eadweard Muybridge and the Horses of Leland Stanford Part One In his 2013 book, The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Guilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures, Edward Ball wrote, somewhat dramatically that “Muybridge, the photographer, killed cooly in a...
by Jeanne Willette | Jun 5, 2015 | Modern
Eadward Muybridge in Yosemite Eadweard Muybridge lived many lives under many names, rose and fell, appeared and disappeared, invented and re-invented himself. In the nineteenth century, you could do that sort of thing. This was a century of non-identity, meaning...
by Jeanne Willette | May 30, 2015 | Reviews
MICHAEL WEST: PAINTINGS FROM THE FORTIES TO THE EIGHTIES ART RESOURCE GROUP Newport Beach June 5 – September 25, 2010 The Fifties. According to Gore Vidal, the worst decade in the history of the world—unless, of course, you happened to be white, male,...
by Jeanne Willette | May 29, 2015 | Modern
Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part Three The leader of the survey party in charge of the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel (1867-79) was Clarence King, one of the “characters” of the West during its days of being...
by Jeanne Willette | May 22, 2015 | Modern
Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part Two For decades the work of the nineteenth century photographer, Timothy O’Sullivan had been relegated to government archives and he was remembered, it at all, as one of the “operatives” of Matthew...
by Jeanne Willette | May 15, 2015 | Modern
Timothy O’Sullivan: Exploring the West Part One In retrospect, it is something of an oddity that twenty-one year old Timothy O’Sullivan was not drafted into the ranks of the Union Army for the American Civil War. After all many young Irishmen, fresh to the...
by Jeanne Willette | May 8, 2015 | Modern
Alexander Gardner: The Last of the Native Americans After the Louisiana Purchase, the new maps designated the vast stretch of land west of the 100th meridian as “the Great American Desert.” To the eighteenth century mind, this territory, dry and dusty,...
by Jeanne Willette | May 2, 2015 | Reviews
THE ART OF THE STEAL (2009) The Barnes Foundation and Art Collecting The story of how the world-famous Barnes Collection was moved from its long-time home in Merion, Pennsylvania to downtown Philadelphia is told in tones of indignation as a vast conspiracy of moneyed...
by Jeanne Willette | May 1, 2015 | Modern
Alexander Gardner: The Last of the West Once it was customary, in less sensitive times, to refer proudly to “winning the West,” a triumphalist trumpeting of conquest and colonialism in which “we,” the authors of history, white people, pushed...
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 25, 2015 | Reviews
ONE MORE TIME—WHAT IS ART? This year has brought two very good films on the art world, first, The Art of the Steal about the Barnes Collections (reviewed on this site) and, now, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The title refers to the museum blockbuster, which routes...
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 24, 2015 | Modern
Alexander Gardner and the Civil War Referring of his work as a photographer of the American Civil War, Alexander Gardner said, “It is designed to speak for itself. As mementos of the fearful struggle through which the country has just passed, it is confidently hoped...
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 17, 2015 | Modern
MATTHEW BRADY AND HIS OPERATIVES “The camera is the eye of history.” Matthew Brady From Portraiture to the Civil War It is unclear precisely when Matthew Brady was born, in fact, in an 1891 interview, the photographer himself said “I go back to near...
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 11, 2015 | Reviews
Solo exhibition of the Photographic Work of James Higginson Behold. Perspective at Play in a Young Man’s Mind Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin Photographic Exhibition from March-May 2015 Unless one is an angel, descending from on high, no one without wings utters...
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 10, 2015 | Modern
PHOTOGRAPHING THE AMERICAN WEST PART ONE Carleton Watkins in Yosemite In a virtually unreadable book on the discovery of the California territory called “Yosemite,” the first owner of a tourist establishment in what became a national park, James M....
by Jeanne Willette | Apr 3, 2015 | Modern
SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION Artful Photography Julia Margaret Cameron and the Eminent Victorians Julia Margaret Cameron knew absolutely everyone worth knowing in Victorian England or she was connected to someone who knew those she did not know. Her connections to the...
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