Art History Unstuffed
On line. At your convenience. In your own time. On your own terms.
For too long art history has been held hostage by scholars speaking to scholars and not to people. The purpose of this site is to educate and to inform and to do so with respect to the intelligence of the readers. Designed as a site for serious students of art history in need of solid substantive material, Art History Unstuffed is written for Twenty-First-century learners who prefer reading “text-bytes” and “sound-bytes” of targeted information.
Written by Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette, a published scholar who has researched and consolidated both well-respected classical sources and vetted the latest research, this site creates a middle ground between arcane scholarly jargon and informed discourse and presents a detailed account of Modern, Postmodern, Philosophy and Theory that is accessible to all readers interested in the history of the modern and contemporary periods.
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Art History Unstuffed is listed on the ACI Scholarly Blog Index.
Recent Posts
Current chapters of the topic of the season, part of an ongoing research project.
Otto Wagner (1841-1914): The Shift to Utility
Architect to the Emperor There is a portrait of Otto Wagner (1841-1918) by Gottlieb Kempf-hartenkampf, conventionally painted in 1896, showing the famous architect in formal dress with an Imperial medal around his neck, indicating that he had been recently appointed...
The Secession Building in Vienna and its Patrons
The Patronage of Modernism in Vienna One of the tropes of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna is the contradiction within the culture. The regime with its outmoded and ineffectual monarchy represented a long-dead past and the members of the court and the governing bodies of the...
Vienna, Anachronism, and Design Revolution
Pre-War Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna The Last of the Old: The Ringstraße To understand Vienna, the heart and soul of Austria, the seat of the aging but glitzy Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is necessary to understand the Ringstraße, an urban development project that...
About the Author
Art historian and art critic, Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette lives and works in Los Angeles. An art historian at Otis College of Art and Design, the widely published author covers the local art scene and is the publisher of the website Art History Unstuffed.
With an international audience, this website and its accompanying podcasts provide the 21st version of learning about art, history, philosophy, and theory.
How To Use This Site
Welcome to Art History Unstuffed, and to education in the twenty-first century
For Students
In contrast to the traditional text books, Art History Unstuffed exists on online where there is infinite space. The site can therefore go into depth and provides a fuller discussion of topics in art and theory.
For Teachers
Designed as an addition to classroom instruction, Art History Unstuffed is not a course but an extension of topics found in a survey art history class.
For Artists
Professional artist and students in studio art courses can find fast, easy access to information about famous historical artists.
For Museums
Art History Unstuffed can be a valuable resource in presenting information on modern and contemporary art for docent programs, which concentrate on training the teachers on the collections in your museum.
Podcast
Seeing to present art history to a variety of learners, Art History Unstuffed presents the Soundbytes in Modern Art podcast. These episodes are available as single units or can be found as a virtual book on iBooks, free of charge under the title: Art History Unstuffed: The Podcasts. Each episode discusses a single topic at greater length than the written posts, which are about 2500 words each. Each podcast ranges from 15 to 20 minutes and is part of a series that treats an artist or a topic over an hour of listening. The episodes are, therefore, discussions at a higher level and are geared more to graduate students and to colleagues than to the beginning student.
Episode 19: Romanticism and Constable
CONSTABLE, THE PICTURESQUE, AND ENGLISH ROMANTICISM
Less famous and dramatic than his British rival, Joseph Turner, John Constable preferred the humble English countryside of his native Stour Valley. In his humble rural paintings, Constable captured his “careless boyhood” on the eve of the Industrial Revolution and froze these scenes in a nostalgic time, creating a much-loved “Constable Country.” Compared to Turner who faced change, Constable turned away and retreated into the past of his boyhood. Even though his carefully delineated and detailed depictions of the Stour Valley, Constable often painted from memory as much as from observation. “Constable Country” is a elegy to a golden past that may have never been.
Also listen to “Romanticism in England, Part One” and “Romanticism in England, Part Two” and “English Romanticism and Turner”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 18: English Romanticism and Turner
TURNER, THE BEAUTIFUL, THE SUBLIME, AND ENLISH ROMANTICISM
Joseph William Mallord Turner was the most famous exponent of English Romanticism. A product of an era of war with Napoléon, the artist celebrated the rise of the British empire. Although many of his landscapes featured classical and ancient subject matter in the foreground, Turner was fascinated with the dramatic modern events. His manner of painting was innovative and unprecedented but his patriotic and often moralizing content won Turner the support of England’s most powerful art critic, John Ruskin. Turner was the painter of the beautiful but he is mostly remembered as being one of the most prominent artists of the new and unprecedented Industrial Sublime.
Also listen to “Romanticism in England, Part One”and “Romanticism in England, Part Two” and “Romanticism and Constable”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 17: Romanticism in England, Part Two
NAMING LANDSCAPES IN ENGLAND
Part Two
“Nature” in England acquired a new identity after the Napoléonic Wars. In response to the completion of the Enclosure Movement and the spread of private ownership of vast expanses of land, an economic response to profit opportunities was interpreted through several new aesthetic theories that are uniquely English. Landscapes were divided into categories: the Sublime and the Beautiful and the Picturesque. Linked to English literature—novels and poetry—the “picturesque” is a very English form of landscape which inspired many important theoretical writings that defined the nostalgic elegiac English countryside.
Also listen to “Romanticism in England, Part One” and “English Romanticism and Turner” and “Romanticism and Constable”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Videos
The complete Art History Timeline – this twenty-seven episode series of five minute videos span Western art history, from the Caves to Romanticism. Produced with the assistance of Otis College of Art and Design, these can be used by students and teachers as introductory, supplementary or review material.
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Show off your smarts. Art history unstuffed merchandise makes great gifts for you and your colleagues.
The Writing of Cubism:
The Construction of a Discourse, 1910-1914
$20.00
New Artwriting:
Creating a Culture of Cyber Criticism
$10.00
Falling Through Postmodernism.
Volume One: Blindness (Volume 1)
$30.00
Forthcoming Books
To continue to the circulation of her contributions to Heathwood Press, Dr. Willette has assembled the articles, published and not yet published, into a new book on the avant-garde. This new book will include other articles available on Academia.edu and Heathwood Press. This most recent series on the historic avant-garde was being written in response to the centennial of the Great War. After a remarkable span of five decades, the avant-garde was ended by this war in Europe. The war exiled and killed the artists, ended art movements, and scattered avant-garde art, now left to the mercies of totalitarian regimes. Now that a century has passed it is time to re-examine the avant-garde and re-write its details, reexamine the art historical assumptions, which constructed the idea of provocative art. This forthcoming book also seeks to relocate forgotten art, left behind in the rush towards the future.
Dr. Willette is currently completing an entirely new kind of book on design, a book that is multi-modal. Offering multiple modes of output, this book offers the readers several ways of receiving information, slide shows, podcasts, texts and images. The interactive book, Design and the Avant-Garde, 1920-1940, will be divided into several volumes. Volume One will focus on the interconnections between art and design at the fine-de-siècle period, leading up to the creation of “modern” design.
“Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”
— Jackson Pollock