Art History

This document is an expanded version of panels used to introduce the mixed media art of Souleymane Ouologuem and Amahigueré Dolo at the Greater Denton Arts Council's "Dogow Adouron Bew: Components of a Dogon World" Exhibition (2017). It also includes some new pieces which were produced during the artists' Texas stay. The document explores the relationship between Mr. Dolo and Mr. Ouologuem's paintings, drawings, and installations and local weaving, dyeing, carving, and architectural practices in Mali's Bandiagara Escarpment region. The photos derive from my own fieldwork in Mali, various museum visits, and the artists' exhibitions at the Patterson-Appleton Art Center in Denton and the Menil Collection in Houston. These highly intellectual and creative works of art are available for purchase and museum display. Please reach out to the artists directly:  Mr. Ouologuem (anwkoart@yahoo.fr), Mr. Dolo (donkoculte@live.fr).

Here is a sample of a works produced by modern painter, María Elena Lavie, a woman who helped modernize the Latin American floral painting genre and contributed greatly to Venezuela's post-WWII modern art scene. The collection, which is available for private purchase and museum or gallery display, is lovingly maintained by her eldest daughter, María Elena Nelson-Lavie (marielenanelson@gmail.com). The paintings span from the 1930s, when Lavie was finding inspiration from the mystic poetry of Spanish and French saints at a Catholic boarding school in Caracas, to the turn of the millenium, when her monumental depictions of nature became increasingly enormous, gestural, sexual, and "violent" in terms of color and form.
            Lavie’s vivid depictions of fruits and flowers, which often share the canvas with female nudes, draw inspiration from the monumental, botanical watercolors of American painter Georgia O’Keefe, but also Venezuelan garden mural traditions and Frida Kahlo’s prickly, autobiographical still lifes. She employs Francisco Goya’s fleshy and violent reds, Venezuelan artist Pedro Centeno’s tropical sensuality, Picasso’s method of abstracting and eroticizing the painted subject, and Alejandro Otero and Armando Reverón’s prioritization of white volumes. As with many women in her profession, Lavie’s history rests in the shadows of the many famous, male artists who worked closely with her as equals during her career. Examples include President Pérez Jiménez’ prized, yet unofficial artist Pedro Centeno, ‘School of Caracas’ artist Pedro Angel Gonzalez, and Creole Modernists Ramón Martín Durbán, Miguel Arroyo, and Francisco Narváez. Like her classmate, Alejandro Otero, Lavie also left for Paris in the 50s, mingling with many modern expat painters at l'École des Beaux Arts and l'Academie Julien. Her works have been featured in all the best art venues in Venezuela and numerous galleries, museums, and festivals around the world (Galerie Bernheim and Galerie Cristobal Rojas in Paris, the International Festival in Osaka, the Art Triennial in Bulgaria, the Premio Internacional in Monaco, the Art Expo, Venezuelan Embassy, and Galeria Venezuela in New York, and the Biennial of Latin American art in Mexico City...).

This article explores the cultural controversy about the relationship between painting and poetry sparked by Wilhelm von Schadow's 1828 rendering of Mignon, a famous literary heroine in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Following closely a position introduced by Lessing and endorsed by Goethe, and using it to advance his general thesis about the end of art, Hegel argued that Schadow's image transgressed the proper borders of its medium by attempting to translate the poetic into the visual. Schadow, by contrast, insisted on the crucial regenerative role of art in society and art's religious mission, thereby giving an emphatically Christian tenor to the Romantic injunction to strive after the infinite. Animated by these convictions, Schadow turned Goethe's heroine into an allegory of Romantic art, thus " Christianizing " Goethe's neoclassical sensibility. The controversy provoked by Schadow's Mignon provides an opportunity to explore late Romantic aesthetics and the cultural and political meaning of art within the context of the Prussian Restoration, as well as to reconsider the relationship between this putatively conservative sensibility and " modernism. " In 1828, Mignon made a sensational, though belated, entry at the biannual exhibition of the Berlin Academy of Art, where the painting, as one Carl Seidel assured the readers of the Berliner Kunst-Blatt, " was awaited with extraordinary longing by the whole of the art-loving community. " 1 A depiction of the main heroine of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, first published thirty years earlier, 2 the painting showed a dark-haired, pale young woman lost in thought, a fragile apparition who tenderly holds a Renaissance guitar, her delicate,

