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.
Enjoy and Learn
This site is responsive to computers, cell phones and tablets and will resize for your reading convenience.
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.
John Pfahl: Photographing the War Machine
The Odd Couple Missiles and Petroglyphs The forcible pairing a fragmented photograph of a missile on top of a part of a petroglyph may seem like an odd pairing, but the jarring juxtaposition of a machine on a mission of death and an ancient drawing actually has an odd...
read moreJohn Phafl: Measuring Nature
Perspective as Photography One of the paradoxes of the discovery of perspective during the early Renaissance was the fact that landscape painting played so small a part in this new "science." Today, art students are taught to use perspective to measure the...
read moreRichard Misrach: Photographing Horrible Things Beautifully, Part Three
The Wall, the Fence, the Desert In 1914 America's poet Robert Frost wrote a poem, Mending Wall, made famous by its opening line: Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And...
read moreAbout 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 64: Norman Rockwell at War
Norman Rockwell, Part Two
America was never more united in a single national effort than it was during the Second World War. During the dark days of these years, American on the home front took comfort from a steady stream of covers on the Saturday Evening Post. Through a series of invented characters, such as Rosie the Riveter, who personified the United States, and the famous suite, The Four Freedoms, Rockwell created icons for his country.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 63: Norman Rockwell – America’s Favorite Artist
Norman Rockwell, Part One
Although the career of Norman Rockwell, the acclaimed illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, spanned the twentieth century, his mature period of the 1940s and 1950s is the best known. This podcast, the first of three, discusses how this artist “invented” a traditional old-fashioned America, using modern movie methodology of “directing” his cast of characters to create his iconic “America.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 62: Pablo Picasso and Guernica – The Impact
Pablo Picasso, Part Four
For decades one of the most famous and iconic works of modern art was mis-placed, waiting in New York City for the Spanish Republic to return. Predicting the horrors of the Second World War, Guernica had a potency and power that lingered long after the mural was finally sent home to Spain. This podcast discusses the long-term impact of this work of art and recounts how the anti-war statement played an unexpected role in the 2003 war on Iraq.
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.
Shop
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