This article explores the cultural controversy about the relationship between painting and poetry sparked by Wilhelm von Schadow's 1828 rendering of Mignon, a famous literary heroine in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Following closely a position introduced by Lessing and endorsed by Goethe, and using it to advance his general thesis about the end of art, Hegel argued that Schadow's image transgressed the proper borders of its medium by attempting to translate the poetic into the visual. Schadow, by contrast, insisted on the crucial regenerative role of art in society and art's religious mission, thereby giving an emphatically Christian tenor to the Romantic injunction to strive after the infinite. Animated by these convictions, Schadow turned Goethe's heroine into an allegory of Romantic art, thus " Christianizing " Goethe's neoclassical sensibility. The controversy provoked by Schadow's Mignon provides an opportunity to explore late Romantic aesthetics and the cultural and political meaning of art within the context of the Prussian Restoration, as well as to reconsider the relationship between this putatively conservative sensibility and " modernism. " In 1828, Mignon made a sensational, though belated, entry at the biannual exhibition of the Berlin Academy of Art, where the painting, as one Carl Seidel assured the readers of the Berliner Kunst-Blatt, " was awaited with extraordinary longing by the whole of the art-loving community. " 1 A depiction of the main heroine of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, first published thirty years earlier, 2 the painting showed a dark-haired, pale young woman lost in thought, a fragile apparition who tenderly holds a Renaissance guitar, her delicate,

Cet article voudrait montrer comment le motif récurrent des fileuses servait à véhiculer les idées des humanistes et des réformateurs du Nord de l’Europe. Les artistes utilisaient le thème des fileuses à la fois pour sa valeur symbolique et pour sa grande ancienneté. Le motif leur permettait d’exprimer les nouvelles valeurs morales et les transformations du rôle de la femme. L’usage de la gravure sur bois et de la gravure en taille douce permettait une plus grande diffusion des idées nouvelles qui étaient liées à l’urbanisation des pays transalpins, à une vision plus favorable de la famille et au fait que les femmes étaient exclues du milieu du travail. Les artistes visaient surtout la classe bourgeoise urbaine qui partageait avec les humanistes et les réformateurs l’idéal de la famille nucléaire. Le motif permettait aux artistes de séparer la « sphère officielle ou mondaine » de l’époux de la « sphère privée ou domestique » de l’épouse. Dans ce contexte, le motif était utilisé de d...

This article explores the cultural controversy about the relationship between painting and poetry sparked by Wilhelm von Schadow's 1828 rendering of Mignon, a famous literary heroine in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Following closely a position introduced by Lessing and endorsed by Goethe, and using it to advance his general thesis about the end of art, Hegel argued that Schadow's image transgressed the proper borders of its medium by attempting to translate the poetic into the visual. Schadow, by contrast, insisted on the crucial regenerative role of art in society and art's religious mission, thereby giving an emphatically Christian tenor to the Romantic injunction to strive after the infinite. Animated by these convictions, Schadow turned Goethe's heroine into an allegory of Romantic art, thus “Christianizing” Goethe's neoclassical sensibility. The controversy provoked by Schadow's Mignon provides an opportunity to explore late Romanti...

This article focuses on Paolo Trubetskoi’s statue of Alexander III and the controversy surrounding it. Trubetskoi won the commission over other well-known sculptors thanks to his aristocratic origins, the approval of the imperial family, and his successful portraits of Lev Tolstoi and others. Through an analysis of the monument’s artistic value and its contemporary and subsequent reception, the article considers whether it was a failure, and if so why.